I think the information I'll get from wearing this damn thing for 72 hours will be fantastic but seriously can't they make it look like something other than a 1970s style handheld video game! The clip on the back is awful - I normally click my pump to the bottom of my boxers when I get home from work and toss on a pair of shorts - because of how heavy this thing is if you clip it to something upside down it will fall off. Minimed provides you with a sexy shower bag but since the meter is the size of an elephant it pulled my shaving mirror off the wall and fell out of the sexy shower bag - not a fun start to the morning. But in the name of research I'm willing to endure.
Cornell application goes in tonight, Darden (UVA) is still far and away the top choice but I need to make sure I cover all bases, doesn't look like I will receive an interview invite to Berkeley.
9 comments:
what kind of school are you applying to?
hope the cgms is easier after your first day...
Ugh I wore one of these back in September (see my Sept 5th & 9th blog posts). It was definitely really annoying it seemed to weigh a million pounds on all of my clothes, but the information was somewhat beneficial. I hope it helps you. By the way good luck with your applications and interviews!
It looks like they have to streamline that sucker.
Good luck with your applications!
So far the routine you set me up with is working fine. I'll contact you after next week!
You've got to love the sexy shower bag, although I found it didn't really keep the device dry anyway. Luckily, no one wears these things for more than a few days on occasion.
They can make iPods the size of a credit card (and almost as slim), but everything else still has to be gigantic. I'll admit, I don't understand it.
Also, thanks for the positive comments! It's nice that someone can empathize with exactly what I was thinking.
Keep me posted on your progress and if you ever find yourself in the Bay Area, let's grab a drink!! :D And know, I'll do the same if I come back to NY. (We had an AWESOME girls weekend there in Feb last year!)
MiniMed has the MiniLink that is very nice. Check out Kerri's site. She just got her's. So it's not so bad with the MiniLink. That's what I had when I went to my doctor's office. I never had to deal with the one you have. But they should still give you lots of good information!
Yeah, these things suck! I seem to remember that the wire is really thick too.
When I got started with Real Time CGM, I used the original Guardian RT. The monitor was of exactly the same design as this, although it did at least have the benefit of no wire so you could leave it outside the shower and on a table by the bed at night. Medtronic obviously put no money/effort initially into R&D of the Real Time monitor!
However, things seem unlikely to change now since the move is definitely towards Real Time. Have you asked your rep if she could get you access to the Guardian Real Time for 3 days instead? Since swimming is a regular part of your schedule, being able to do this with the CGM attached would surely be beneficial to you.
Good luck with the ongoing progress of your applications.
I am the father of a 5 1/2 year old with Type 1, diagnosed at 16 months of age. At 20 months she was on a pump, and we did the CGMS several months ago. It made us realize there was a lot of value, especially if you could see numbers in real time.
She now has a real time sensor from Medtronic (although its been hard to get a 5 year old to have a second pump site). But it is fabulous. I strongly strongly recommend you look at that. It was $1000 (insurance paid a lot) to upgrade the software on her pump.
http://www.minimed.com/products/insulinpumps/
And here is a demonstration video: http://www.minimed.com/products/insulinpumps/demonstration.html
The sensors are pretty expensive, so she doesn't wear them all the time. But when she does, every few minutes you get a real time number and you can see graphs that go back a couple hours or several hours. You get a nice trend you can watch and see which way you're going.
I think that type of data would be a lot more valuable than the CGMS where you have to go back and figure out what you were doing...rather than staring at a screen in real time while in action. See if you can find a pump/sensor to even just borrow from a salesperson to try out for a bit.
Good luck with the CGM and your application. Hopefully Darden will come through.
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