Hyper Aware

Ever since I started using Dex (it’ll be a week tomorrow evening, yay!), I’ve become hyper aware of what’s going on. Before, when I used to test four, six, ten plus times a day, I wouldn’t be able to see what’s going on in between these tests. Sometimes I’d eat lunch at noon, get busy with work, and test again at 4pm or so. Of course, at 4pm, my bg would be somewhere around 120, and I’d think, Woohoo, I’m totally in the zone! What I didn’t see was that my levels would skyrocket to close to 300 about an hour and a half to two hours postprandial…like they are right now. I’d like to see more (and more and MORE) of this.

Now, with my trusty spycam DexCom, I’m seeing the bigger, more detailed picture. Just because my numbers look good when I do a fingerstick does not mean everything is okay. Without Dex, I wouldn’t have been able to tell that I was hovering around 200 from about 1am to 7:30am. Without Dex, I couldn’t see that I was WAY up there after what I thought was a decent lunch.

Right now, I’m 264 and holding steady. What I want is to be 164 and holding steady, or at least 264 going down! So frustrating. I’m definitely going to make some major tweaks in my diet.

I LOVE seeing this level and trend arrow one hour after a meal!

Paired with the soft (ahem) rises and falls, I just feel like I’m doing something right. It’s such a far cry from last night/today’s roller coaster of going to bed high, waking up low, and going high an hour later.

Diabetes Equipment Fail

Eeks. I woke up a few minutes ago feeling completely sick. I grabbed my DexCom off the headboard, only to find ??? staring back at me.

“DOH!” I leaped up from bed and practically ran to my meter as fast as my sluggish body would let me. Something definitely did not feel right.

I clocked in at a whopping 361.

I gave myself a bolus, and, on a hunch, felt around my pod (on the adhesive part that sticks out) for any leaks. BINGO. A pod changed revealed that my OmniPod (which I had changed about 3 hours prior to this fiasco) had a bent cannula and thus wasn’t giving me my basal insulin properly.

But the kicker was that somehow Dex’s receiver lost communication with the transmitter as I was asleep, thus not alerting me even when I reached 200.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can prevent this from happening? Obviously I won’t know about the bent cannula until my bg rises with no explanation, but how about preventing the lost communication between the receiver and the transmitter? I currently have the sensor on my lower back, but I sleep on my stomach, so there is really nothing in the way except my shirt and blanket.

I’m totally blaming diabetes for this one.

New Month, New Blog

I’ve decided that rather than bombarding my tumblr with posts about diabetes that I should consolidate them into one diabetes blog. I want to be able to read back on these entries and not have to sift through other entries.

So Sugarbump at WordPress is born! And to kick it off, here is my post from last night about being a beat up diabetes robot:

My spreadsheet tells me I’ve been testing around 15 times a day (yes folks, that’s almost four times more than recommended). My right ring finger and left pinky are particularly beat up– I’ll try to get a shot of that and post it here.

I don’t mind though. Sore fingers are a small price to pay for the peace of mind of knowing where the heck my blood sugar is wandering (a la Big Brother). With the finger pricks and my brand spankin’ new DexCom system, along with the Kevin spreadsheet, for once in my life I feel like I’m adequately armed for this battle…or at least my next endo appointment in a couple of weeks. Diabetes is an annoying friend I’ve come to love. Sorta. Of course, there are times I want to kick it in its face, especially when it’s rearing its ugly head and I can’t get it to calm the eff down, but most of the time it’s manageable and, dare I say, even entertaining. My pod is a good ice breaker topic, that’s for sure.

I can’t even begin to describe how I feel about the DexCom. I’ve only had it for three days, and I can’t imagine what I did without it (kinda like my iPhone). Not only am I constantly checking it, Chris is as well! I’ll be sitting/standing there randomly, and all of a sudden, I’ll feel a little pressure on my side. And there’s my husband, eyes lit up like it’s Christmas morning, pressing buttons, eager to see how I’m currently doing and what the trends are. He’s the only person who can get away with pushing buttons on my diabetes gear, so don’t get any ideas, people. ;)

He’s also expressed how glad he is that I have this thing– he’s still in CA until tomorrow, with no way of knowing when I go low, and more importantly, how low I go. Take this afternoon for example: since I was dead tired from my red-eye flight, I took a nap after work. About two hours into it, the receiver started beeping. My bg was 42 and falling. I did not feel a thing. A finger stick confirmed it with 46. This thing knows me better than I know myself.

Dex says I’m 100 and steady. I’m going to reward myself by sleeping. :)