When to dial 999 (Libre App)

[VioletMatilda]

Dsis is Type 1. She lives alone. We live 3 hours apart and I have the Libre app on my phone. If the alarm goes off, I call her - usually a video call to check she's ok.

On 3 occasions this year she hasn't responded to repeated calls and her blood has continued to fall. I have dialled 999 when her blood dropped to 2.8 or 2.7 and a paramedic in a car has been there quickly.

Today her alarm went off mid morning and when I called she was asleep in bed, not feeling well. She took jelly babies and I saw her blood go back up. Two hours later it went off again. I called again and again she was asleep in bed. This time she seemed to think my call was a continuation of the previous one, and she was saying "I told you, I've taken jelly babies." I ended up shouting at her to drink Lucozade, so she got up, but then got distracted by her cat. More shouting and she eventually drank Lucozade, but her blood dropped to a low of 2.3. I stayed on the call till her blood was back up to 4.

Should I have dialled 999? She was breathing, conscious, and speaking to me, holding her phone so that I could see her, but she was confused.

I know that 2.3 and losing consciousness is an emergency, and in this case she wasn't losing consciousness, but is the threshold higher when the person lives alone?

@brownbootsandhats you are correct. It’s 5 to drive and that means you must check with a finger prick. It takes time for your brain to catch up once you’ve had a hypo.
My alarm triggers when I go lower than 4.

This ^ the suggestion by a previous poster of a level of 4.5 sounds more appropriate. Maybe even a bit higher if it's dropping so sharply.

I have the libre app to support a family member and his app is set to alarm at 4.2 I think. On my app it goes off at 3.9. I turn off notifications overnight and he knows that I won't monitor then but I check that it is high enough (12 or above) when I go to bed, call to remind him to eat muesli if it isn't high enough and check again when I wake up as he is most likely to go low in the morning. Libre is extremely useful as I can do this living hours away and even when abroad on holiday! The alarms are annoying but Libre is so much better than the finger prick blood tests before. His consultant said that it is harder to stay in the target range as people get older. It is a relentless condition. Maybe show the diabetes section to your Dsis as a way for her to communicate with others going through the same thing?

If it’s dropping so sharply she needs to look at how to even her sugars out a little more to lessen the sugars suddenly dropping. A family member has done this by really lowering carbs - done with medical support. But less carbs means less insulin and less spikes.

She’s nowhere near managing her diabetes. Why is she letting it get so low before treating? Given repeated hypos her alarm should be set at around 5mmol. Why isn’t she treating hypos properly? Chocolate milk and toast isn’t a suitable hypo treatment. The spikes suggest she’s overtreating them, and the time to increase shows she’s not treating properly (fast carbs, holding them in the mouth, checking with fingerpricks after not libre). Why isn’t she adjusting her insulin doses to prevent the hypos? Is she correcting the highs - if so she’s overcorrecting them

she doesn’t seem to have any clue what she’s doing and needs to speak to a professional urgently and regularly

Thanks, @PotatoFan . She's been T1 diabetic for 40 years. She is convinced that, after all these years, no-one knows more about how to manage her diabetes than she does herself. @MujeresLibres comment about "burn out" sounds right to me. She is absolutely fed up of being T1 diabetic. She doesn't take kindly to anything she perceives as criticism from anyone medical.

I find it very hard to get clear answers from her, which is why I'm on this thread.

Four alarms this week, one on Mon, one on Tues, two on Fri, but all during the day when I was awake.