My almost 10year old daughter was diagnosed 10 days ago. I was checking her symptoms online and that led to checking her with her dad’s meter:437. We live in Mexico, so some things are different, but as she was stable, the ER didn’t admit her that fateful Saturday night. Monday evening we saw the endo and began insulin. We’ve had to adjust the dose, but finally her numbers are coming out of the 200’s, even normal today, twice.
My big worry is how to know when to start checking at night or before bed. The endo has us on 3x a day, and told me that when twice she has a.m. highs to check at night, but I’m scared to wait. We upped her intermediate, and I worry when the honeymoon will start.
I feel the weight of the responsibility and worry about when the first hypo or low will come. Will I catch it in time? What if… What if… It isn’t helping that this all triggers memories of losing my first baby due to a heart defect.
I’m a pretty relaxed Mom, and not a worry wort, but this seems to justify worry!
Hi @rosiknitzar. I’m glad you found this site so quickly; there are lots of helpful, smart, experienced, and enthusiastic people here.
One thing in your post that jumped out at me immediately was that your endo has you on a 3x/day schedule - is that for testing her sugars? If so, I would increase the number of blood sugar tests each day. Before I got a continuous glucose monitor, I tested my sugars at least 8 times each day.
By testing her sugars more frequently, you will have a better idea of what her sugars tend to do at certain times. For me, for example, my sugars start rising around 5 or 6 am, and keep going up - so I need to be sure I give insulin in the morning.
Kids bodies can be pretty unpredictable as they grow, so try not to get discouraged if you don’t get steady/consistent patterns.
When I was little, I was frequently high in the mornings, and it would mess up my whole day, especially once I started going to school. As a result, my mom (and as I got older, I) started checking my blood sugars around 3:30am.
If you are concerned then you should test any time you think it’s necessary, especially until you become more comfortable with diabetes. Just watch how many strips your insurance provides each day–you don’t want to test every 5 minutes and then run out of strips before your insurance will refill them (having to go days/weeks without testing at all). If you have enough strips and you want to test more often than the doctors or endo are telling you to then by all means do it.
Today he said that her numbers are staying up because of the thyroid meds, so we have some more time before a hypo is likely. In 2 weeks we get the next panel done, and then he’ll know better what is going on.
Not having insurance, in some ways we’re freer to do as we think is needed. Today we found a local foundation to get plugged into, and through them we can get supplies much cheaper and even given. Next week we’ll have a review, and then we can be involved in the support groups and children’s activities.
If you feel that you want to check in the middle of the night or anytime you should just check. You don’t need the doctors approval.
I agree with @ksmerk12. I echo everything she has said.
Thanks, all, I feel freer to test whenever we are unsure.
I am about to post a new question, if you want to look for it.