Or… How I felt about my glucose monitor last night.

Don’t get me wrong… I’ve had hypoglycemic episodes during my dance lessons before. My instructor is all too aware of the different sounds my insulin pump makes. (Though… Apparently he heard a new one last night… The temp basal/hour change alarm.) More often than not, he hears the alarms before I do. With that in mind, I consider him to be an honorary member of my broken pancreas club; mostly because he’s around me when my sugars drop the fastest – during exercise post-dinner.

Last night was a pretty traditional trend. I had a dinner that I may have blouses too aggressively on, my CGM reading was around 102 an hour after I ate, and I was headed into samba rehearsal. To be on the safe side because I felt a drop coming, I tested.

49.

Huh.

I went into treatment mode immediately. But paused because I didn’t “feel 49.” So I checked again while knocking down a Juicebox.

76.

And because third time’s a charm, 74.

So… I was probably closer to the 70s after all. Finished the Box, set a small temp basal, and went on my merry way.

Half way through the lesson, my low alarm goes off.

“Do you need to take care of that?” He asks.

“No, I already did. It’s just a residual alarm.”

“Oooookay.”

<10 minutes later>

“Yeah, I’m gonna go test again… Sigh.”

Meter: “52!”

Me: <facepalm>…What happened to that last Juicebox?

My CGM graph is trending downward into the 60s and I finally start feeling the low to the point of disorientation. But, I’ve treated said low, so I should be fine to run my routine at nearly full speed.

Ha.

I nearly toppled over half way through. Hyperventilation, ghostly pale… just… an ugly ugly low. Needless to say, my lesson was over for the night.

The question still remains – what exactly was my starting blood sugar? I’m still not really sure.

Have I mentioned Strip Safely before? Yes? http://www.stripsafely.com/

I know – Congress is a wee bit backed up right now, so sending letters right this second is probably not going to do much good. But when we have a Federal Government again, jump back on this campaign. Do it for me, the zillions of other PWDs and their allies that see them go through this.