Ok so we just passed our first emergency test with DS. After school DS had an iced coffee and doughnut and was pretty high but the insulin brought him down in range by 5. He later had some diarrhea and said his stomach was not feeling quite right. So he skipped dinner.He hovered near 70 for a while, and had a fruit snack which popped him up to like 120. At around 10PM he said he was hungry so we had some nuggets and fries from Wendys (a favorite of his). He dosed for them and his Lantus. At 11 he started dropping. 8 ounces of apple juice and still dropping. I was testing him every 5 minutes. 60, 74, 60 55 51 45 41 42 39 So i went for the glucagon. I mixed it but then used the regular needle instead of that monster needle you might need to get through clothes that comes with the kit. I gave him about 13 units. I made sure his head was turned to the side. 10 minutes later meter was 80. I double checked 83. The dex is still catching up. He slept through the whole thing. So we passed. Mr T1D...nice try. I win. You lose. My wife was like, you gave him fries and nuggets? Yeah. I was an idiot. Toast would have been better and I should have waited to see if it absorbed. Dex now says 104 two arrows up.
Scary! He slept thru all that testing and the glucagon shot too, wow. Hope he is ok today, I'm sure you are exhausted!
Sounds like you did great. He may not absorb carbs well for a few days or even a week so I'd be cautious with boluses for a while.
So here is the Dexcom trace. You see the big spike on the doughnut/iced coffee and the little spike with the fruit rollup. The slide started after the fruit rollup when he dosed for the fries/nuggets. He seemingly ignored the apple juice completely except perhaps for the little blip up to about 74 (the two white dots) after 11. I knew i was in trouble when i didnt see a spike for the fries. He started this trip at about 120 after the fruit rollup. When he went straight down I blunted it with the apple juice, he hovered around 70, then dropped after more apple juice as the Humalog peaked. A mostly positive story with the Dex. The most important thing it did was show me that he was still dropping even after he had eaten. If I had not seen that i would not have been alert to the possibility of danger. I doubt very much i would have checked him at 11 after checking him at 10 and seeing 120 on the fingerstick with fries going down the hatch. On the negative side the dex was really behind on the drop. His fingerstick was in the low 50's but dex was reading 68. Dex did eventually reach the low 40's (the lowest fingerstick was 39), but it was lagging. So yeah setting that alarm for 70 is really a good idea! I eventually went to bed at 3 once the adrenalin wore off. We kept him home today as his stomach was still feeling quesy. We are backing off the Humalog some until the stomach issue resolves.
After 8 years, we used a mini glucagon a few months ago for the first time. Like your experience, it worked like a charm and I won't hesitate to use it again if necessary.
My son just got his first experience with glucagon this week, too. He was at school and was a 20 on his meter while his CGM said LOW with double arrows down. He was sucking down juice boxes as fast as he could and I drove over to give a mini-glucagon (school can't do mini-glucagon, which I'm fine with...but I didn't want the after effects of a full dose). Took 80 carbs of the glucagon to get him to an 80. Experiences like that make me really appreciate the existence of glucagon! (oh, and ours was because he basically doubled his breakfast insulin by mistake.)
I don't shy away from doing mini glucagon. my daughter has had a rough school yr in terms of stomach bugs and a lot of weird bg days so it's helped me a lot. It doesn't make my daughter throw up like a full shot either.
Glad to hear everything worked out well and your son was safe! Sorry to hear you had to go through this. We have done glucagon shots several times, but not the mini glucagon shots. Most times we treat the lows with glucose tablets. The mini glucagon shots work well for stomach viruses.
