January 21, 2009
Karen R.

This may turn out to be a long blog; I’m probably just going to ramble as a lot of new things have taken place during January.

January introduced swimming and biking into the schedule along with new blood sugar challenges—for a change I’m now dealing with exercise induced highs instead of the usual lows. The high from swimming I’m able to understand because of the pump disconnect, but the high from bike riding is more difficult to understand. I figure adrenaline is playing a big part in each BS rise, as the highs are not the result of rebound lows. I’m taking on insulin and carbs before each session but now I realize the sessions probably aren’t long enough to cause a BS drop. The highs I’m experiencing are not much higher than those I’ve experienced during the first hour of a long run and as I think this through, I realize each session is only 30 to 45 minutes so I guess I need to exercise a bit longer and see what happens. Thank you all for being on the other end of this blog and letting me work through this.

Also new is a different endocrinologist. This last week I met with my new doctor (who shared his own triathlete stories) and am looking forward to having him on my team. He gets what I’m trying to do and understands that I’m not going to like running high for the next couple of weeks to try to get my hypoglycemic responses back. But I’m willing to try, again. Three days into it and nothing lower than 77. Well, so much for that, the 59 today won’t help. Wait and see.

As a result of this new doc, this past week I’ve been playing dueling sensors, that is, wearing both brands of CGMs at the same time–the DexCom which is not new to me and the Minimed 522 (Guardian), which is new to me. (Thanks Edy, your blog information was helpful.) It’s been an interesting week. Both devices have their strengths and weaknesses and I’m fairly certain the Minimed sensor was put in a poor spot as the readings haven’t been that close to the glucometer. On the other hand, for once, the DexCom has been spot on. I went 7 days on the MM and am amazed that people have been getting 21 from them. It’s probably just me, but I found the Bad Sensor message funny. It just came at the right time and then I realized I was talking to my pump. How my coworkers put up with me is beyond me. But I digress. If nothing else, I’ve learned that insertion site matters. Upper buttocks seem to work well, except during sleep, as I may lay on it and block the signal to the DexCom. But for that matter, the abdomen didn’t work well either. Basically I’ve come away without a strong preference for either one.

The last new thing was joining a local all girl triathlete group. When I went to the monthly meeting I came out thinking that they are well organized (six years will do that) and hopefully in less time than that, our group will function similarly, only with diabetes in the mix. Here’s to the future.