When my son goes low in the middle of the night, my husband and I usually wake up to him screaming. When we get into his room, he just has a blank stare and screams. After checking his blood sugar and giving him the needed carbohydrates, he tells us that he was seeing scary things. Is it normal for him to see things that are not there?

Hypoglycemia in the middle of the night is frequent, often occurs without symptoms at all and can sometimes be suspected when next morning hyperglycemia occurs. The only real way to know about nocturnal hypoglycemia is to periodically test, even though this is somewhat hit-and-miss. Why one child would have nightmares or report “seeing things” remains totally unknown and very speculative. It probably does not have any lasting importance except for the scariness of what is seen. Similarly, why one child will have convulsions and another merely lose consciousness while many at the same level of blood glucose do not have any signs or symptoms at all is also unknown. The probably has something to do with the actual brain glucose level rather than the blood glucose levels since there is at least a 30 to 45 minute time difference between the two levels.

SB