I'm Sorry I Don't Have Enough Lows for Your CGM

My DE sent me another e-mail today. She looked at my pump information and said that I did not have enough low blood sugars too quilify for CGM through my insurance. So, because I am able to catch my blood sugar before it dips down below 50, I don’t get a CGM. It’s funny that I had to prove I was “diabetic enough” for the pump with my myriad of high readings and now to get another piece of medical equipment I have to get to the point of “just before the coma sets in.” Why do I have to jump through so many hoops to be healthy? I understand the benefits of a CGM for someone who experiences multiple hypos through the week, but it could benefit me as well.

I deserve to wake up and be able to feel the hand that goes numb every time I have an overnight low (sometimes my only indicator of a low now), to not worry that when I run high for exteded periods I’m doing irreversable damage to my body that will make itself known in a decade, to not hear my fiance finally admit that he knows that without a cure he will outlive me, to concive a child that I do not risk perminate damage or loss of because I can’t get my A1C to that magical “safe for baby” number. The insurance won’t even give me enough test strips to get me through on a sick day. All they care about is numbers. If you don’t have the numbers they want, they don’t help you. And if the number they see racking up over the fiscal year is too big, they don’t give you the help you need. Never mind that down the road the cost will be far greater. They just don’t see or care that giving me something that costs a bit more now will be far less expensive that treatment for all of the complications I’ll suffer if things don’t get better.

I am turning 25 this year. Most of those years have been spend with Big D in my life. I have accepted it. I am not, however, willing to accept that my life is half over because the insurance company is willing to cut it short and keep my life from being full. I don’t care what it takes anymore. This is MY life and it will become what I want it to be. I’ll figure out something. I’m just really ticked right now.

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I totally am in the same boat as you! Not enough lows and because I haven’t wrecked my car from a low or ended up in an ambulance, I have been denied three times! I have zero hypo awareness and I have to test so much that I also run out of strips. My doc wrote a bigger script and the insurance refused to pay for it…I hate the big business machines that are the insurance companies!