Will my son be OK?

[danijo]

My 11 yr old son is on Lantis and Humalog. He takes 33 units of Lantis at 9:00 pm. At noon today I made the mistake of giving him 2 units of Lantis instead of Humalog. Is he going to be OK? What can I do for him now?

[JDRF-VOL-RL]

Hi, danijo.  I'm not a medical professional, just the parent of a kid with diabetes.  We've done the same thing, given a long acting shot instead of a short acting.  Yes, he'll be ok, but you're going to need to monitor him VERY VERY closely.  First of all, call your endo, they know your son better than I do, and they know the dosing better than me.  You'll need to adjust the insulin you give him until tomorrow to take care of the differences.  But call your endo immediately, if you haven't done so already, so they can talk you through the insulin tweaks.  And check his blood sugars often.  He'll be fine, and don't worry about it.  Everybody makes mistakes.

[JDRF-VOL-SG]

Yes, if his glucose levels go high (they probably will do this, seeing as how the dose he is on is so small compared to his usual dose), his doctor can give you a sliding scale of quick-acting insulin to lower his glucose back to normal. So he will probably be taking much more of the quick-acting than normal to compensate, but will probably be just fine as long as he tests often. Yes, we all have done things like this -- life gets busy, and we find ourselves on "autopilot" when measuring out our insulin while thinking of something else. We feel stupid, but we figure out how to compensate and we are OK. He will be, too.