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That song from Staind has been going thru my head today. It seems to be roaming pretty freely, must not be much else in the way inside there…

I’ve been on my Medtronic CGMS for just over a month now and think I am finally starting to get the hang of it.

The issues mostly involved

  1. Frustration when the numbers were way off and I didn’t understand why – This mostly came from wanting to believe the numbers when my sugar levels were changing rapidly. I really have to be aware of what is “probably” going on with my sugars (ie in relation to meals and time of day) to know whether I can feel comfortable with the numbers or not. It is also hard to not fall for the temptation to over calibrate. I calibrate first thing in morning, before lunch, dinner and bed. You also have to be careful not to calibrate if your sugars are rising or falling rapidly.

  2. SHUT OFF THAT DAMN ALARM!! the alarms were one of the biggest sources of stress, especially getting the Low threshold set to a reasonable level. When my low alarm goes off once, it is almost guaranteed to go off three times. It sounds every 20 minutes and raising my levels without a huge spike can take an hour at times. It is most annoying in the middle of the night. I ended up with it set at 70, my CDE thinks that is too low, but it drive me insane set at 75. The biggest issue there is that my actual sugar level may be well into the 50’s before the alarm sounds. I still have issues that I am working on where my overnite sugars stay under 80, and with the variations that can be in the CGMS values, it can still sound that damn alarm all nite long. There have been nites where I have just turned the alarm off. Honestly, everytime it goes off, I feel like it is an epic fail.

  3. Having to turn the automatic Ultralink meter upload off. It just annoys me no end to now have to manually enter the sugar level into the bolus wizard. Not to mention that I have to go thru the hassle of uploading the meter to Carelink as well. It’s not like I don’t have enough to worry about. It annoys me most when I have to do a correction because then I have to enter a huge number into the thing and I’m already miffed about having to correct anyway. But that just may be because I am old and cranky

The good…

  1. Much better feeling for my patterns, but still much frustration for the ones I don’t understand yet. Mostly evenings, after dinner

  2. Someday, I may actually test less. I still test a hell of a lot and am trying to manually wean myself to not test quite so much.

  3. The alarms do work to warn me when heading I’m dangerously low, often that’s the only warning I get

  4. Watching the trends (one or two downward arrows) has let me actually recognize the “feeling” I get when my sugar is changing rapidly. I don’t know if I’m high, low, or in the middle, but at least I now sometimes have a sense that something is changing very quickly and that is usually not a good thing

Thanks for coming by
Scott

Today’s snarky comment: Bailout? You mean like jail? I don’t get it

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thanks scott! this post was very helpful.
and you are right, im definitely going to wait to get cgms.
the pump is a big step in itself.
sounds like mostly everyones complaint is that its not accurate.
but i can deal with that to know my trend i guess

keep it cool scott!

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I’m having all the same issues. Minimed will never admit it publicly, but we all know we are guinea pigs for this first generation of home CGMS units, and that the next generation will be a huge improvement based on the feedback and frustrations we’re giving them. I don’t mind that, but I must say I don’t use my CGMS very often because of the inaccuracy issues - I just don’t find the numbers very helpful when they’re so far off sometimes.

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It has taken a lot of patience and cuss words to get to where I’m feeling better about it. The trends are the big benefit to me

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Scott,

I am feeling you on this one! I just spent the last 45 minutes going over DexCom data to try to fix some consistently low spots I have during the day, checking my trends. I thought technology would make life easier? HAHAHA I am now cross eyed!

But seriously, I am still testing like crazy, I still don’t trust the DexCom yet, it warns be about the lows too late sometimes, I will be in the low 50s before it alarms. I will have 2 really spot on days and the 3rd day none of my numbers are close enough for me to feel good about it. My favorite is when the low alarm goes off 4 times in the night, I drag myself out of bed to test and my numbers are not low, they are fine, not even dropping! I am getting a ton of info out of the trends which is what I wanted. I have already cut out some foods that I was eating often because of the serious post meal spikes. No more Jimmy Dean turkey sausage bowls for a weekend breakfast anymore, the spikes are worse than what a donut does to me! I’d rather have the donut!