SCIENCE! Dex 7+ vs. G4

So I got my G4 finally, and had a couple of 7+ sensors left. I decided to conduct science and wear both of them and see if either was more accurate or any general conclusions I could make about the new G4 or the old 7+.

So I put them both on opposite sides of my stomach. The G4 was taller, but with the same footprint (more or less) as the 7+. I used an alcohol wipe to prep my skin and clean off the sensor before I put them in, and then stuck an IV3000 with a hole cut out over both. 

G4, says right on it. It's about half an inch tall, I think. Annoying because it seems like it's not snapped in all the way.

7+ sensor. Smaller and closer to the skin, I think better engineered overall.

 I know that the new G4 sensor is bigger because it has more of the "brains" in it, but it's annoying and I think that they could have left that stuff in the receiver and just redesigned it (make it square instead of annoying egg).

A couple hours after calibration, they're close enough together for government work. And the graphs are nearly identical, G4 has better labeling in terms of time though.

Look at that.

I would have taken more pictures but I lost interest in constantly comparing the graphs. Suffice to say they seem to be identical in technology, except that one is presented more appealingly.

7+ has a shorter battery life, probably because of the insane backlight and the length of time it stays on. The light goes out on the G4 faster, but not too fast to read and comprehend it. Both have really annoying LOW <55 alarms, but the G4 is more annoying. I kept them both solely on vibrate, and it seems like there's more of a pattern to the G4's vibrations than the 7+'s.

G4 has a microUSB port! Except there's a cheapo slidy bit to prevent dirt and stuff from getting in it that will be the first thing to break - they should have done a rubber cover thing like on most digital cameras.

In terms of sensor life, I actually had to rip them both out after 4 days because of itchiness and adhesive failure. The G4 gave me a 67 or something when actually my BG was 144 or so. 7+ was right, and I noticed that the adhesive was going on the G4 sensor - I think the wire was out. I took it off because it was really itchy anyway and then took out the 7+ an hour later.

I think that's more of a result of a) stomach is the worst place you could put them and b) I sleep on my stomach etc so a lot of rubbing etc to the sensors than it's sucky adhesive. I haven't yet done an arm G4 but I hope they will be similar to my experiences with the 7+ which is that they last nearly forever (until the sensor wire conks out).

I did a dumb thing; writing papers about diabetes

So last night (technically the night before last as it is now the 25th) I was low before bed. I ate some fruit snacks, ate more fruit snacks, then decided to suspend my pump to stave off the low.

I fell asleep and the alarm clearly did not wake me up... Nor did my DexCom (although I can't blame it, it fell on the floor). I woke up when my phone alarm went off, 6:15, and grabbed my Dex off the floor. It said HIGH. I said, it's just messed up because it fell off the bed, whatever. I went to the bathroom and decided to look at my pump (don't remember why). Lo and behold, it was suspended. The puzzle pieces fell into place and I gave myself 8 units then and there.

Went back to my room, tested, 398 or summat, added the extra correction on, continued to get ready to be a productive member of society, and drank a bunch of water. Crawled back into bed until 7:00 when I headed to work... We played ping-pong for half an hour, and sleep-deprived high [bg] me is not very good at that. Oddly enough I was asymptomatic until I realized what I'd done, and only then did I begin to feel like crap.

Breakfast was bad... Bacon, hash brown, grapes, donut. Diet mountain dew and a glass of water. 

Work = summer college fun awesome camp for high school students. I'm a residence counselor, like an RA for the students. It's pretty cool and I get to be a total geek about my favorite geeky things and people actually enjoy it. Also I stay up late sometimes and get paid for it, which is what I'm doing right now (no I'm not voluntarily writing a blog post at almost 1 am).

And I am writing this post instead of working on a paper I am supposed to be writing about stereotypes and diabetes. But now I will get on with it and go do that.

