Question about CGM results?

My Endo put me on a CGM last Friday and I’m to turn it back in tomorrow, Tuesday 6/5. I have been doing the finger sticks along with it and was doing pretty good staying within range but hit a low of 57 once and then until yesterday, I spiked to 265 was back down to 193 before bed so I did a correction with 3 units of Novolog. Woke up with a 139, did my basal and bolus this morning and low and behold 2hrs later I’m at 162…arrrggg! For some reason I’m spiking all the sudden!
My question to anyone that has gone through this, what will my Endo say about this? Kind of worries me, I won’t even know what the whole result of the CGM until June 18th when I go back in to see her. How did it go for any of you that did this?

I didn't get the results of the "test" CGM while I had it, which sort of annoyed me, but the SalesNurse said "oh, these are great...I'll get the paperwork going or something like that". It's hard to tell exactly where to suggest changes without the "whole picture", what you were eating, what you were doing, etc? 5 day is also sort of a short time to make any big, useful changes? The CGM really reinforced that even "bad" numbers that are frustrating and annoying can be useful data.

For example, if your Carb/ insulin ratio is 10-1, with each unit dropping you say 50 points and you ate 50G of carbs, and ended up at 265, if you chage it to 8-1, the 5 units might change it to 6.25U and perhaps you'd then end up closer to 200, try again and see some improvement? For me, it really made it clear how useful it is to have "benchmark" foods that I know what the carbs are so I can test stuff like that and see if the ratios are right or not. A lot of times, a small error in carb counting can lead to a wild CGM ride. The next step, for me, is to use CareLink, which has a chart that will show you how accurate you are during each time of day so, if you are running high after lunch all the time, you can try a new ratio, see if it works and, if it does, give yourself a high five or eat cupcakes or have beer or whatever to celebrate. I am totally lazy and don't bother doing formal testing but just sort of nudge ratios when the results are off.

I did 2 trials with 2 different CGMs. The first one was a blind study where I didn't get a receiver so had no clue what was going on - my endo was gathering data and I was frustrated that I couldn't see what was going on.

The second trial was with a receiver. I wanted to go on a CGM because I was having some hypo unawareness but I wanted to see what it felt like to "live" with one before I fully committed. So the clinic let me have the receiver for this trial.

What you may be seeing with the spiking is what's been happening "behind the scenes" with your bg patterns all along - you just couldn't see it with fingersticks alone because it was happening between the fingersticks. Having a CGM has made me so much more aware of how what I eat affects my patterns and for how long. It's an amazing tool.

To answer your question about what your endo will say about the spiking, he will likely look at it as data - information to use to make a correction of some sort. Try not to look at the numbers as bad, just data to help you change things.

Well I went in to see my Endo this morning and all went well. I'm up a bit on my A1C 6.0 from a 5.8, but yeah I'm not gripping about that at all, I'll take it! The only thing she didn't like is me hitting a few lows. I forgot to even ask about the results from the CGM, so I'm guessing all's well. Thank you two for letting me know what you went through.