So, the wife’s new continuous glucose monitor and insulin pump are having a few glitches.
Over the weekend the darned things woke us up at around 4:00 AM each morning, issuing dire warnings that the wife’s blood sugar was too low and something had to be done RIGHT NOW.
We got up and checked her readings, got her some food to eat to bring up the blood sugar, and rode it out.
The second morning when it happened again, we did the same thing then called the company that made the device for support.
It turns out that the educator neglected to tell us that the device needs to be calibrated. You’re supposed to check your blood sugar against a reading from a standard finger prick glucose meter, and enter it into the app manually. I got her meter, stuck her finger and got a blood sugar level. It was just a little higher than normal range. I put that into the app and flagged it as a correction. The system settled down at that point.
The next morning the sensor app went off again. The wife has it on the back of her upper arm. Also, she usually sleeps on her side. Somehow during the night, something happened to the sensor and it stopped reading her blood sugar levels. We don’t know if she accidentally dislodged it, or if she rolled over on it and did something to it. Once again we called the manufacturer. They said to replace the sensor. These things are supposed to last for ten days. To their credit, the company is replacing the sensor for free.
These things are a little more difficult to get off than they are to get on. They have a sticky pad that apparently uses superglue to keep it on your skin. It took me a while to just get it started peeling, then more effort to get it to pull away from her skin. I guess it was sort of like ripping a Bad-Aid off. Not a pleasant experience for either of us.
I got the new sensor set up and ready to go. It has a little cup sort of holder, which you press against the skin, the press a button. It makes a loud click / pop noise as it shoots the sensor against the skin. I find it a little disturbing.
Today, we had two instances where the insulin pump said it was in manual mode too long (it wasn’t) or it was administering insulin for too long. It then put itself in manual mode each time.
The system will hopefully improve at gathering data on the wife’s blood sugar levels and properly administer the insulin. The educator said it would take two weeks for it to dial in its accuracy. We’ll have to keep an eye on things in the meantime. I’d hate for the wife to die because she got too little or too much insulin. I’m sure the tech is fairly safe, once it dials in the necessary levels.
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