Finals Week

Oh hi there. Not like I haven't posted in months, or anything, but I haven't. I've had this amazing thing called college to deal with. This coming week is finals week and then I'll be done for a couple of months before coming back up here to be an RA for the summer camps they have. I'm also taking a couple of classes so I won't be bored out of my mind.

Still waiting on the Vibe, although it's getting closer.

Endo appointment shortly after I get home; hopefully a1c will still be in the low 7s.  My cholesterol, on the other hand, will probably be awful...

Also I got my Gold Award finally, so I can now say I've earned the highest award in Girl Scouts, and my diabetes helped. :P

Bring on the summer!

Be T1D for a Day

I think this is a nifty little thing, although not even close to my life on a daily basis, but it should help you get a little bit of an understanding of the crap we do on a daily basis...

Throughout November, we're asking people to better appreciate what people with type 1 diabetes (T1D) experience every day, every hour by taking part in a unique mobile-based challenge: T1D for a Day.
When you sign up for the T1D for a Day text challenge, you agree to receive as many as 24 text messages over a 24-hour period that simulate the constant blood sugar testing, insulin injections, and dietary decisions that confront people with T1D.
While no virtual campaign can recreate the many needles required or the physical and financial tolls of this serious disease, T1D for a Day seeks to deepen understanding of the many heroic steps our friends and loved ones with T1D take each day.
Please sign up for the T1D for a Day challenge now!
Text T1D4ADAY to 63566. You will receive a confirmation text that completes your registration.

JDRF's Be T1D for a Day

Alternatively you could send me your phone number and I'll send you a text every time I do something diabetes related... Yeah, don't do that. I'd need to send you hundreds of texts...

Wordless Tuesday, or Not.

I don't know about you, but you can't bill Medicare anyway... I don't have it. Don't be THAT supplier. Oh wait, you already are.

Dumb supplier did send me my cartridges, but also 5 little zippy bags of 10 IV Prep wipes each (wtf?) and this crap envelope filled with more crap. I don't care right now, much less do I have the slightest idea what on earth this is about, as I've never seen it or heard of it before in my life and I've been through four or five suppliers.

It's Rant Time

So I need to order more cartridges. Not sets, not strips, just cartridges. My mom calls the new med supplier, because last month the insurance company told us we couldn't order straight from Animas anymore, and we needed to use this supplier. She called last month and set everything up so she could just call and order what I needed. [Note - this is the third time this year we've had to change suppliers, same insurance company though.]

Of course it can't be that simple. They ask for everything they asked for before and tell us they can't ship us the order, that we need the doctor's office to send something in, they need money from us (wtf? never had that before), and that they can't ship us test strips. We don't want freaking test strips [switched scrip to local pharm, getting them for $5 a month!], we know you can't give us them. Then she tells us she can ship us Insets. I don't want those either, I have a freaking ton of them. All I need are cartridges. The woman didn't know the difference between the two, because of course they also sell all the crap that medical suppliers do and they don't attempt to know what they're shipping to people.

Then they tell us they can only ship 4 boxes for a three month supply. 40 cartridges are not enough for me, as it's about 100u a day, and the cartridges are only 200u. Three months (90 days) should be 45 cartridges. I know you can't ship half a box, so ship me an extra box, dangit!

Add to the fact that the woman said they didn't have Opsite Flexifix tape when I'm almost positive they did. My mom even gave her the freaking item number! [I <3 Amazon, just bought some off there, although it was more expensive obviously.]

So I have no idea when I'll get my cartridges. I have about ten left I think, but I leave for college in ten days... Everything else is taken care of, getting my normal scrips filled on Monday so I'll go up north with 8 bottles of insulin for some inane reason. Bought about half my books, bookstore doesn't have the other ones for some reason. I went and got new glasses and they should be in next week so I can pick those up yay.

