Today is the next installment in my weeklong celebration of Type 1 Diabetes Awareness Day: Keep It Up!

Aside from high blood sugar, we also worry about -- wait for it -- low blood sugar.

What could possibly be as scary as all the bad stuff that can happen with too high a sugar for too long?

Well... how about death?

So yeah, pretty damn scary. Remember me saying back on Monday that we often check Penny's sugars in the middle of the night? That's why. It was especially harrowing while she was dropping into her honeymoon phase, because as her body was returning to efficiency, it meant that the insulin we were giving her was suddenly more than she needed. There were a lot of lows.

On the plus side, lows are pretty easy to treat. The easiest way to get sugar into one's system, after all, is to... eat sugar. Specifically, in order to get sugar into the system as quickly as possible, it helps if the sugar is fairly pure, in either a liquid or powder form (which means it starts being absorbed before it's even swallowed) and not complicated by fats or fibers.

The rule, according to the hospital, is to administer about 15g of carbs in the purest, easiest-to-absorb form we can get our hands on, wait fifteen minutes, and then test the blood sugar again. Rinse and repeat until the blood sugar is back into the target range.

Chocolate, because of the fats in it, is not a good solution for low blood sugar, but most other candies are. Back in the hospital, they gave us a fun-size AirHead to keep in Penny's kit. And once when we stupidly went to the grocery store without her kit, Penny dropped into a low (I don't know how low, because we forgot her kit and couldn't test her, but you learn the symptoms pretty fast) we bought a pack of gummi lifesavers. Four of them got her back on track, and we put the rest back in her kit.

And now we never go ANYWHERE without it.

We also have a little pack of Glucotabs that came with her kit, which are tablets of compressed sugar, specifically designed for treating blood sugar lows. On the plus side, they're easy to carry around and they start dissolving in the mouth even faster than candy. On the minus side, they're freakishly expensive for what are essentially loose-packed SweeTarts. We're sticking with reguar old candy until we have a better reason to switch.

Juice is another good option -- it starts absorbing in the mouth, and has the added bonus of actually containing some nutritive value. It's harder to carry around with you, though, especially since 15g of juice is only about half a cup (4oz), and you can't buy single-serving containers of less than 8oz. We keep some single-serving bottle of orange juice at home, though.

If the low isn't too severe, we rely on good old milk -- one cup of it contains about 12g of carbs, and the amount of fat in it keeps the sugar from hitting the body too hard, too fast. If Penny has a moderate low at night, we try to rely on milk. In fact, if her blood sugar is at or below 100 at 10:00, we'll give her some milk, even though 100 is well within her range, because the tendency is to dip lower during the night.

A severe low may make a diabetic too groggy to eat, though this hasn't happened to Penny. In these cases, you want the food to be as close to liquid as possible, to make it easier for them to swallow. Juice, again, if you've got some, or honey. Otherwise, I've been told that those little tubes of colored sugar-gel that are used for writing on cakes contain just about 15g of sugar, and are easy to squirt into the corner of someone's mouth.

On the other hand, if she drops low enough that she can't even swallow...

This is the the Glucogon kit. If Penny's blood sugar ever drops so low that she falls unconscious, this is what we use. The little vial contains a powdered glucose that will dissolve instantly in water. The syringe contains a measured amount of water. We stick the needle into the vial and squirt in all the water, then pull the plunger back out to the appropriate dose. (The solution degrades faster in liquid form, which is why it's stored powdered like this.)

They recommend injecting this into the butt -- this is a muscle injection, and the behind is mostly muscle. Also, if we ever need to use this, we were told, speed is of the essence, so don't bother taking her clothes off; the needle can go through a couple of layers of clothes, if need be -- even denim. (Not that Penny ever wears jeans, but she'll probably change her mind on that someday.) There's a better than even chance that she'll throw up as soon as she wakes up, so having her on her side is a good idea.

And after she gets that shot, we can call her endocrinologist's 24-hour line while we're in the car on the way to the emergency room.

So how do we even stay balanced on the tightrope between highs and lows? Constant vigilance! Well, and a lot of tracking. Tomorrow, I'll show you how we Follow It!