From Leeds, West Yorkshire, England: My nine year old daughter
has type 1 diabetes. Neither we nor the hospital are able to get
a regular blood sugar count and she always has ketones. So, the
specialist at the hospital has involved social workers to find
out if she is under a lot of stress at home to see if this is
the cause. Is this possible? Yes indeed. In the past, a term,
"brittle, " was used when a person's blood glucose (sugar) level
often was swinging quickly from high to low and from low to
high. This term no longer is used much because there has been
such a debate over what it means (also called labile and
unstable diabetes ). In essence, someone who has lots of
admissions to hospital with hypos and/or ketoacidosis would be
labelled "brittle". However, in itself, this is a useless label
because it tells us nothing about the cause. There are many
potential problems that can lead to blood sugar instability
including poor injection sites, missing insulin, poor diet, etc.
the quality of diabetes educatio