Teaching high school, I have other young ones for whom I am responsible, and at times, they have diabetes. When working with these students, I feel grateful for my knowledge and experience with the disease, although I wouldn't have minded acquiring the knowledge in some other way.
One of these students is in the school's Spanish Honor Society. He has had Type 1 diabetes since he was three years old. I have had several conversations with his parents about the experience of having such a young child with Type 1, and boy, do I not envy them.
Last week we were holding a meeting of the club, for which I am an advisor. During the meeting, the young man checked his bg levels, which were just over 300. After checking his bg, he left the room huriedly.
The students in the room knew how this could go. One of them asked me, "Did he go to throw up?"
I didn't know, but I knew that he needed to get his bg down soon.
Often when he is nauseous, this student needs some water, so I left the room to get a couple of cups of water for him for when he returned.
When he did return, he said, "Sweet. Water." and downed the two cups.
I asked him if he had bolused.
He said he had over an hour ago, and since his bg hadn't dropped since then, he had better go home.
Alarm bells went off in my head: I knew this kid had recently acquired his driver's license, a must for teens in rural areas like the one in which I teach.
"How will you get home?" I asked.
"Drive," he said.
"Oh no, you don't," I said. "Let me call the nurse to see if she is still here. If we can't get your bg down, I will drive you home."
The student explained that he thought that when he inserted his infusion set, it might not have installed properly, so he might need to change it.
"Do you have a spare one?" I asked.
"Not on me," he said.
The nurse wasn't at the school (after all, it was about an hour after school was over), but the student went to the main office to have someone unlock the door to his diabetic supplies, so that he could access his spare infusion sets. Then he returned to the classroom.
He was a little wound up. He sat on one of the desks and removed his infusion set. I peppered him with questions about how long it typically takes for his body to respond to the insulin, and whether he had a syringe, just in case. While he answered my questions, he unwrapped the infusion set and lifted his shirt, pinching the skin on his belly.
At this point the club president said, "Oh my God, are you going to do that NOW?"
I think he and I both gave her the same look, because she made some apologetic noises and discreetly turned her head to talk with a friend.
While he put in the infusion set, we set the timer on the computer for him to check his bg again in 15 minutes. Then I made him promise to check it one last time before he left.
Needless to say, our meeting about planning a day trip to NYC was thrown way off topic. By this time it was nearly one and a half hours after school ended. The meeting was adjourned, and the kids went home.
I left the school with a number of things on my mind. My diabetic student, evidently, was not one of them. About halfway home, I realized that I never did have him check with me before he got in the car to drive away. Just like M, he probably never gave it another thought, thinking he was perfectly all right, and that he could handle it, even if his bg was too high.
After my half-hour commute, I made the phone call.
He answered the phone, obviously having made it home safely.
I told him who it was and that I just wanted to make sure he was okay. He immediately apologized for worrying me; it had slipped his mind.
He's a really nice kid.
But I am glad that I only have one of these at home.
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| No such luck. Maybe next time, kid. |
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