My CGM spent the night under an elephant.

Well an elephant pillow. Gigi (my Dexcom CGM) has been getting on my nerves lately. It keeps telling me that I am low when I’m not. I recently switched the sensor from my arm to another new location (my lower backish area). Sometimes it takes a couple days for it to calibrate, but I wasn’t sure if the inaccurate readings also had to do with the new location. Either way, I felt like the past few days all I’ve been hearing is Gigi vibrating in my purse, in my desk drawer at work, and on my nightstand when I’m trying to sleep. It’s one thing when its telling me that I’m low or high, but when it isn’t being accurate, it’s just annoying. The way it’s designed, if you don’t acknowledge the warning (high, low) by pressing a key, it will keep buzzing at shorter intervals until you press a button. Sometimes I talk to Gigi in my head. “I heard you the first time Gigi, let me just finish what I’m doing.” It doesn’t listen. It was as if it  kept yelling at me, “Pay attention to me!”, “I’m here!”.  Actually my CGM is a lot like my puppy, Mayzie, always wanting my attention. Mayzie doesn’t care what I’m working on, it’s all about her. When she wants to play, you better play with her. Gigi is like that too. It doesn’t care if you are at work, at the movies, or trying to sleep, when it has something to tell you, it’s going to tell you!

Last night I had had enough. I just wanted one night of undisrupted sleep. My CGM doesn’t go off every night, but it does a lot. I figured that it would be okay for one night to not leave Gigi on my nightstand where I could hear it. I put it on the floor next to my bed and put my elephant pillow over it to muffle the sound. I had a very nice sleep without being woken up by Gigi.

The next morning I was in my car driving to work. I could tell that I was starting to feel low. “That’s odd,” I thought, “Gigi hasn’t made any noise”. In my head I began to chide Gigi. “Of course when I’m not low you vibrate, but when I’m actually low, you don’t go off.” I felt around my purse for my CGM to see what number it thought I was. That’s when I realized that Gigi was still in my room, under my elephant.

You know how they say that sometimes you don’t realize how great something is until it’s taken away from you? Well I realize that now. All day I wished that Gigi was with me, I didn’t even care that she would be vibrating. I dropped low two times, one was so low that my tongue and lips started to tingle. Gigi would have caught those! At another point I checked my blood sugar and it said 150. Well is that 150 on it’s way up or on it’s way down?! Without Gigi I had no idea! I missed Gigi. I realized how much I had taken her for granted, how much I had overlooked the incredibly important service it provides me because I had gotten caught up with the inconveniences.

I love my puppy and my CGM. Despite how annoying my CGM and puppy can be (and yes she can be annoying, especially when she thinks my arm is a chew toy), now that they are in my life, I can’t imagine it without them.

Good Mayzie

Bad Mayzie