I feel like snails

I don't remember Kerri's post but you know what I'm talking about. I feel like absolute garbage. Sure my wisdom teeth are gone, but now I feel like puking my guts up and have an awful headache. I don't want any of this, it freaking sucks. My blood sugar's been in the high 300s since I got up. Rage bolusing is doing nothing and Dex decided it was a good time to conk out completely.

It's the amoxycillin doing this to me, but I can't fix it unless I don't take it. I hate this.

Any suggestions?

Things that used to be

My wisdom teeth are gone. None of them had come out yet and they would have wrecked my nice orthodontia so we finally got them taken out this morning [I wanted to get it done before going to college].  I couldn't eat for nine hours before and didn't really eat until three or four hours after. My mouth kept bleeding until I just decided to stop the gauze at which point I guess it stopped.

Had some regular jello that I couldn't properly appreciate as my tongue was still mostly numb. Pudding for dinner and I'll probably have ice cream later today. Scrambled eggs are on the menu for breakfast.

We lowered the basal for the night and I went into the surgery with 212mg/dl. I was out completely for maybe an hour. After my bg was fine, still in the 200s but that's been fixed obviously. I've got Vicodin which is acetaminophen based, which is unfortunate for my DexCom  because it's giving me weird numbers.

Some Updates

I think I'm going to be gradually updating the look of my blog or maybe not. Something I will do, that I've been meaning to do for some time, is make a video for the walk. I attended a lunch kick off event [first time in nine years I've been able to make it] yesterday and saw the most amazing walk video from @bleedingfinger and @sweet2thesoul - decided it finally needed to be done. I'm not a cute little kid anymore but I think stabbing myself a bazillion times is enough to warrant people giving money to a cause that will help me and the cute little kids. :D

I won't be there [college is ten hours away] but you can still be awesome and donate to my team, read my story, and donate to my team...

And I'm kind of working on a silly t-shirt design that doesn't really have anything to do with the JDRF walk theme this year... except that it involves diabetes heroes...

DexCom Deconstruction

yes, it is covered in dust...

see notes on flickr

It's actually an almost wordless Wednesday! For more pics see the flickr.

It's Been Awhile.

Hey there again. I've got some things to share, namely a DexCom in pieces, pictures of a sketchy Ping, and a story of Animas customer service. Still playing hockey once a week and rocking goalie.

I'm getting my 6-month-old Ping replaced... New one is coming in the mail tomorrow. This is why:

in addition, I just pushed a button and the screen's not coming on....

It's been freaking out off and on for the past couple of months in terms of the screen; flickering, not coming on, and generally being sketchy. I do drop it a lot, but not any more than my Medtronic I had previously, and that made it through four years no sweat. The lady at Animas took a long time to figure out my problem, I don't know if it was my ineptness at describing the problem or if she just wanted to make sure I was being serious that a six month old pump was being sketchy. I was on hold for like ten minutes but spent like twenty just going over the one thing that was wrong with it. Anyway it's okay, even though she told me not to use this one until I get the new one (I have a couple old Animas pumps kicking around) I still am. I'm too lazy to reprogram an entire pump for 18 hours of use, when this one's still working minus the screen.

I finally called today because it did it for two hours (no screen) and I realized that it might happen sometime when I didn't have the meter-remote in easy reach, and then I'd be screwed. (Basically, the Dex went off, I needed to bolus, couldn't on pump, went and tested then corrected with the meter which is super nice.)


I guess the moral of the story is if you break a pump, break it all the way? Off to download my data one last time on this pump...

ZAMBONI

Again with the falling off the earth thing! - And it's still hockey related.

My 18th birthday was Thursday, and this was my present! I got to ride the Zamboni during the second intermission of the Griffins game yesterday! It was awesome, and I have a new life goal - drive the Zamboni. The Griffins won 6-1, I saw Conklin play, and Chris Minard got a hat trick, so altogether an awesome day.

My team also won our game on Thursday 5-2 which was awesome, and I'm hoping to keep up the winning streak today.

