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My pump just went off -- post breakfast. Checked Dexcom -- 104 with a nice steady downward trend. Three hours after breakfast. I probably will make it until lunch, but I will probably eat something to be safe.
At the same time, I did an increase on my bolus rate. Was using a 1:4 ratio and went to a 1:6 ratio since my pre 8:00 am was slow, and my after 8:00 was at 1:6. Plus I've gone low a bunch in the mornings lately.
Yes, it's the first week of school. The kiddos reported on Monday.
I am sure I would have survived without Dexcom but it's sure made a huge difference. I don't have to stop and finger stick during class. Just pull out Dexcom and dose. Yes, I'm dosing completely off of Dexcom now and only finger sticking when it tells me to.
I just did a reset after 7 days. I've got an extra sensor in my emergency pack just in case.
I also have plenty of test strips and my meter, again, just in case.
My class size is much larger this year. It's a good and a bad thing. So far, my 5th and 6th classes are the fullest.
Also my AP program is really different. I told the Dean that she could combine my PreAP and AP classes. Well, she also combined a few students into my CS. I'm definitely going to take a look at 6th period since the room is full of regular students and it looks like I have only one AP student and he didn't take PreAP. I'd like to move him into 2nd or 3rd period.
I'm also working hard to get rid of all the 9th graders from Web Mastering. We cover way too much material for 9th graders. And this year, I'm going to be evil and push very hard to get everything done.
All in all a very busy week so far, but thank goodness for Dexcom.
Marcie's Standard Run
Marcie's JWW Run
Maggie's JWW Run
Maggie's Standard Run - A Q!
Things continued going well. Marcie was very fast --- even weaving in rhythm however, she's not the confident, do what mom says dog that she was in our earlier days.
She made mistakes because I trusted in her, and didn't handle as hard as I should have.
Maggie finally finished Novice, so that made up for the rest of the day. I have vidoes and I'm going to try to post them.
We are doing our first dog agility trial since the end of June.
Quoting my agility instructor: "Marcie was flying!"
She missed the table and the weavepole entry she was going so fast but Qed in JWW.
She took a fourth place in Jumpers, first in about a year.
Then I got real lucky with Maggie in Open Jumpers. She started off without listening to me and took a wrong course. However the judged blew her whistle and stopped us which Maggie took as a correction. We got to restart and she ran a perfect course and took first place.
Our standard course was also good but she just would not listen to me at the table.
All in all, 2 Qs and 2 placements meant for a good day all around and much better than we'd been having.
Marcie had seemed very down last Spring and I was thinkging of retiring her.
I just removed Sensor 2. Or did it remove itself? Basically the adhesive failed.
It lasted for 12 days. Costing $5.00 a day for those of you keeping up. Worth the cost. Yep!
It was extremely accurate. I'm very pleased with the results I've been having. In fact, I'm doing to finger sticking only when the Dexcom SeVen asks for one.
I actually would have liked this sensor to last one more day -- I'm doing an agility trial this weekend, BUT the good news is that my Friday, Dexcom should be extremely accurate again.
I received the "sensor is going to expire" icon this morning. So, I ended the sensor and restarted it.
The bandage part of the sensor seems to be in good shape -- in fact better than the last sensor.
The sensor has been extremely accurate. I've drastically cut down on finger sticks this week, and have been dosing based on the receiver. It's working well. I haven't gone low all week and the few times I've gone high, I knew why.
I think I finally got the spelling right. The doctor doing the injections initially got caught in jury duty today. So my doctor did them.
They have different approaches. The first doctor said he liked just doing them with spray to numb them. They didn't see to take as long that way.
My doctor numbed with injections first, then did the Synvist with a light amount of cold spray at the beginning.
The first two shots made my knees hurt, but not excessively afterwards. This one I didn't feel until late afternoon. I felt a bit of crunching running in class tonight (bone hitting bone, ouch), but not bad.
Overall since the initial shots, I have been feeling less pain and doing more activity.
So I put this sensor in on 8/10. I was a bit disconcerted to see that it was running a tad off of the One Touch but put it out of my head. Had a lot of other stuff going on.
So tonight, I did dog agility (yeah in this heat), and our instructor brought us Italian chocolate (well, chocolate purchased in Italy). I are one piece during Maggie's class and one during Marcie's -- a bit after, Dexcom goes off. Which freaked my instructor out, and sure enough I'm running high.
I go ahead and keep going without a correction, because I'm doing a fair amount of running. Check afterwards, and Dexcom said I was at 258. One Touch said I was at 253. Can't get much better than that.
And yes, I've been dosing off of Dexcom most of the time, have cut down my finger sticks drastically, but do check if Dexcom doesn't feel right. I've also been extremely aggressive on my control, I've set my pump to alarm at 1 hour. I eat, reset my pump with a 0 bolus at 1 hour, then check every hour and correct off of Dexcom. That has been helping to solve the problem where I've been going off on high excursions -- causing the high A1C.
