I have a Dexcom G6 which is a small, discreet wearable blood sugar tester that you apply yourself. It lasts up to 10 days monitoring your blood sugar every five minutes. Don’t let the every five minutes testing stop you from getting one. Mine doesn’t show me the reading unless I check it on my phone.
I wasn’t going to write about this but then I went to the gynecologist yesterday and he had never seen on any of his patients the little thing that is attached to my belly. His nurse hadn’t either. They were very interested in learning more about it. That got me thinking that if a doctor that sees that portion of a lady’s anatomy several times a day hadn’t ever seen one it might help one of my followers to know about it.
I am a horrible diabetic when it comes to sticking my finger and checking my blood sugar so I was a very good candidate for this system. I am an all-around horrible diabetic since I really can’t see why I should be miserable the rest of my dementia life by eating sugar-free things all the time. Dr. Majors my endocrinologist, a fancy name for diabetes doctor, gets that and is working with me to make it all easier for me to handle.
A couple of months ago he ordered a Dexcom G6 blood sugar monitoring system for me. Before Medicare will cover the cost of the Dexcom system they require you to check your blood sugar four times a day for 30 days and document it. For someone who checked her blood sugar once a week maybe that was a lot to go through but now I feel it was worth it.
The system came in the mail after I passed the 4 times a day for 30 day blood sugar checking and gave Dr. Majors the “evidence” that I did what was asked.
I had a rough time with the system at first because I put the sensor on wrong twice and there were only three sensors for the month, each lasting 10 days. The three sensors I get each month now are shown in the picture below.
After the very rocky start for me which I believe was because of me having dementia, I was so close to just giving up using it. I finally figured it out with help from a very kind Dexcom G6 customer service employee. Since I messed up the first two they very nicely sent me two more to replace those.
They have names for each of these pieces. The one on the right side of the picture below is the SENSOR The small thing on the left side of the first picture is actually two parts and together they are called the TRANSMITTER. There is also a “RECEIVER” which I do not use since I chose to put the Dexcom G6 app on my phone to receive the blood sugar numbers every five minutes.
Each Sensor (the big thing) is only used once. The bandaid-like patch with the hard plastic attached to it has a needle in it which is inserted in your belly when you remove the orange piece and click the orange button.
The first photo below shows putting it on your belly and clicking the orange button which inserts the needle and attaches the patch.
Clicking the orange button releases the bandaid like patch with the hard plastic attached to it. You then insert the transmitter into the bandaid like patch with the hard plastic transmitter holder attached to it. Then you answer the questions about the New Sensor on either the receiver or on your phone app and you’re all set for 10 days of testing every five minutes! One of the questions is what the new sensor’s ID number is which is found on the bottom of each sensor.
I had to laugh when the instructions said to put it on a place on your belly where there is some fat. Like there is a place on my belly that doesn’t have lots of fat!
Every ten days you are notified through the app that it’s time to change sensors. You will then remove the bandaid-like patch from your belly and take out the actual transmitter. That transmitter will be used in the next Sensor. You will get a new sensor out of the box and do the process all over again.
One of the purposes of the DexcomG6 is to help me learn how different foods and activities affect my blood sugar either in a good way or in a bad way. Or even how much of something I can eat without really affecting my blood sugar.
There is an alert that I set to notify me when my blood sugar goes below a certain level and above a certain level. I really like that.
While at Dr. Majors office Monday he installed an app on my phone called Clarity that sends him the same information I can see on my phone upload glucose data from a Dexcom CGM device and then view the data in easy-to-read graphs.
One thing he saw immediately was that my blood sugar is the highest all night. That lead to a discussion about snacking before bed. Since I read 2 to 5 hours in bed I tend to snack then. He added a mealtime insulin shot (in a lesser quantity as regular shots) before snack time. I can continue enjoying my snack and it will prevent my blood sugar from staying high at night. Last night my blood sugar was 100 points lower than other nights so that is helping me already.
Now that I have this all figured out, have made all the mistakes that could be made, and have gone through the process a couple of times I really like having this. It is making me more aware of how my blood sugar fluctuates during the day and night.
I hope this little information will be helpful to someone. Tomorrow I go to the Neuropsychologist in Baton Rouge to get the report on my neuropsych testing from two weeks ago. We plan to pick blackberries after the appointment so I have two things to look forward to tomorrow.
Ya’ll have a wonderful evening, It’s time for Prayer Meeting so I’m out of here! Rosalyn
BECAUSE HE LIVES 