mySentry: My diary of the first 3 days.

You're in the right place!  My blog is under construction.  Please bear with me!
_______________________________________________________________________________

I have so much to share and only so much brain capacity. I've been sitting here staring at the screen for five minutes and have decided to just begin typing and see where it takes me.

I want to start out saying that I fully understand how completely blessed I am to have the mySentry sitting on my bedside table at this very minute. It is the beginning of something wonderful, and I have this unshakable feeling that this is bigger than what it seems to be.

On the outside it seems so simple. A monitor that displays your child's CGM graphs, directional arrows, BG number, Reservoir units, battery life and more. But on the inside, you know...my inside...it is peace of mind, and that is such an overwhelming feeling I can't wrap my head around it.

(If you are not sure WHAT the mySentry is, please check out my post about it HERE:  And all the links attached to it!)

This is one of the pictures that was released with the the mySentry:

Yeah...I didn't look like that. Most of you know that last week I was on my deathbed with the flu of the century. Included in the perfect storm of an ear infection and a sinus infection...I also had pink eye. The word "mess" doesn't even seem to cover it. So I was in my sweats, with bright red eyes, and a headache the size of Mt. Everest the first two nights I worked with the mySentry. Needless to say, my experiences were under "real life" circumstances, not nighttime perfect hair, cute nightgown, lab conditions.

Below is my thought process throughout the weekend.

Day 1: This UPS guy probably thinks I'm a junky. Bright red eyes, not a stitch of makeup, and obviously full of some kind of medication...but yet I smiled and I smiled wide. It has arrived! IT. HAS. ARRIVED!

Wait. I need to slap a CGM on someone. Who? Who will be my lab rat? Ahhh! B! He is my most mellow...AND he had the highest A1C last week...brilliant!

After inserting the CGM, which B took like a champ, my husband and I set to our room to set up the mySentry and to synch the pump and the outpost. I checked the clock to time us...we were expecting a good half hour...it took 8 minutes from opening the box to having it ready to go. Winning!

As I laid on the bed: I'm never going to sleep again. I'm just going to stare at this pretty graph all night...I just know it. (Snore.)

Now before I go on, you should know that I didn't read the instruction booklet before we went to bed. I was sick and my eyes hurt. This was a mistake. The alarm went off ALL NIGHT LONG. I was beside myself with confusion. I would silence it and it would just go off again and again. Later I found out that you can mute the alarm by pressing the silence button TWICE. I did not know that, obviously. There was one High BG alarm that I got up and fixed and then there were a couple where it couldn't find the pump. I'm chalking night one up to a rookie mistake. Do over!

Onto Day 2:

It was the weekend, so I spent much of my day walking by my bedroom door to look at the graph. Hello, awesomesauce! I know when we used the CGM in the past the boys would be beyond annoyed with me when I would ask them to take out their pump so I could see the graph and the number. This device sets them free of that...when we are at home anyway. That night when we went to bed, I was ready. I let the lights on the graph lullaby my eyes to sleep and night 2 began.

12:00am ALARM. High BG. B has been sick and his BG was over 250. This is the first big victory. I had bolused him an hour and a half before. I wouldn't have known for a couple hours that he was going up, (rather than down,) if it weren't for that alarm. I went in and bolused him and things were quiet until 12:30.

12:30am ALARM. It is alarming that it can't find a signal. I'll just quiet it with the silence button. A few minutes later...ALARM. I will quiet it again. A few minutes later...ALARM! At this point I have two choices. I can go in there and flip B over so there is a signal again, or I can MUTE the alarm altogether until the 2am check. I choose MUTE. (I was dying, remember!)

I got up at 2am and did my rounds, where I was forced to bolus B again. I was so thankful I had an eye on the graph, I hate bolusing before the first bolus has run its course. I turned the alarm sound back on and the rest of the night was quiet. I woke up periodically on the hour because of my head cold, and in a blurry haze smiled at the CGM graph in front of me. Flat line...all was well.

DAY 3.

11:45pm. Low alarm. Tears. Feed B. This thing is magic. It would have been another TWO hours before I checked him.

3:00am Alarm that I need to calibrate the CGM. "Thanks for the reminder" >Quiet! It keeps alarming. Apparently this is non negotiable. I always calibrate at 2:00am check, but this time forgot. My mistake. I jump up and check again and calibrate and there are no other alarms the rest of the night.

This is what I woke up to the next morning:

Is it not beautiful?

Tomorrow I will post my thoughts and post answers to the questions that many of you have, incuding:

"Will I ever be able to afford this?"

"You have three boys, how is this ONE gadget, that works with only ONE child at a time, going to help you?"

"And, how do you really feel about it?"

If you have any other questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section and I will try my very hardest to answer those too!