Seven Days of Dexcom

My Dexcom CGM (device that monitors my blood sugar patterns) has software where you can upload the data to your computer. Unfortunately, your computer needs to be a PC. My husband and I find ourselves in a world of nothing but Apple these days. I'm slowly going to think of a way to get a hold of a PC or Windows in order to upload eventually. If you have one I can borrow....let's talk. :) 

I wouldn't need it so bad if my receiver would show more than just the last 24 hours of blood sugars. I want to keep track of the patterns over the days

So I'm waiting for them to develop a web based system overnight just for me. In the meantime, I've been trying to remember to take a picture of my Dexcom trend graph every night so I can look at it later. Humoring my geekiness, here are my charts over a weeks time. 

Friday: A normal diabetic day. That little arrow means my blood sugar is slowly rising. I kept an eye on it.

Saturday: "Bubble tea" day. My husband and I had a craving for bubble tea and drove across town to get some. I carefully studied the nutritional facts online and made a choice based on the carb count. Turns out this did not include the tapioca balls. We could not for the life of us figure out how much was in them. I have had bubble tea a million times, but it's been awhile, and this one really shot up my sugar. Lesson learned; no more bubble tea until I figure out the carb count. I'll probably just be skipping it in the future, so not worth the almost 5 hours of high blood sugar. Well, not this time. I might change my mind on that during my next craving.

Sunday: This one shows the nasty low overnight after I finally came down from my bubble tea high ("bubble tea high" ...ya I'm chuckling too). My blood sugar was finally looking good and I fell asleep on the couch while my husband was on the computer. He woke me up letting me know my receiver was alarming and to check my blood sugar. I haven't had a high of 300 for at least two months and then on the SAME day a low of ....46, I haven't been that low in even longer. Your typical diabetes roller-coaster. I probably should have seen it coming. Seriously though, no more bubble tea.

Monday: This day was all in range and well earned! Notice the little blank space? I had to replace the sensor, it takes about 2 hours before it starts detecting blood sugars and then all set for the next 7 days after that.

Tuesday: This day was actually all in range. The dexcom was off by a little bit. For the most part I've felt like it is very close. Some days it matches almost perfectly.

Wednesday/Thursday morning: I forgot to take a picture of the Dexcom Wednesday night because that was the day our car went up in smoke and then came home to a backed up sink. When it rains it pours! So I took this Thursday morning. 

Friday: Definitely a trend of post dinner highs. I've made some adjustments already.

These graph may look a little crazy and maybe even scary to a non-diabetic. For a type 1 these are very typical and those ups and downs very normal. A non-diabetics blood sugars vary in this fashion in a smaller range throughout the day as well. 

My husband and I attended an event over the weekend where we heard another type 1 diabetic joke, "The perfect blood sugars would be a flat line...but we all know what a flat line means in the medical world." I immediately turned to my husband and said, "that's not funny". It's still not funny, but I appreciated her pointing out the impossibility of perfect blood sugar graphs.

 A zoomed in version makes it look much different. Oh, and I treated the low.