Monday, June 15, 2009

Thankfully I'm Not Lost

Because the Freestyle Navigator has about as much ability to lead me out of the darkness as Mr. Magoo could lead me through the Amazon. Having gotten into the swing of my summer internship I decided to give the freestyle navigator another try, hoping that my dismal results with it during the marathon were an aberration. However, after today I'm about ready to go to town on this device with as much vengeance as Peter and the boys had for the office printer in Office Space. I don't know if John Connor has as much loathing for Skynet as I do my Freestyle Navigator!

Last night I inserted the oh so well designed infusion site as Kim watched in horror. She also very logically asked, "you mean to tell me that thing is held on by that small amount of tape." Yep, they clearly designed this thing with the end user in mind - great job Abbott. Finally at 9am this morning the blood drop icon shows up on my Navigator so I go to calibrate, my blood sugar was oddly high at 180, so the test results weren't valid for calibration. An hour later I was below 160 and was able to calibrate.

Then the real fun started, even though my blood sugar was below 170, my CGM was showing my blood sugar to be above 220. As the day progressed my blood sugar on the CGM continued to climb above 300, but from finger pricks I was never above 270 (it was a really weird blood sugar day). After seeing my blood sugar at 340 on the CGM, but 220 as a finger stick I went to the gym. Upon returning from the gym my blood sugar was in the 60s - but wouldn't you know, the damn sensor failed already.

Less than 5 hours, my new sensor lasted less than 5 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The rip off Cabbage Patch dolls of the 80s that spontaneously burst into flames were designed better than this thing. But don't worry, I have a whole box of sensors so I'll keep trying, I swear one time I'm going to get this thing to work or its as worthless as Crystal Pepsi.

4 comments:

Kim said...

could you bring it to your doctor/hospital and try to figure out what is wrong with the sensor or if something is up with the infusion site?

Kerri. said...

OMG I absolutely remember the spontaneously-flamed filled Cabbage Patch Kids. I had to send one back after the news reports came out. I remember crying my eyes out.

Much like I'd be crying my eyes out that an expensive medical device isn't working. Can Abbott hook you up with some new sensors to replace any that fail within ... oh, say five hours?

Anne Findlay said...

make sure you call every time a sensor fails. they should definitely replace the ones that don't work as promised. Dexcom has been really good about this. My dexcom always seemed to work best 2-5 days in.

Gary said...

Wow and I thought this only a Minimed thing. CGM is really an interesting (flaky?) technology is it?