news artical..

[zimbie45]

http://www.azcentral.com/community/tempe/articles/2008/06/26/20080626tr-police0626-ON.html#commentform

news artical from here in arizona.. re a situation with an 18 year old diabetic and police...

[Shannon's Mom]

Did you read the comments below the article? The whole thing is sort of sickening. I've read plenty of stories about people acting out when they drop - even the one on here when someone was at pump class and the person dropped and the instructor wouldn't let them leave. It scares me to death thinking our kids can be subjected to something like this. :mad:

[Sandy's mom]

This is so disturbing! I have yet to experience "strange" behavior from Sandy when low. But my dh has more than once acted goofy, unreasonable, drunklike when he's low.

Another reason to keep the glucotabs in their pockets at all times!

[zimbie45]

YEs the comments below are SOOOOOO disturbing!!!

[Lee]

The article was bad enough - the comments made me cry.

[buggle]

It really is a worry with our own kids. My son is going to be a huge guy. He's already so tall for his age. I don't think we can expect the public to be sympathetic and recognize a low BG if a diabetic gets violent. They are going to react like they would to any violent person. The chances of something awful happening if the diabetic gets violent with cops are high. I also worry about drunken symptoms and my son not getting help if he's dangerously low.

The one thing I don't understand about this case in Phoenix is why the kid and his grandmother weren't carrying sugar with them -- especially if they know he gets crazy when he's low. He obviously felt the low and if he'd had something to eat right then, all of this could have been avoided.

Very upsetting story and very worrying.

[StillMamamia]

I don't know what to say about the article...I mean, I feel so bad for the guy and for the grandma, and the comments on it are truly unbelievable for some of them.
All I know is how my son acts when he's low. On one occasion, he was SO aggressive it was unbelievable. He's such a calm kid, and from one moment to the other he went running towards his brother and scratched his whole face. His brother was bleeding from that. That's how bad it was. I tried to hold Ian still and he was fighting me with all his strenght. I was able to test him while struggling with him, and sure enough he was very low, in the 30s. This with having tested him 1/2 hour before and he was over 120:eek:.
So it breaks my heart to know that this guy must have really been low...but then again, we don't know the full story.

[Shirley and Jamie V.]

Although we've been lucky with our daughter, we saw a young woman collapse at an ADA Tour d' Cure bike ride. Like the young man in the article, she was at the food stand TRYING to address her low BG. She once she was awake, she was still combative and would not co-operate with the medics. It was VERY SCARY. I hope this family has supportive community members stand up for them and life with diabetes.

[Zane's Mom]

This just makes me sick to my stomach. I can't believe how people automatically jump to stereotypical conclusions! Obviously there needs to be more and more education :eek:

[KatelinsMom]

How terrible. The story made me sad and nauseous..the coments from other readers also made me cry. People have no clue..and it saddens me that this could be any one of our kids at any given time. :(

[bethdou]

This is the same type of thing that happened to Doug Burns (Mr. Universe) in California last year. He was beaten up quite badly by the police when he had a bad low at a movie theater. If I remember right, his BG at the hospital or in the ambulance was in the 40s......

A lot of the comments are relating to how people get lethargic, etc. when their blood sugar drops - but obviously, this is a case of YDMV in a big way. I know it took my husband and I to hold our then-50-pound daughter down to get cake gel into her mouth when she had her first bad low, not long after she was diagnosed. It was awful. I can't imagine what it would be like with a full-grown adult, and I can TOTALLY see how someone can become angry, combative, violent when they are in the midst of a bad low. That being said, I do agree that a) grandma should have had something with her if he didn't and b) he shouldn't have been sent off alone. Treating his low should have become the immediate priority, even if she was standing in line to purchase something or whatever. Especially if he's had lows with reactions like this before.


No matter what, it's sad....I will tell you all that a LOT of the commenters on the AZ Republic forums are horrible, no matter WHAT the article is about. (I read them fairly often, because it's the newspaper here and I read online instead of hard copy) There are a bunch of trolls who are on there constantly just to make crappy remarks. Last week, a young lady (age 20) drove her SUV into a lake in front of an apartment complex, and had to be rescued from 10+ feet of water by the fire department. The comments that appeared almost immediately were AWFUL, and they just kept getting worse as the story developed. Sadly, she died 3 or 4 days after the accident, and no one knows what happened - as in, was she intoxicated/on drugs, or did she have diabetes and go low, or soemthing else? Unfortunately, they all hang around on the news website instead of much better places like CWD. ;) Of course, we wouldn't want those trolls here anyhow. :p