To know or not to know? A CGM Story

I'm so, so tired! Yesterday afternoon we visited some friends. It was a family-style event where everyone brought something to feast on. The food was sooo good.

The diabetic downside is that while the food is really good I had no idea what the carb count was and therefore, no idea what my blood sugar was going to do.

I've been using a CGM since last November and this has been really beneficial with reigning in those blood glucose numbers.

I could track my BG's while I was eating and even afterwards while talking to people using my CGM and I was quite impressed at how well my blood glucose levels were doing.

However, it was late at night, heading towards the wee hours when my BG's started to climb, and climb. Oh and climb.

If I didn't have a CGM I would have taken a little insulin and just gone to bed assuming that this action would have taken care of the elevated levels perfectly.

This is not what happened at all. I have my High Glucose Alert on my CGM set to alarm when my blood glucose levels are above 15.5 mmol/l. And this alarm will continue to go off every 30 minutes until my BG's come back below this level.

My first indication that my blood sugars were rising came at 10pm when my alarm went off. I calculated some correction insulin and hoped for the best.

The arrow on my CGM fibbed and said that my BG's were holding at 15 mmols (279 mg/dL) leading me to believe that they were done going up but this was definately not the case for 2 hours.

It's so difficult to sit and wait. I know that my insulin takes AT LEAST 20 minutes to start working.

11.20pm alarm indicating a higher BG. More insulin 11:40pm more 12:30am more 1:40am some more

A CGM Story

Would I have been better off living in ignorance where I took an insufficient amount of insulin and just slept through the night spending 6 hours til morning way above a good BG?

Or was it worth it to spend those 4 hours (2 of them trying to sleep) to get it down to a more reasonable number and start a new day well?

I feel I did the right thing for me on this occasion. I felt that I learned something more about my diabetes because of it and I felt that I prevented a blood glucose reading of above 20 mmols/l

I'm tired today but the next time I know what to do to get to sleep. :-)