Not nice.

8 July 2008
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I was talking to a workmate yesterday and she mentioned this story of a woman in Illinois who had her toe bitten off by her dog. She didn’t feel it because of diabetes-related nerve damage. Awful – poor lady (although I can see why it’s made headlines around the world, who would ever guess such a thing would happen?).

I noticed an article come across today saying that every week 100 people in the UK have amputations due to poorly controlled diabetes. (see here). I don’t believe in wallowing in all the negatives of this condition but once in a while reminders like this make me all the more focussed on getting my…

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By Nic on 8 July 2008 at 12.45 pm
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If it’s good enough for the Masai…

8 July 2008
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…. it’s good enough for me. Check this fella out with his phone hooked onto his belt (maybe it’s a CGMS?). Pic courtesy of http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/toplevel/.

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By Nic on 8 July 2008 at 8.11 am
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Nic 0, Diabetes 1

8 July 2008
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Of course my first night with the monitor was completely untypical – my blood sugars dropped instead of rising. I suspected this would happen once I was wired up! Went down to low 2’s at 2.30 and got up and treated it. Was 8.5 when I left for the gym. Recently I’ve mainly been somewhere around 14 and 16. So hopefully I’ll capture these sorts of inexplicable high BMs overnight tonight so we have some data around what’s going on.

Sleeping with the monitor wasn’t tooooo bad…. I put it in the pocket of my pyjamas, and clipped it on. I had a pretty restless sleep with that and the low and then had to get up at…

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By Nic on 8 July 2008 at 7.59 am
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Wired up.

7 July 2008
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Well, I went to my appointment at 2pm today and walked out with a Minimed continuous glucose meter attached to my stomach and slung on my hip – nice.

Apparently this CGMS has been out for about ten years and while I’m very grateful to be able to use it for free, it’s starting to show its age. The fantastic staff member at North Shore diabetes clinic gave me the low down and inserted it for me then showed me the buttons. There are only a couple of buttons on it and the user interface seems pretty rudimentary.

I have to wear it for three days to get 48 hours’ worth of data, and it takes my blood sugar using…

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By Nic on 7 July 2008 at 8.42 pm
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Continuous blood glucose monitoring.

5 July 2008
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One of the main things which finally got me to set up this blog is that I’m finally on the road to an insulin pump.

I’ve been having all sorts of problems overnight lately (quite possibly dawn phenomenon) – going to bed with perfect 6-ish blood sugars and then waking up with BMs as high as 16 (one morning recently it was 19.9). Totally ridiculous, and so frustrating, when I’ve been making a huge effort during the day – taking 10 or so finger prick tests and micro managing my injections (I’m on Lantus as a basal and Humalog as short acting).

My last HbA1c came in at 7.8 which I was really cross about, especially after all the work…

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By Nic on 5 July 2008 at 7.25 pm
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