CGM

Yesterday I had a Libre 2 continuous glucose monitor put on the back of my arm, and this is not the experience I was expecting.

There are hardset alarms if it reads your blood glucose is below 55 mg/dl.  Three times (or was it four?) that horrible alarm blared at me until I scanned with my phone.  It confirmed 53 or 54, and then waited to scream again.  I was already struggling to sleep and that is the last thing that I needed.  And it would go from 54 to 30 minutes later 112 (wake-up glucose spike) when of course I haven't eaten in 10 or more hours.  It's all over the place.  I'd think that's just normal except for the screaming siren in the middle of the night. 

I'm researching what causes that because I cannot live like that, unable to sleep.  I am not diabetic - I am wearing this to better understand my own glucose readings on a regular basis to better regulate spikes, etc.  Other than these bizarrely low readings, everything else is normal.  I ate an ice cream sundae to see how it responded and it didn't go above 120 at the spike two hours later and then regulated again normally.  

I think it may be a faulty monitor, or I put pressure on it with sleep position which I read can give false reading.  I can of course just turn off my phone, but that means I won't be able to use the Calm app to help fall asleep, and my Fitbit isn't recording data.  I may give it one more night and then if I can't figure out a workaround I'll have to turn it off until I remove the CGM (two weeks later).  I usually never sleep with my phone near me; I only do now because of the Calm app, and now the CGM.

Now I'm drinking coffee with half and half, at a stable 90 mg/dl.  I thought the device scanned directly to the phone, but apparently I have to manually hold them together to get a reading (which doesn't make sense to me because how am I getting alarms if it's not regularly reading it?).  So I'm trying to do it every half hour or so, as the data is interesting how all over the place it is, though usually within fully normal ranges, just with some nocturnal hypoglycemia.  It also is weird about where to hold the phone to scan the device and it doesn't work that well.  

Maybe it was the ice cream at 5:50 pm affecting me with a glucose downward spike?  I dunno.

I'm going to try some other things on my list to check for glucose spikes and other effects.  White rice, oatmeal, bread, bread with cheese, bread with jam, pasta, fruit, no-sugar added muffins, "healthy" sweet potato pie, and the things I eat regularly.  I have two weeks to run everything and see any triggers or problems.  

Anyway, it's Christmas Eve day and I have to work but I refuse to go to the office and I probably won't do much actual work though I'll be on call as always. I stayed up late last night writing a response to my boss who has been bizarrely trying to target me, but I'm probably too sleep-deprived to make final edits today.  It's been a lot of sleep deprivation lately.  

And I will take a lunch break to walk over to an event with food vendors.  Get something tasty, check my glucose.  Looking forward to wrapping up some projects tomorrow, yay.  Oh, should go grocery shopping today if I need anything since all is closed tomorrow.