I've also made another change. I was not bolusing for meals and then walking on the treadmill. It did prevent lows but was causing the escalating highs. Now, I bolus for half the carbs, and then correct. I'm not having to correct as much (often not at all), and no more of the excursions.
Of course, I'll have to find another plan in a few months.
Just went out to try to order a set of sensors, and I'm off on my pricing. They are $60 a piece, so if my sensors last 15 days, they cost $4.00 a day. That does not work out to be much difference between the 3 day sensor.
So far, the current sensor is doing well, though I've only had it in one day.
I woke up this morning, checked my receiver and it had the "no sensor" display on it. Looked at my transmitter/sensor, and sure enough it had come off in the night.
So I managed to make my first sensor last 15 days. Not bad. Makes the cost come to $4.33 per day.
Also Dexcom saved my butt twice from lows yesterday, so I'm doubly pleased.
Husband and I are taking a few days to vacation together. We decided not to travel anywhere but to do local tourist stuff.
So I reset my 1st sensor -- and took over this morning. I will say Dexcom saved my butt as I didn't plan ahead as well as I should have.
We went to the Fort Worth Stockyards and took a walking tour there. Dexcom showed I was around 100, but the good news was there was candy handy, so I spent grabbed some M&Ms, and munched on them as we walked.
By the way it was very nice.
Yep, I'm on Day 13 of my first sensor. I do think I might go ahead and put in a new sensor tomorrow, but haven't completely decided.
Numbers are still good, but I notice that as time goes on, I get more missing readings.
If I can consistently get sensors to last 14 days, then the cost will be $4.60 per day for the sensors. The bad news that cost is still about twice as much as the 3 day sensors were costing because I was get them to last at least 9 days which comes to about $3.89 a day.
I've just gotten my worst A1C since pumping. 7.7. Man that sucks.
Doctor is attributing the travel and related stress. I hope he is right.
He also noticed, without me pointing it out, that I've been high a lot of evenings and am still high in the morning. We tweaked some bolus settings. I've working on better strategies -- I was going low a lot in the evenings when I first started working out with Fitness4Diabetics but as I shift my walking to earlier in the day, I'm not doing that any more.
I also got "approval" to use the Dexcom rather than finger sticks. Okay, I've been using the Dexcom to decide if I was in range, and then used the One Touch to get the actually reading to calculate the correction. I'm going to start skipping that step when the Dexcom is looking good.
Some other medical news -- had my second Synvist shot today. And my knees passed the school stair test -- I went down the stairs the best I've had in years. Man those are steep stair cases.
I have also managed to walk for 60 minutes per day every day for almost two weeks. I'm slowly moving my schedule towards a school schedule since I report in 2 weeks.
The good news is that the rest of my values were good.
I'm having trouble with the adhesive and figure the transmitter will be coming off soon. I'm still getting good readings, though I do occasionally get ???
The receiver seems much more stable now -- I really had an interesting day yesterday when about half the time I looked at the receiver I had ??? and lots of gaps in readings.
Last night there were very few gaps and Dexcom is reading close to the meter (but under it).
I go to the endo on Monday and I still haven't figured out how to handle all the data -- do I put it in EzManager for example.
I forgot how frustrating the first day of a sensor can be -- and yesterday my sensor acted just like a brand new sensor. Missing readings mostly but also off. The weird thing, is that my sensor was slightly higher than the meter before resetting and now it is reading slightly lower than the meter.
Since Amy blogged about it and it's been in all the diabetes media, I took the time to watch the show tonight. Besides not much on TV anyway.
It was the motorcross episode.
The show makes Gene Simmon's family look smart. Also Shannon and the daughter are much more attractive than any of the women on the show.
My husband joined me before the end of the show, and he wasn't impressed either.
It's really sad if that truly is the only way he can meet women.
On the other hand, it looks like it is pretty easy money. And probably a lot of fun for a single guy -- though it would be nice if they could have found better women.I did get the Sensor to stop and restart -- and am getting readings again. So you can definitely get the Dexcom Seven to go more than 7 days.
Here's one really interesting issue. I had to do three fingersticks to get the system to start. The first two were almost at the same time and were 138 and 126. The third fingerstick about 5 minutes later was 144. The sensor is now reading 121.
I'm beginning to believe that Dexcom is the accurate one and really wish I could use a more modern meter.
I just checked my claims with BCBS of Texas, primarily because of the Symvist treatmeat and saw that Dexcom is showing as an unpaid claim. It will be interesting to see if it gets covered.
I continued experimenting dosing using Seven. Yes, it works.
Sensor is still on and working. I got the sensor expiration screen this morning. I just told it I had moved the sensor, and then told it I put in a new sensor.
Since I wasn't doing anything yesterday, I decided to give it a try of dosing on the Dexcom and cutting down on the number of finger sticks. Saw no adverse problems.
I do find that the steadier I keep my blood sugar the more accurate the Dexcom Seven is -- but that was true of the STS-3 system too.
I should be having to "change" my sensor soon.