Five Haunts our Halloween

Its November and for those of us living with diabetes that means Diabetes Awareness Month! What better way to start off Diabetes Awareness month than with a dreaded 5 mmol (90mg/dl) bg level.  

I have mentioned time and time again how much I truly hate that number.  Five means he could drop low or he could be perfect.  It should be a number to make me happy and if it was three in the afternoon instead of three in the morning I would be happy.  Five at 3am is NOT a good number. Its a torturous reading...perfect for Halloween I suppose. 


At 2:30 I stumbled into my son's room.  I was tired.  I am getting used to being able to see at night thanks to a very recent iLasik procedure.  When you have not seen properly in 30+ years, it is actually something that is very hard to get used to.  The fact that I have to wear space goggles on my face that make me feel like a character from the movie The Fly does not help things. 

Has I said, all of this was topped off by a perfect, lovely reading of 5 (90).  Crap! I was going to have to try to stay awake and see where things were headed. Would he be low? Did I have basals set perfectly and he would be fine? What the heck would happen? Where is a CGM when I need it? Oh yeah, the one I want is not in Canada and my son thinks that they are a horrible idea anyway. More nightmares! 

I headed back to bed to wait.  I would simply doze for a half an hour and see where he was trending.  I haven't been sleeping overly well lately and I am always pretty alert when I have to stay awake to retest.  This would not be a problem. 

Wrong! I woke up at 4am! What's with that??? I went to check again not sure what I would be walking into.  This time he had dropped however slightly to 4.9 (87).  Time to shovel the glucose into him.  Not enough to make him high but enough to cover any drop that could occur.  How many tablets would that be? I guessed four of my giant rockets.  They are a little less carbs than the normal glucose tablets.  It was 4 am and I really did not want a lot of math involved at that hour.  

I began to feed my son.  He ate the first three fine.  At that point, I guess he had had enough of me and subconsciously did not want the dreaded glucose tablet hangover. He rolled over so that I could no longer access his mouth. I had to tell him to open up and take the last tablet.  I went back to sleep sure that I had avoided a crisis and hoping that I did not send him too high. 

This morning he woke up to a lovely 6 (108) and surprisingly no complaint of the taste of glucose in his mouth! What a great start to November :(  Where is that cure?????