Some mornings are tough. The alarm goes off and I hit the snooze button, for what I know full well will not be the first time. Eventually I tumble out of bed and make my way to the bathroom, only to stand under the shower-head forgetting what it is I am meant to be doing there. And then I stand in my underwear for ages unable to make the (what in my exhausted mind is a) critical decision of what to wear for the day.
By the time I walk out of the door – late – I am flustered, disorganised and completely unready to face the day.
Now add diabetes in there and you might understand why the day started so badly.
The hypo at 2am made the 7am alarm downright cruel and jumping out of bed very difficult.
The ripping out of the sensor because I wasn’t paying attention as I was drying myself after the shower was just frustrating. And I was running too late to even contemplate putting in another.
So the result of all of that is that today, for the first time in about 3 months, I am not wearing a sensor. And I feel like I am flying blind.

Spent strips. Used since lunchtime. It’s now just before 3pm…
I have no concept of…well, anything. Melbourne is sweltering, so I am already at a loss with hypos, despite having lowered my basal rate and cautious blousing. I have been checking my BGL what feels like very ten minutes (slight – but only slight – exaggeration) to try to get some idea of what my glucose levels are doing, but the absence of alarms, alerts and arrows is making me feel very anxious. I am not sure if any feelings of light-headedness are due to needing a drink of water or impending low. And then, is the sudden thirst due to dehydration or an impending high?
I have become so reliant on my CGM and the information it gives me every second that I have no idea about the cues my body is sending out anymore.
I am not sure what to make of this. To begin with, I thought I should feel worried about the reliance that I have developed on this piece of tech. But how is dependence on a CGM any different to reliance on a BGL meter? Isn’t it just newer technology? We would never suggest someone who felt lost because they had left their BGL meter at home had an unhealthy reliance on that device, would we? We wouldn’t say that they should be expected to work out what was going on with their BGL with nothing more than stick to pee on, would we?
Perhaps it stems back to the thinking (by some) that CGM technology is a luxury, which it is not. It is a medical device that I use to manage my diabetes as best I can.
I am counting down the hours until I can get home and shove in a new sensor, wait for the two hour calibration period and then get back sense of knowing what the eff is going in. Because right now, I have no idea….
3 comments
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February 23, 2016 at 3:10 pm
rickphilips
Renza: I enjoyed your blog a great deal. I often feel the same way most days “I thought I should feel worried about the reliance that I have developed on this piece of tech. But how is dependence on a CGM any different to reliance on a BGL meter?”
I want you to know I referred your blog to the TUDiabetes web site for inclusion in our blog list. Thank you for what you do of the Diabetes community.
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February 23, 2016 at 3:15 pm
RenzaS
Hi Rick. Thank you so much for reading and for your comment. And thank you for referring my blog to TuDiabetes – a site that I really love! R
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February 23, 2016 at 7:24 pm
Sue
It makes you appreciate how far we’ve come since the olden days of my childhood when we flew blind all the time with only clinitest tablets and urine in a test tube, then the early bgl meters which took minutes. In those days insulins were different (animal insulins were the norm) and it was possible to guesstimate bgl to within about .5m/mol, not now with current insulins.
The tech we use now makes possible the flexible management we do now, but at the price of dependence on the tech. Sometimes I worry about dependence on tech, but I would never, never want to go back to what we used in my childhood, it was all so much more rigid then. And painful – those blunt re-usable needles! ugh!
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