Some things about T1D you are better off not knowing about.  One of them is an awful phrase used to describe the sudden death of an individual with T1D due to severe hypoglycemia.  I'm only going to blog about this once.  It is probably the biggest fear for parents of children with T1D.

The phrase 'dead in bed' is used to describe the sudden death of an otherwise healthy person with T1D, while he/she is sleeping.  It is very rare, and studies are not completely clear about what exactly happens to cause this sudden death.  It is thought that the T1 experiences a severe low/severe hypoglycemia, resulting in severe brain damage and then death.

You might ask why I would blog about something so morbid.  It's one of those places we don't let our brains go as parents.  When I wake up in the middle of the night I always reach over to feel Carter.  Sometimes, he is sleeping very still, his body feels cool, his little chest hardly rising and in that instant my body has a visceral emotional reaction; my heart drops, I want to throw up...he's gone.  It takes less than a second or two to realize that he's breathing just fine and is sleeping peacefully, but that feeling hangs with me for a bit and I find that the next day I'm just a bit melancholy.

I don't know if that fear or visceral reaction in the middle of the night diminishes as parents of T1D's become more comfortable with the disease.  I assume that it is always there, and I understand why many parents feel the need to get up at 2:00 AM to do a glucose check...just to be sure.