San Antonio and the Death of Dex

I spent a long weekend, out of my usual routine and either walking far more than usual or sitting still far more than usual, without Dexcom (a continuous glucose monitor).  And I was just fine.

You see, last Wednesday night (or early Thursday morning!), Dexcom vibrated to wake me and tell me I was low.  I felt OK, but tested... and I was 90.  Perfectly fine.  So I calibrated Dex and laid my head back down to sleep... only to be startled awake by an incredibly shrill BEEEEEEEEEP!!!!

I've seen other D bloggers complain that Dexcom is too quiet and won't wake them up at night.  Yeah, I don't have that problem.

I grabbed it and saw that Dex was initializing, and then that it had recovered a session.  Okayyy...  I put Dex back on the nightstand and settled back in, trying to relax...

BEEEEEEEEEP!!!!


Initializing and recovering again!
 
I went through this two more times before I turned Dex off and got out of bed, wide awake.  3:30 am.  Great.  No way I could get back to sleep, as wired as I now was.
 
I called the Dexcom service line as soon as business hours arose and they confirmed that, yeah, something pretty bad had gone wrong with the receiver, and they wanted to just replace it to be safe.  They offered to overnight it, but I asked them to wait and send it so it would arrive Monday, since I was leaving town early the next morning.  (They were, by the way, extremely awesome and offered to just overnight it to where I was going.  I didn't really feel secure about sending it to a hotel when I surely wouldn't get there until well after delivery.)
 
Friday morning, after stopping for the #7 breakfast at Cafe Antigua (this particular meal is both incredibly delicious and miraculously easy for me to bolus correctly!!!), Chad and I made the long Trek down to San Antonio for my grandmother's memorial service.  As a straight shot, it's about an 8 hour drive.  It's much longer when you're pregnant and need to make frequent stops to use the restroom and stretch your legs.  The drive wasn't bad though (especially since Chad was awesome and happily drove the whole way!), and we met up with my family on The Riverwalk when we arrived.
 
I had few blood sugar issues.  I went low twice over the weekend, but neither time was bad at all.  I probably went a little higher than I might have with Dexcom once, but it wasn't really out of my typical range, either.  Basically, I just tested more often... A lot more often.  And it was fine.  But still, there's so much that Dexcom gives me.  For example, I ate most of a sugar free fried pie and felt like maybe I'd given myself too much insulin for it.  We Dexcom, I could have just kept glancing to make sure my blood sugar wasn't dropping.  Without it, I tested like 45 minutes after eating to make sure I was going in the right direction at the right rate (I was), but I still felt kind of paranoid until the two-hour test.  And with Dexcom, I didn't feel the need to test my blood sugar before sleeping.  I just glanced to make sure it was in the right range and fell asleep with confidence that it would wake me if I went too low or too high.  Without it, I tested before sleep (a good thing too, as I was a little low at that test on Saturday night) and still worried as I fell asleep... In fact, I let myself run a tiny bit higher during some of the weekend than I normally would while pregnant and with the safety net of a CGM.
 
Things have been fine, but I'll be really happy to see that Dexcom box this afternoon!