Penny Magnification

My night last night.


Notice the “HIGH” for eight of the ten hours I was asleep? Which means that Nick was yelling at me every two hours throughout the night. Screaming his loudest. And, yet, I did not wake up. I have programmed myself to ignore his shouts while I sleep, kind of like a husband learns to tune out his wife’s nagging during the football game. I am completely oblivious to it.
One of the major reasons I got Nick was for him to wake me in the middle of the night when I am high. I want to attack those high blood sugars immediately, not wait ten hours until I wake up in the morning and realize I spent the whole night ripping holes in the small capillaries in my eyes and thickening my blood with too much sugar attached to my red blood cells. I need him to wake me when my sugar goes to low, too, as it does so often, so that I wake up in the morning, as opposed to not waking up.

My solution? Nick’s new megaphone



This is Nick’s new nighttime home. The coins rattle around with the vibrate mode and the glass bowl serves to magnify that sound like horn on an old record player. And it works wonderfully. I have heard everyone of Nick’s calls since I gave him his new home. Now if only I could get him to use ringtones to wake me instead of the standard beeps.

P.S. Thanks mom for the cute bowl. You couldn’t have had better timing.

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Erin - Great solution! It'll be hard to sleep through the next alarm. Congratulations, you took a bad experience, salvaged an important lesson, and took concrete action to minimize it from happening again.

By the way, many pumpers in our D community are enamored with integrating the CGM receiver function into an insulin pump. And that combined CGM receiver/insulin pump will be covered over by layers of blankets during the night. Unfortunately, both Medtronic and Animas will be offering this option for many years to come! Your experience exposes the folly of this idea.

Good luck slaying those nighttime lows!

I meant, of course, "Good luck slaying those nighttime highs!"

Similar to Medtronic, Dexcom either needs a separate "alarm clock" type feature or at a minimum allow the user can control the volume and tone on the receiver. I don't understand how my cell phone is half the size of the dexcom and I can turn the volume up and down except on the Dexcom you are stuck with one standard tone.

I haven't heard a lot about GEN5 Dexcom, but I think that is where they are making changes to the receiver so hopefully that issue will be addressed there.

Hopefully they address the issue on the receiver, because I don't want to fork out an additional 1500-2000 for a separate unit (like metronomic).

You could also put it on top of a large toy drum, or put a big tupperware container upsidedown, and lay it on top of that. The vibrations would be much louder.

Since I started with the system, I have been jarred awake every time i was high or low. And the good thing is it is still quiet enough that it doesn't wake up my husband. It's the perfect balance.
Terry- I had the medtronic and couldn't hear a thing because it was under the covers. It's one of the main reasons I switched to the Dexcom.
Jim- I wonder if the volume thing is an FDA sort of regulation. they have all sorts of weird rules they put on our technology. But it doesn't seem like it would be all that difficult to do.

I got quite a few laughs out of your desctiption of the problem and your solution, although it is quite painful to see those 10 hours over 400. It's kind of like seeing someone in a cast and you cringe when they tell you how they broke their bone. Does the cup impair the reception, giving you more missed readings? Seems like it might.

my numbers were like 500 and 600by the end of the day i was eating terrible fried foods and cakes and cookies just alot of bad stuff i been on veggies and fish and chicken and salmon and nothing else egg whites for morning been onthat eating habits since 6 weeks now my #s are 100s the highest 180 i think i got it controled

i been taking alot less insulin now half what i was taking

@karaoke judy- that's great. its amazing how much good a clean diet can do. This one was a bounce from a low right before it shows. And then I overcorrected and fell asleep thinking I would wake up to that alarm and adjust. looks like i need to correct a little less next time :)