My name is Clemma and I am writing about my experience with the Dexcom Seven continuous glucose monitoring system. I live in Minneapolis with my young son and my not so young husband. I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes 11 years ago, when I was almost 21 years old. I started pumping 7 years ago, first with a Minimed 508, then an Animas IR1200, and now with the OmniPod. Friday, June 29 I hooked up to my newest constant companion, the one and only Comrade Dex...

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Wanna see my dawn phenomenon?

The dawn phenomenon (anyone have a better link for this?) is a powerful beast. One of my reasons for wanting a CGMS was that I was waking up high in the morning, and because of my hypoglycemia unawareness I often didn't know if the high fasting sugars were due to the dawn phenomenon or rebound from a nighttime low.

In July I posted a very nice example of the latter, when I stupidly ignored the Dexcom warning that my blood sugar was dropping, tanked into the 40's, and rebounded.

This morning, I woke up to a high threshold alert (> 140 mg/dL) at about 4:30 am. I fell back asleep (whoops), but I woke up again about an hour later and the receiver showed my blood glucose a little over 200 mg/dL.


The Dexcom Seven manual says never to correct for high or low blood glucose without a confirmatory finger stick. Most people with half a brain* will, over time, learn when they do and don't need the finger stick. I know that when my sugar is trending up, I can usually correct for a high blood sugar based only on the Dexcom reading. So I corrected, my sugar came down, and I didn't hang out for hours with excessive glucose in my blood. Hurray for Comrade Dex. Anyway, I just thought I'd post this so you can see what the Dexcom Seven does for people who wake up high. It is helping me catch nighttime lows, and it is helping me realize right away when I need to ratchet up my early a.m. basal rates.



*This footnote is to acknowledge that some Dexcom users, with whole and functioning brains, will find that they do need finger sticks to confirm every Dexcom reading before making a correction.

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