While moving away from home to your college campus is an exciting time, as a type 1 diabetic it can also be scary. You deal with things that most people know nothing about. You take action every day to keep yourself safe and healthy. It can be intimidating or awkward to explain to others what you may need of them, but you are worth it.
Be awkward...it could save your life!
Based on my daughter's experience and the tragedy on her campus, these are our recommendations.
At the bare minimum, we recommend:
Ask your Disability Office to connect you with another T1D on your campus.
Hang glucagon by your bunk.
Ask another person in your dorm (not necessarily a roommate) to get a Sugarmate urgent low text; show this person where you keep your glucagon and how to administer it.
Train your wing in your glucagon - where you keep it and how to administer it.
911 should always be called after administering glucagon.
Have glucagon and sugar with you 24/7.
Further recommendations for safety:
Set up a tiered system of supports based on BG levels.
Kate's supports for example:
Follow alarms:
75 - Kate and mom
70 - dad
65 - bf
65 for 10 minutes - RA
55 - another girl in her wing
2 others in her wing get Sugarmate urgent texts at 55.
Kate, mom, dad, and bf also get Sugarmate urgent low texts.
Let your professors know you are T1 and carry glucagon on you at all times.
Kate put 2 classmates in charge of knowing what her lows look like and where her Baqsimi is in her go bag. She tells her professors that Jordan and Sam know what to do in an emergency. Jordan is one of the only other girls in Kate’s engineering cohort and Sam’s best friend at home is T1 so he’s always talked to Kate about her diabetes and he’s in her cohort so they were her choices.
Set up a sick day protocol with another T1D on your campus where you check in with each other to make sure you are doing all the important things like pushing fluids and insulin and checking for ketones, etc.