BeingDiabetic.co.nz » hypo

Guest blog: The new tan line

Aaron — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:00:20 +0000

Hi Everyone!

Hopefully you have all had a great break

Every year for our summer break, Andy and I like to head off somewhere remote for a good week or more to relax with some close friends before we have to start thinking about getting back to work and because we don’t have kids, we ALWAYS go camp.

The joys of camping are boundless I reckon. Sunshine, beaches, BBQs, a chillibin full of beer (and insulin), the road trip with it’s compulsory pies and gas station snacks, the music, feet on the dashboard, card games and scrabble. It’s got everything.

This year, we went and plonked ourselves 5 hours north of Auckland in Taupo Bay with another couple who were camping…

Is that the sun in your eyes?

Nic — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:27:57 +0000

Strange habit of mine which I clocked myself doing today when I was low with a 3.1: When I’m having a hypo I often try to keep going, and because I’m in a desk job that often means reading type on screen. I’ve caught myself doing this a couple of times lately – when my vision starts to go all hazy due to the hypo, I’ll cup my hand over my eyes to try to see the type better, as if there is sun in my eyes… duh! Shows how much of our behaviour when low is on autopilot I guess.

Bluffing it.

Nic — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:51:55 +0000

Have you ever had a situation where you know you’re going low but unable/unwilling to do anything about it? In my full-on job I have them all the time. Basically most of the meetings I’m in are ones I’m actually running, which requires me to be on full alert at all times, and often requires me to say a lot. For this reason, it’s often tough to (a) get a minute to test or (b) shove some glucose tablets in my mouth without looking like an idiot. A lot of the time I choose just to hang on in the hope that the meeting will finish abruptly and I can go off and have a melt down in peace. I…

How amazing is THIS?

Nic — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 01:37:27 +0000

Hiya – I am supposed to be doing a lot of work today but couldn’t resist downloading the Dexcom software and then my records, and have wasted about an hour already so I can show you these charts from yesterday.

First up, here is an hourly update on my blood sugars and where they were at. The red bars across the graph represent 4 – 8 mmol (as we know it in NZ). Click on the image to see it enlarged.

And secondly, here is an aggregate of my glucose readings for the whole day. Note: blue is for low blood sugars, green for in-zone blood sugars and pink for > 7…

First night with the Dexcom.

Nic — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:24:27 +0000

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…

On yer marks, get set, GOOOOOOO!

Nic — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:51:53 +0000

Woohooo! Have had a great day in the land of the diabetes treatment/monitoring! Justin from insulinpumps.co.nz came and met me at my office and gave me all of the background info for the Dexcom CGMS, plus helped me do the first insertion on my one month CGMS journey. The insertion was easy and didn’t hurt.

It takes two hours for the unit to start transmitting properly and the time went quickly as I ran around the office tending to tight deadlines. By just after 3pm I got my first non-finger-prick, real time glucose reading – ahhhhh! It is so crazy to think that over the next month I won’t have to draw blood every couple of hours, and…

More love.

Nic — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:02:03 +0000

It has to be said – for a busy full time worker like myself it’s not easy getting to Diabetes Auckland to buy anything, even though I work about 15mins’ drive away.

So – big shout outs to my friends at http://www.diabetessupplies.co.nz/ for making my life easy by having a simple-to-use transactional website which I can log onto at lunchtime and order glucose tablets from – which I did today. Last time I did this they arrived on my doorstep merely days afterwards, and if you order more than a hundred bucks’ worth you get the delivery for free.

Which begs the question – why are glucose tablets not sold…

Nic 0, Diabetes 1

Nic — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 07:59:03 +0000

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…