I have an essay on blood and the circulatory system due on Monday and I really ought to be typing it, but I'm not!

Misc

What has taken over my life? Hmm....

HOCKEY.

I was sort of recently mentioned in the Griffins' game program as 'a child with an insulin pump' - and oddly enough, the first game I attended that had this program [they have about one a month] was the JDRF game! I freaked out and had to announce this to our chapter's CEO who was happy for me. :P I'm the only kid with diabetes who plays with the youth foundation.

I'm just wicked awesome. I can CAD like nobody's business. Not really. But for having just started threeish weeks ago, I'm pretty awesome. I can stand on my head [figuratively] in goal. I play a mean bari sax solo.

It's 7:15! Last week I wrote a paper for college writing. It was a personal narrative. I wrote mine about my diagnosis. Maybe someday you'll get to read it.

Thursday I stuck my hand in a pig heart. Friday I was on a bus for four and a half hours. Saturday I was on the ice for three hours and SAW CHRIS OSGOOD! I was less than a hundred feet from him. Sunday I made a three-dimensional perler bead thing - they're my new obsession. My birthday is in ten days, and I get to go to the hockey game the day after. And this weekend, my cousins are coming to watch one of my games and then we get to have cake afterward to celebrate.

I  like cake. And the wireless keyboard is having spasms again:

This is what happens when I try to type fast like I normally dd. Then it stopes freaking out and randomly ruuns to normal and then stops working again. I don'tlike lag.

I'm not dead.

Who's that? Curt Fraser of the Grand Rapids Griffins! Rocking a MiniMed!

Winning.

 This is today. I ran out of insulin at lunch... Because it was 11.25 units... This was at 12:30, and I got home about two hours later to this:

Pretty sure Charlie Sheen would call that 'WINNING'. I've got a no-hitter right now too.

It's low calorie. Why doesn't it say ZERO calorie? Please answer, FDA.

The Ove Glove is on sale!

Hockey has taken over my life.
Saturday first game - 10-5; I played awful, my D was also awful.
Saturday second game - 5-3; I didn't play amazingly, my team won but I wasn't playing for them...
Tuesday - 7-4; I played well and we lost, not a big deal, I really enjoyed this game and made some awesomesauce saves.

Today

Update: No pump as of yet. It's at the UPS depot. My mom will be getting it sometime today, although she has been sidetracked by a very unfortunate occurrence.

A car driven by a kid from my school rear-ended a bus from my school this afternoon. The two teens who were in the car were killed, and it's very likely I know them well. [I have 800 kids in my high school... I can put a face to almost every name.] The kids who were in the bus are okay, but obviously there's a horrible mental aspect to deal with; same with the bus driver, who is a very nice lady who I feel very sorry for right now.

I want to know who they are, but at the same time, I don't. Tomorrow won't be a good day, and break will have this cast of despair over it. When we come back, it'll hit us again, realizing that we're two less, and that although we've had more than our fair share of tragedy in the recent years, we're not invulnerable.

You don't know them, but all the same, please keep them in your thoughts and prayers. Mine is a small community, where everyone knows everyone... Thank you. While you're at it, remember your family and give thanks for them.

Insulin Pump is not here.

1. Diet Mountain Dew is the best thing in the universe.
2. Christmas cookies are not good things to keep in the house.
3. My Ping came to my house and left today!!! Nobody was home and somebody has to sign for it... Hopefully they'll come after I get home from school tomorrow... (because nowhere does it say you have to be an adult to sign for it)

YOU WILL BE MINE!

What's New

I have issues writing stuff when there are other people around me. My mom is on the phone with our lovely medical supplier right now [I think], so I wasn't going to write a post but I haven't in a while so I did. /awfulrunonsentence

Our medical supplier got purchased by some other company recently [read a month or two ago] and they are ridiculously slow now. It takes at least two weeks to get a shipment of strips out, after we call and tell them to ship them. We ordered strips right after [the company] was purchased and they didn't get here for two and a half weeks - when I had like one vial left. Not happy.

