Stupidity Curve
Dateline—Denver, Colorado
3:05 a.m.
The insistent alarm finally woke me up. It was the backup alarm that sounds vaguely like a European police siren. If you hear it you know that Guardian has been trying to wake you up for more than 15 minutes.
It’s slightly louder and longer than the normal alarm, but not much. We’re in the guest suite at my Mom’s high-rise. Deb and Rio are sleeping soundly in the other bed, five feet away. None of the alarms have stirred them either. By comparison my sixty-dollar Timex Expedition watch can wake everyone in a 2.3 mile radius.
When the Europe cops arrive you don’t know if you are high or low. Highs, lows, and monitor status alarms all have their own personality. It’s one of the things I really like about the Guardian family of products, but they share the same last-ditch backup.
Blearily brained I search around for the source of the noise and silence it by feel, Guardian’s buttons are raised.
I force one eye open and look at the dash board. It’s a high SG alarm; quite the surprise ‘cause when I went to bed I had been worried about a hospitalization-grade hypo.
We’d spent all day helping my mom with her kitchen. Installing spice racks, cleaning cabinets, getting reading for painting. So the day stared with an early Starbucks run, included a Home Depot run, and extraordinarily well bloused lunch at Noodles, and finally a drive up and over to Boulder for a Chinese dinner with that branch of the family.
Chinese is always bad for me. I took half the pen of Humalog (not really) after we ordered to get ahead start. Then the food came. I had never been to a chinchy Chinese restaurant before. The plates were petite. I began to have serious worries about the amount of insulin I had taken. Lacking much real food I resorted to filling up on rice and must have over done it.
By the time I got back to Denver that evening I was at 314 with two up arrows. By the way, Green Tea Ice Cream is very yummy.
I took a correction and started a violent ride downwards. Exhausted I went to bed very early and fell asleep when my head hit the pillow.
Now, in the dark, I’m studying the bizarre graph by it’s glowing backlight. The crest is 358 shortly after 9pm. By 11 o’clock I’m down to 140. Good stuff that Humalog. Shortly after that I bottom out at 138. Then a slow climb begins. I’m now at 284.
What the Fu…? Then I recognize the curve. I’m going to start calling it the Stupidity Curve. It is the graphic representation of my body poisoning itself because I, once again, have forgotten my Levemir shot. I groan. Find my glasses using the Guardian’s back light as a flashlight, and get out of bed. I stumble to the bathroom, and squinting, I turn on an overhead light and rootle around in my toiletry bag for the dark blue Flexpen. I’m thinking it would be nice to have a user-programmable daily alarm or two in this Guardian. (Hindsight Editor’s note: it does, but they don’t work very well, more on that in a future post.) After all, you wear it 24-7, it might as well do more than monitor your blood sugar. My retired CoZmo pump had no end of alarms you could set. When I first stated Lipitor I had an alarm to remind me to take it. Right now I need a Levemir alarm. While I’m at it, an on-board carb data base would be nice, and a list of all the Starbucks locations in the United States.
I take the 20 units of Levemir on my right side and then take a couple of units of Humalog on the left and then collapse back into bed.
In the morning the bell curve of stupidity and smooth correction is nicely displayed on my 12-hour screen.
So starts another day.
3:05 a.m.
The insistent alarm finally woke me up. It was the backup alarm that sounds vaguely like a European police siren. If you hear it you know that Guardian has been trying to wake you up for more than 15 minutes.
It’s slightly louder and longer than the normal alarm, but not much. We’re in the guest suite at my Mom’s high-rise. Deb and Rio are sleeping soundly in the other bed, five feet away. None of the alarms have stirred them either. By comparison my sixty-dollar Timex Expedition watch can wake everyone in a 2.3 mile radius.
When the Europe cops arrive you don’t know if you are high or low. Highs, lows, and monitor status alarms all have their own personality. It’s one of the things I really like about the Guardian family of products, but they share the same last-ditch backup.
Blearily brained I search around for the source of the noise and silence it by feel, Guardian’s buttons are raised.
I force one eye open and look at the dash board. It’s a high SG alarm; quite the surprise ‘cause when I went to bed I had been worried about a hospitalization-grade hypo.
We’d spent all day helping my mom with her kitchen. Installing spice racks, cleaning cabinets, getting reading for painting. So the day stared with an early Starbucks run, included a Home Depot run, and extraordinarily well bloused lunch at Noodles, and finally a drive up and over to Boulder for a Chinese dinner with that branch of the family.
Chinese is always bad for me. I took half the pen of Humalog (not really) after we ordered to get ahead start. Then the food came. I had never been to a chinchy Chinese restaurant before. The plates were petite. I began to have serious worries about the amount of insulin I had taken. Lacking much real food I resorted to filling up on rice and must have over done it.
By the time I got back to Denver that evening I was at 314 with two up arrows. By the way, Green Tea Ice Cream is very yummy.
I took a correction and started a violent ride downwards. Exhausted I went to bed very early and fell asleep when my head hit the pillow.
Now, in the dark, I’m studying the bizarre graph by it’s glowing backlight. The crest is 358 shortly after 9pm. By 11 o’clock I’m down to 140. Good stuff that Humalog. Shortly after that I bottom out at 138. Then a slow climb begins. I’m now at 284.
What the Fu…? Then I recognize the curve. I’m going to start calling it the Stupidity Curve. It is the graphic representation of my body poisoning itself because I, once again, have forgotten my Levemir shot. I groan. Find my glasses using the Guardian’s back light as a flashlight, and get out of bed. I stumble to the bathroom, and squinting, I turn on an overhead light and rootle around in my toiletry bag for the dark blue Flexpen. I’m thinking it would be nice to have a user-programmable daily alarm or two in this Guardian. (Hindsight Editor’s note: it does, but they don’t work very well, more on that in a future post.) After all, you wear it 24-7, it might as well do more than monitor your blood sugar. My retired CoZmo pump had no end of alarms you could set. When I first stated Lipitor I had an alarm to remind me to take it. Right now I need a Levemir alarm. While I’m at it, an on-board carb data base would be nice, and a list of all the Starbucks locations in the United States.
I take the 20 units of Levemir on my right side and then take a couple of units of Humalog on the left and then collapse back into bed.
In the morning the bell curve of stupidity and smooth correction is nicely displayed on my 12-hour screen.
So starts another day.
posted by Wil | 10:42 AM
1 Comments:
The Stupidity Curve--I like it. But by definition it should include missed boluses too. 'Cuz that's what I do sometimes on the pump.
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