I don't know about EVER DAY but Monday night I defiantly learned something new about type 1 diabetes that shocked me.
Every second Monday of each month I have an Outreach JDRF support group meeting. It is a core group of people right now (we are trying to reach out and gain more people) however it is still fun and on many occasions very educational. This Monday was one of those nights, a mother was talking about her newly diagnosed teenage daughter (lets call her Sarah) having horrible, frightening very disturbing NIGHTMARES. Her daughter was waking up in the middle of the night screaming and shaking...these were some horrifying dreams.
Sarah started to think that something was wrong within herself because of the images that she was dreaming of. Her parents had her seeing a therapist, they took her from doctor to doctor and NO one was able to come up with the REASON this poor young lady was not able to make it through the night without having these images haunting her sleep.
That is, until they met with a nurse from our diabetic clinic. They gave Sarah a CGM to wear for one week and the results shocked everyone...except the nurse I guess. Sarah was having sever lows that was causing the night mares.
LOWS CAN CAUSE NIGHTMARES...who knew...not me!
Her parents had no idea. She was going to bed with wonderful numbers and she was waking up with great numbers but in the middle of that she was crashing dangerously low.
I have NEVER heard of this...like many things type 1 it seems to be kept a secret until it happens to you.
7 comments:
Yikes! I wasn't aware that it happened with lows too! :( Kacey has nightmares with highs. If she goes really high 400-500 range, then she will wake up crying and actually feel like shes dropping low. I asked the Endo about this and they said it was probably the spiking that caused her to feel like that. She dreams really scary stuff when shes high...monsters, mean animals chasing her, death...things like that. Then it takes her forever to settle back down.
Great information Nicole. I had always wondered about that. Joe has only complained of a couple of nightmares in his life and I couldn't really find a correlation. I'll know to check his BG if he wakes up do to bad dreams.
I love learning new stuff!
Our CDE mentioned this very thing the second time we met with her. I had been decribing Ellie waking up and coming into my room crying and saying she was having a nightware. Every single time I tested her blood sugar and when this occurred she had low numbers. A couple of times I asked Elllie about her dreams she always said she was looking and searching for something or someone and couldn't find it. The CDE said the brain will cause vivid scenes (often relating to food or lack thereof) when numbers are too fay out of range in an attempt to wake up the body to get food (or to move around if the numbers are high). Totally made sense to me!
I knew this once my husband and I shared a bed - he'd wake up in a panic almost bolt upright with these horrible dreams and low blood sugar. And when Isaac is going low he screams "MAAAMMMAAAA" in the highest pitch scary voice ever, part of what helped us catch a few nasty lows. Scary stuff - good info to share, thanks.
GOSH! So scary! Just another thing to add to the ever growing list!! BLAH!!
I just got goosebumps reading this! I had never heard of this, but now I'm thinking about a few times recently when Ally woke up in the night really irritated and said she was having a nightmare. I will have to watch her numbers when this happens. Great! Now I'll want to check her every 2 hours at night instead of every 3!!
My son Colin has had this happen a few times, very scary stuff. He used to have awful dreams before diagnosis and now it makes me wonder?
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