They want to rip us/our insurance company off by putting us on auto shipment and sending us enough diabetes garbage to last a nuclear apocalypse. I don't need 800 IV3000 sticky things! I already have 300! Same with the IV prep wipes and the random accouterments that come with diabetes. All I need are my strips and infusion sets and cartridges. NO MORE LANCETS!

Next bit of randomness. I am getting a lime green Animas Ping! I dunno when or if it has been shipped, but I should be getting it soon. Which is good because the warranty on my Minimed is over as of today.

The ridiculous thing is that my insurance company would not pay for a new pump until 4 years had elapsed/my warranty was up/it was damaged. It's been damaged for some time, with some cracks and such in the cartridge thing and the battery cap thing; that was enough for them, I guess, but it's still stupid. They didn't buy me the last one I had [current minimed]; that was a different insurance company.

Nice thing is we don't have to pay the copay as Animas has a rebate program going on -  they will reimburse your copay up to $700 if you have a pump already, even if it's not Animas! So that was a happy day.

We also happened to win a Target gift card through a study we did [diabetes and adolescents and transferring care], which we found out about on the same day; was a good day.

We are dissecting cats in Anatomy and Physiology. Right now we're just doing muscles, but eventually we will get to organs and such, at which point I will find its pancreas and take a picture of myself with it.

We won our first hockey game of the season 5-3 on Saturday. I have slightly messed up my knee, which is disappointing, but I can deal with it.

So many things, so little time

I have been meaning to write a blog post since I got back, but it's only just now happened.

Flying to Houston - no problem, didn't even tell them I had diabetes. Insulin and everything went through x-ray just fine, empty pockets so Dex went through with my carry-on. I walked through x-ray thingy and was the first one out in my group. Did fly out of my local smallish airport though.

In Houston - no problems. I ran high pretty much all the time, because I switched basal rates, until the last day when I decided to screw it. Changed pump a bit early twice because we spent all of the day away from the hotel and I didn't want to risk it. Ate a lot of carbs:

One of many giant cookies consumed

Potato=Carbs + large cookie + bacon! (on potato!)

Obscenely large pretzel.

The ever-present Diet Coke, which I couldn't get in any vending machines/at the convention despite Coke being a sponsor.

They had to empty the mini-bar for me [never mind the fact that we're three unaccompanied minors in the room] so I could put my insulin in there. Thoroughly enjoyed reading the price lists on the food in the minibar though... $3 for a Snickers. Dex didn't bother my roommates, only went off once or twice in the night. Only had to charge it once over the four day trip. Kept it on in the plane.

Trip back from Houston - We get in the line at the airport [Houston Hobby if you care] and I glance down towards security... Then I grimace. I ask my chaperon if those are the same things they had when we left; she agreed with me that they were not just x-rays. Full body scanners, fun. [insert witty comment about leaving me in Houston here] I get up to the line, throw my stuff through the x ray, and tell the guy I can't go through it because I have type 1 diabetes and an insulin pump. He tells me to stand in a sort of awkward place [I'm in front of the scanner thingy so people kind of think I'm in line...] and I wait for about five minutes for someone to come over to give me a pat-down. I get taken to the back of the security thing [wouldn't you want the potentially sketchy person away from the secure area?] and the lady does it - nobody was annoyed or uncourteous to me.

Was just kind of stupid that I couldn't go through the scanner and had to have a pat-down just because that's the only technology they let passengers through [employees can go through the metal detector.] Oh and also because I had more than 3 oz of unfrozen ice pack gels in my bag with my insulin and they said nothing about it. Seriously folks, please at least be consistent?

Besides my trip, I've got lots of hockey. Expect a nifty picture of my in mah gear soon, and probably not a whole lot of blog posts - three days a week hockey takes over my life now!