Saturday, June 21, 2014

Dexcom: the first few weeks

I've been using my Dexcom  for a few weeks now. I'm in love with it. Love. The very first night it woke me up at 4 AM with a low. It said I was 68, meter said 65. So I grabbed some tabs and went right back to sleep. Now, my body will wake me up when I'm low but it waits until I'm at about 50. At that point I feel much, much worse than I do in the mid 60s and I stay awake for much longer treating the low if I have to treat a 50 vs a 65.

I did a TON of reading before I got the Dexcom, and I did even more reading while I was waiting for it to ship to me. I prepared myself mentally for the onslaught of information and numbers. I told myself over and over to not fall into the newbie mistake of overreacting to every change I see on my graph. For the first three days, I just watched it. I lived my life as I usually would, but I had this thing squealing at me all the time for being too high/low. After the first three days I took what I'd learned from my graphs and applied it to my bolusing habits. I'm so, so much more likely to prebolus for meals now because I've seen the difference it makes on my graph.

Probably 90 percent of the time I have a peanut butter sandwich on whole grain bread for breakfast. I love peanut butter. I love sandwiches. What I love the most is that it is like glue for my BG. As long as I wake up in range, I can stay in range until I eat something else. On the days I skip lunch altogether, my sandwich keeps me going until dinner. We're talking 12 hours here, folks.

I'm a numbers person. Numbers, graphs, charts... I love it. I love when I can visualize my BG numbers. I feel like Dexcom Studio is much better at doing this for me than CareLink. Here is my first few days with Dexcom:

I just like it. Not the numbers, but this is a beautiful representation of what's going on. Just because I'm proud, here are the most recent three days:


This is a miracle, I know, and I don't think I'll ever repeat it. I fully expect to mess this up over the weekend. 

1 comment:

  1. The Dex G4 is indeed life-changing and I'm glad to hear that it's working well for you. The second graph is amazing! Of course you won't be able to do that every day forever, but it shows that with the right information, you can have a positive effect on your BG. Good work, Courtney!

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