LifeAfterDx--Diabetes Uncensored

A internet journal from one of the first T1 Diabetics to use continuous glucose monitoring. Copyright 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

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Location: New Mexico, United States

Hi! I’m William “Lee” Dubois (called either Wil or Lee, depending what part of the internet you’re on). I’m a diabetes columnist and the author of four books about diabetes that have collectively won 16 national and international book awards. (Hey, if you can’t brag about yourself on your own blog, where can you??) I have the great good fortune to pen the edgy Dear Abby-style advice column every Saturday at Diabetes Mine; write the Diabetes Simplified column for dLife; and am one of the ShareCare diabetes experts. My work also appears in Diabetic Living and Diabetes Self-Management magazines. In addition to writing, I’ve spent the last half-dozen years running the diabetes education program for a rural non-profit clinic in the mountains of New Mexico. Don’t worry, I’ll get some rest after the cure. LifeAfterDx is my personal home base, where I get to say what and how I feel about diabetes and… you know… life, free from the red pens of editors (all of whom I adore, of course!).

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Here's looking at you, kids


So I went into Photoshop and rescaled downloads from CoPilot, CareLink, and ZeroClick. I distorted them so the X and Y axises would be close to the same and then lined them up by time as well. The upshot, as we are comparing apples, oranges, and lemons--I wanted to try to get all the fruit on the same page. It was a huge pain in the ass, so we won’t be doing this little exercise again anytime soon.

Top is Navigator from day one, about 12 hours worth. Middle is Guardian from the same time period. Bottom is Presto. That’s my clinic presto meter, so it doesn’t have the late afternoon or early evening readings.

So a couple of things to point out. First, Guardian is exhibiting a very noisy trace. This happens sometimes, but is pretty rare. This particular sensor on this particular day was really acting crappy. As speculated yesterday, I could be RF interference from the other CGM. Navigator’s trace is much smoother. Of course, they might polish the data during the download, but it seems to me that both traces are accurate presentations of what I experienced with the devices on that day.

But in spite, or despite this, but the CGM curves are pretty much the same shape. We have a drop from early morning to noonish, a hospice-pizza spike, a decent to base line that is pretty rapid and then a leveling off.

The connect-the-dots Presto control strip also mimics the overall shape of the curve too.

So bottom line. Both systems, from a large over-all trend perspective work.

But which is better in the trenches for day-to-day use and survival? Ah, it is too early to tell. The real-time shootout has just begun.

Next time: a summary of first impressions using Navigator.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Carol said...

Thanks so much for posting about your experiences in such detail. Couldn't be more timely for me...considering the MM offer right now as an opp to get a "free" CGM. I'm eagerly await the next installment of your CGM exploits!

9:54 AM  
Blogger Crystal said...

I'm with Carol, eagerly awaiting.

Don't have the option for a CGM at all, no insurance (a good thing?) so Way to expensive for my small bank account.

Thanks for the details, Love the graphs.

10:57 AM  
Blogger Scott K. Johnson said...

Looks like they tracked pretty darn well (relatively same shapes)!

9:42 PM  

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