Living with Diabetes

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  • Sensor 2 – Day 3

    So I put this sensor in on 8/10.  I was a bit disconcerted to see that it was running a tad off of the One Touch but put it out of my head.  Had a lot of other stuff going on.

    So tonight, I did dog agility (yeah in this heat), and our instructor brought us Italian chocolate (well, chocolate purchased in Italy).  I are one piece during Maggie’s class and one during Marcie’s — a bit after, Dexcom goes off.  Which freaked my instructor out, and sure enough I’m running high.

    I go ahead and keep going without a correction, because I’m doing a fair amount of running.  Check afterwards, and Dexcom said I was at 258.  One Touch said I was at 253.  Can’t get much better than that.

    And yes, I’ve been dosing off of Dexcom most of the time, have cut down my finger sticks drastically, but do check if Dexcom doesn’t feel right.  I’ve also been extremely aggressive on my control, I’ve set my pump to alarm at 1 hour.  I eat, reset my pump with a 0 bolus at 1 hour, then check every hour and correct off of Dexcom.  That has been helping to solve the problem where I’ve been going off on high excursions — causing the high A1C.

    I’ve also made another change.  I was not bolusing for meals and then walking on the treadmill.  It did prevent lows but was causing the escalating highs.  Now, I bolus for half the carbs, and then correct.  I’m not having to correct as much (often not at all), and no more of the excursions.

    Of course, I’ll have to find another plan in a few months.

  • Dexcom – Calculations off

    Just went out to try to order a set of sensors, and I’m off on my pricing.  They are $60 a piece, so if my sensors last 15 days, they cost $4.00 a day.   That does not work out to be much difference between the 3 day sensor.

    So far, the current sensor is doing well, though I’ve only had it in one day.

  • Dexcom – Day 15

    I woke up this morning, checked my receiver and it had the “no sensor” display on it. Looked at my transmitter/sensor, and sure enough it had come off in the night.

    So I managed to make my first sensor last 15 days. Not bad. Makes the cost come to $4.33 per day.

    Also Dexcom saved my butt twice from lows yesterday, so I’m doubly pleased.

  • Dexcom – Day 14

    Husband and I are taking a few days to vacation together.  We decided not to travel anywhere but to do local tourist stuff.

    So I reset my 1st sensor — and took over this morning.  I will say Dexcom saved my butt as I didn’t plan ahead as well as I should have. 

    We went to the Fort Worth Stockyards and took a walking tour there.  Dexcom showed I was around 100, but the good news was there was candy handy, so I spent grabbed some M&Ms, and munched on them as we walked.

    By the way it was very nice.

  • Dexcom – Day 13

    Yep, I’m on Day 13 of my first sensor.  I do think I might go ahead and put in a new sensor tomorrow, but haven’t completely decided.

    Numbers are still good, but I notice that as time goes on, I get more missing readings.

    If I can consistently get sensors to last 14 days, then the cost will be $4.60 per day for the sensors.  The bad news that cost is still about twice as much as the 3 day sensors were costing because I was get them to last at least 9 days which comes to about $3.89 a day.

  • Good Endo appointment but bad lab results

    I’ve just gotten my worst A1C since pumping.  7.7.  Man that sucks.

    Doctor is attributing the travel and related stress.  I hope he is right.

    He also noticed, without me pointing it out, that I’ve been high a lot of evenings and am still high in the morning.  We tweaked some bolus settings.  I’ve working on better strategies — I was going low a lot in the evenings when I first started working out with Fitness4Diabetics but as I shift my walking to earlier in the day, I’m not doing that any more.

    I also got “approval” to use the Dexcom rather than finger sticks.  Okay, I’ve been using the Dexcom to decide if I was in range, and then used the One Touch to get the actually reading to calculate the correction.  I’m going to start skipping that step when the Dexcom is looking good.

    Some other medical news — had my second Synvist shot today.  And my knees passed the school stair test — I went down the stairs the best I’ve had in years.  Man those are steep stair cases.

    I have also managed to walk for 60 minutes per day every day for almost two weeks.  I’m slowly moving my schedule towards a school schedule since I report in 2 weeks.

    The good news is that the rest of my values were good.

  • Dexcom – Day 10

    I’m having trouble with the adhesive and figure the transmitter will be coming off soon.  I’m still getting good readings, though I do occasionally get ???

  • Dexcom Seven – Day 9

    The receiver seems much more stable now — I really had an interesting day yesterday when about half the time I looked at the receiver I had ??? and lots of gaps in readings.

    Last night there were very few gaps and Dexcom is reading close to the meter (but under it).

    I go to the endo on Monday and I still haven’t figured out how to handle all the data — do I put it in EzManager for example.

  • Dexcom Seven – Day 8

    I forgot how frustrating the first day of a sensor can be — and yesterday my sensor acted just like a brand new sensor.  Missing readings mostly but also off.  The weird thing, is that my sensor was slightly higher than the meter before resetting and now it is reading slightly lower than the meter.

  • Bret Michaels – Reality Show

    Since Amy blogged about it and it’s been in all the diabetes media, I took the time to watch the show tonight.  Besides not much on TV anyway.

    It was the motorcross episode.

    The show makes Gene Simmon’s family look smart.  Also Shannon and the daughter are much more attractive than any of the women on the show.

    My husband joined me before the end of the show, and he wasn’t impressed either.

    It’s really sad if that truly is the only way he can meet women. 

    On the other hand, it looks like it is pretty easy money. And probably a lot of fun for a single guy — though it would be nice if they could have found better women.