Monitoring My Blood Sugar

February 8, 2023

PHOTO: My new blood glucose-monitoring system is working. The main photo shows the disk affixed to my right arm. The inset shows my blood-glucose level after my first scan at 3:12 p.m. today. I'm running a little high.

My wife and I returned home around 2 p.m. today from my endocrinologist's office to replace my sensor and my monitor that tests my blood-glucose levels. The sensor that I had installed yesterday at the office wasn't working with the app on my phone.

After about seven years, I finally had an appointment yesterday afternoon with an endocrinologist who is actually an associate with the endocrinologist I saw the last time. My primary doctor was prescribing my diabetes medication, but he deemed it beneficial for me to procure medication from an endocrinologist. I currently inject a long-acting insulin into my belly twice per day and take a blood glucose-reducing pill twice per day.

My new endocrinologist wants me to continue with these two prescriptions for another 14 days, as of yesterday. However, my next appointment is in 13 days because I couldn't get the monitoring system to work until today instead of yesterday. During this time, I was to be on a system called "FreeStyle Libre 2" that monitors my blood-glucose levels 24 hours per day using an app on my cell phone and a disk with a plastic needle affixed to my upper right arm. The disk is about the size of two stacked quarters. The levels were also to be linked to a computer program at my endocrinologist's office. This is so I do not have to alternately prick my fingers once every morning to get my fasting blood-glucose levels, and I can easily monitor throughout the day.

Anyway, yesterday's new monitoring system was not working. I would scan the disk, but I just got error messages on my phone that it's not working, to try again in 10 minutes, or that I need to affix a new monitor to my arm. Two nurses, my wife, and I had difficulty setting it up in my endocrinologist's office yesterday afternoon. It seemed OK, but it wasn't working after the one-hour waiting period. The ability to scan started after my wife and I had returned home, but it just did not work after multiple tries.

So, this early afternoon, my wife and I went back to the office. I had the disk replaced on my upper right arm and was given a separate monitor that tracks my blood-glucose levels. I now have to scan the disk with the monitor every six hours instead of the app keeping a constant reading.

My eventual prescriptions will probably be the same long-acting insulin with the addition of a combination immediate-acting and fast-acting insulin, also to be injected into my belly, and maybe the discontinuation of the blood glucose-reducing pills. I used to take the two insulins without the pills when I was seeing my current primary doctor's associate. That seemed to work well for me, so I hope that I can get back to that. The pills make me nauseated.

FreeStyleLibre.us/TryItNow

Interesting Note: I have to be sure to keep my Vitamin C levels in my blood low because high levels interfere with the blood-glucose monitor and may produce incorrect readings.