As you can see from this (rather large) photo… blood sugar levels were floating along nicely at a pretty steady 115ish for a few hours after her very low carb dinner because she decided she only wanted chicken and sauce and not the side of rice. Okay, fine, whatever, no big deal. Dinner was a little later than usual this evening because I didn’t got the slow cooker started until later than I should have and so what, it happens.
We were watching the 3rd episode of Sherlock season 3 on Netflix and OMG it’s 8:45pm and you didn’t do your homework yet and you still need to take a shower before bed. Of course, like every time I tell her she needs to do homework or shower (or both) there’s lots of whining and complaining and “I’ll do it super quick 5 minutes before I’m supposed to be asleep. Please let me play on the computer for the next 40 minutes until then.” To which the answer was a very firm “Not on your life. If you can really do all that in 5 minutes then do it now and then you can have until bedtime to play.” Makes sense, right?
Well, she did do her homework and it really did take her about 5 minutes. But then it was time for the shower and instead she’s picking at scabs on the back of her heels. I may not have mentioned this before but she has pretty bad eczema and one of her “quirks” is that she scratches herself bloody on a fairly regular basis despite our best efforts to keep things under wraps. Well, she had some scratches already and she apparently decided that picking at scabs and scratching was a better use of her time than, oh, getting in the shower so she could actually do what she really wanted to do (computer time) before bed. Around 9:10 I finally coerced her to stop picking and get in the bathroom for her shower. Five minutes pass, no sound of the shower. Ten minutes pass, still no sound of the shower. At this point I announce that it’s 9:20 and she better be getting in the shower because it’s 10 minutes until bedtime. At which point she promptly starts crying and sniffling in the bathroom. She doesn’t want to get in of course, because all that freshly raw skin is going to burn under the water stream.
We’ve recently started recording her various “meltdowns” at the direction of her behavioral therapist so when the crying hadn’t subsided in 10 minutes I decided to start recording and go in to see what could possibly be the matter. Of course she won’t talk to me, won’t get in the shower, won’t look at me, etc. Just crocodile tears and lots of sniffles. Any suggestion on my part that she now, finally, get in the shower is met with a sound that is similar to a cat that’s been backed into a corner and isn’t quite hissing, but has that deep rumbling sound they make that says “I WILL scratch you!”
After about 10 minutes I manage to get her into the shower and get her hair washed, her crying and being generally uncooperative the whole time. I finally leave the bathroom with 21 minutes of this weird crying, sniffling, growling audio recording. At this point her pump has also been off for almost an hour. I think maybe her blood sugar is going to be heading upwards since no basal insulin and am shocked to see that instead she is 72 with a sideways down arrow. I manage to check her with the meter (she, at this point, is laying in the bathtub with the water off but not getting out) and it also says 72.
And then I realize… She started dropping at 9:15. The same time that she finally headed into the bathroom to start this entire process.
So… which came first? The chicken or the egg? Was this drawn out emotional meltdown the result of a blood sugar drop? Or was she really that distraught over the prospect of showering that her blood sugar ended up dropping low?
Just one of those stupid, stupid things that we deal with living with a child with Type 1 and other emotional/behavioral issues. It’s often hard to tell what caused what…
Chasing Lows 