Here is where we get to talk about the actual poking with Type 1 Diabetes. Maybe your only experience with Diabetes is seeing someone give themselves a shot or seeing someone poke their finger to check blood sugar, but here we will go into all the details.
Our son had to poke his finger before every meal to check his blood sugar, or if he was feeling overly low or high at times (of course we weren't really sure of what this felt like to recognize it just yet). Now awful as it was, to make it worse, our son played the guitar. He didn't just strum chords, but he liked to play finger picking guitar songs. This meant he was going to be poking his fingers all day and yet still have to use those sore fingers to play the guitar?
I remember seeing some commercial about a professional guitarist who had Diabetes who was helping to advertise about a blood sugar monitor that let you poke your arm or thigh or somewhere else to check blood, but I didn't know if our son could do this. When I asked, they said it is possible to check other places, but "we won't be teaching you that now". So gee. Maybe he could poke other places, but we weren't allowed to know yet? Our son was brave though, and he chose a different finger each time. I asked him which finger he used least in playing guitar and so maybe he would choose that finger more.
Now, the actual injection details. With insulin injections, there are only so many areas that you can inject, and these need to be rotated as to not cause problems. Here is a picture as to wear you can inject:
As you can see, the areas to rotate injections are the upper arms (mostly in back), the abdomen, the hips or buttocks, and the thighs. I think this picture doesn't show the buttocks part highlighted, but oh well.
So, with each meal, and at bedtime when he needed a long acting insulin, he would have to choose which sight to use and then remember and rotate to the next area next time.
We were rather lucky I suppose. While we met many other parents at the hospital for the same reason, their kids were much younger. Some had kids as young as 4 years old who had developed Diabetes. This meant they were the ones doing all the injections. Our son was 12 years old, and he was the one who was learning how to inject himself and check his own blood sugar. Although we felt lucky, we still felt guilty as putting so much upon a young 12 year old. He was so brave though. With every poke and every injection, he never cried and tried not to wince. I couldn't imagine being poked so much, or worse, I couldn't imagine having to poke myself. I don't know if I could do it.
We soon learned something that could pose almost as difficult---us being the ones to inject him. While we did learn to do his short acting insulin shots and poke his finger for blood sugar check, the main thing we would be responsible for would be the nightly long acting insulin shots. And this we learned caused him more pain. How awful it was the first time I had to inject this needle into his abdomen for the long acting insulin. I felt so bad. I was hurting my child, on purpose! They kept telling us at the hospital that we're not hurting but helping, but it is so hard to think about when you are basically stabbing your son with a needle and looking at him trying to be brave when you know that it hurts him!
Right now we were using viles of insulin with separate syringes that we would fill and inject, but they told us that we would be getting insulin "pens" for when we went home to use for the short acting insulin at meals. Supposedly these pens were easier to use.
We had all taken turns at the hospital administering the insulin. I would do one, my husband would do one, then our son. It all worked out somewhat, but sometimes it would be our son's turn and the rotation site would need to be the back of the arm. This proved difficult.
In order to inject, you needed to pinch the area with one hand then poke the needle in, then release the pinched skin, then inject the insulin. So, how could you do this on the back of the arm when your arms don't bend back there with 2 hands? Well, the hospital staff showed us ways to use "other objects" to make the skin pinch up. They said you can use desks, a counter, a wall, or in the hospital they showed him how to use his knee to pinch the skin on his arm to where he could inject with one hand. We had another kid come in as part of a mentor group who told us that he would squish himself next to the piano at home to do his shots sometimes. Goodness. What an adventure we were getting into.
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