Lows, Lows, and More Lows

Once we switched to straight sites instead of the angled ones, our user error went way down. February went fairly well. Once March hit, it started to warm up, baseball started, and Andrew began to fight tons of lows. We kept turning down basal, adjusting meal ratios, and were calling Vanderbilt all the time. Again, thank you God for a student teacher! Finally, one Vanderbilt nurse told us to turn down the basal immediately whenever he had a low until we could get them to stop. The school nurse didn't program pumps, so that meant leaving school & turning down Andrew's basal at school, on the ballfield, etc. He went 2 solid weeks with multiple lows every day. Of particular concern were school mornings. His basal was turned down to literally almost nothing (.050u/hr) & he still had lows. His BG was still high at 2 hours post breakfast so it didn't seem wise to drop the breakfast ratio. Nothing made sense. Your body naturally fights low BG by releasing stores of glucagon, adrenaline, & other hormones. I worried that as his reserves got more and more depleted, we were headed closer to serious trouble. I called the school nurse in exasperation & suggested we just prevent the morning lows with a snack. It didn't treat the cause of the problem, but it kept him safe in the meantime.