Well what a great little gadget this Dexcom is!! I worked til 8pm last night and hadn’t had any dinner, but had to go to the supermarket on the way home. I didn’t get any of the usual ‘I’m low’ signals but then I’d just worked a 12 hour day so there’s a lot that can be explained away by tiredness. Checked the Dexcom screen and could see that my blood sugar was trending downwards. About 5mins later I had another look, and it was heading into hypo territory so I had some glucose tablets. It headed further towards low and the alarm sounded just as I was at the checkout, so I was able to top up the glucose levels a little more at that point, and by the time I’d got back to the car, I was in a safe zone to drive.

Think about that scenario without the Dexcom…. It would have gone a little something like this:

1. Nic gets to supermarket and races in.
2. As she tries to navigate the aisles in the most efficient and time-saving manner possible, whilst running a hundred other thoughts through her head, she doesn’t notice her blood sugar is dropping.
3. She hits the final stretch of the shop (the dairy and cold meats aisle) and all of a sudden it hits her – she’s at 2.7 and dropping fast.
4. Shakily manoeuvring glucose tablets into her mouth, Nic tries in vain to pull her trolley over to the side and stay out of busy/annoyed people’s way while she gets her wits about her.
5. Not giving herself enough time to fully recover (too tired and busy), she tries to get back to efficiently finishing the shop so she can still get home from work before 9pm.
6. Nic negotiates her way through the checkout while scrambling to make sense and pull the right loyalty and Eftpos cards out. (these people must think I’m a simpleton)
7. Makes her way back to the car and either has to wait a bit longer before she’s safe to drive, or drive anyway, putting herself and others in danger.

Then, a couple of hours after getting home, it’s time for bed. I have to say it was almost worth going on that horrible Minimed because I appreciate this Dexom so much more now. The sensor is tiny, and very flat on your stomach, so sleeping is a breeze. And because the unit is wireless, you can just leave it on your bedside table.

Having said that, I didn’t have the best of sleeps unfortunately! Went low sometime before midnight, and had three glucose tablets. And when you go low on this unit, it BEEPS. Not a polite beep either – I think I jumped about a metre (and my cats both legged it this morning when it went off too). Of course about 15mins later it was still low so it went off again… so I had a couple more. Then, about two hours later I went low AGAIN (arrrrgh) and stumbled down to the kitchen for five more glucose tablets and a couple of pieces of toast (always so easy to eat in the middle of the night, yes I am being sarcastic). Of course you can imagine what happened an hour or so after that. BEEP – I’d gone high (I’ve set it to about 12.0 mmol for this alarm)…. Dang! So, back down to my bag, a couple of units in the tummy and back to bed. You get the idea!

I’m very tired, but still loving the Dexcom – it is really going to teach me a lot. More soon.