Sunday, January 23, 2011

An update on bionic boy

Matthew is now officially "fully wired".  He has his OmniPod (the egg shaped thing on the right side of his belly) and his DexCom Continuous Glucose Montior (The smaller thing on the left side of his belly).  Each device has its own hand held gizmo that gives us all the information we need to keep his sugars in control.

Of course, even technology is not perfect, as we found out on Christmas Day, when ketones took over and Matt felt awful.  But we do know, for example, when his blood sugars are spiking, or plummeting, we have a good general idea of where his sugars are at any point in time, and he now only needs to prick his fingers to verify what Dexie is telling us. (And to sync Dexie at least twice a day).

We are also getting used to new sites for each device.  The one big difference I have seen is that anything which stays under the skin leaves a much bigger mark than a needle.  However, we are all in agreement that we prefer to have to "prick" with a needle every 3 days (for the Pod) or 1ce a week (for Dexie) rather than many times a day.

Not pictured here is Matt's new TallyGear TummieTote, which sits nice and flat against his belly and easily holds both hand-held monitors, leaving his hands free, and rendering useless the pouch he had attached to his belt at all times.  His is in Army Green Cami, and he loves it.  He can even sleep with it on, and that means Dexie has an even greater chance of waking him up should his sugars spike or drop too low during the night.

All in all, not only is it "better living through pharmaceuticals" around here, its Better Living Through Electronics!

1 comment:

Laura Burnett said...

Wow! That's great! How did you go about getting a CGM? Did your doctor have to recommend it & did insurance pay for it? When I tried to get one once they told me that they'd only recommend it if I got pregnant! Grrr. I still want one though!