Question from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada:

My four year old son ( type 1, diagnosed just before his third birthday) has been battling a stomach flu for a couple of days, even with cutting his insulin dose, he went very low this morning (down to 1.2 mmol/L [21.6 mg/dl] ), and we were faced with his first glucagon injection. Even though he wasn’t unconscious, we felt we couldn’t get him back up fast enough because he was refusing to eat or drink anything. We gave him one-fourth of the regular glucagon dose, and he responded well (in fact, went up to 17 mmol/L [306 mg/dl]). Of course afterwards I read about the mini-dose of glucagon (which for his age would be 40 microgram).

How long can you keep glucagon after it has been reconstituted? It sounds great to be able to give small amounts, but if you have to use new glucagon every time, you could look at a day with several hundred dollars worth of glucagon. I’m not sure how realistic that is for anyone.