Meet Bob's new friend - Bobette.

This week, I've told two or three colleagues that if I'm not a chain-smoking alcoholic by Christmas, it'll be a miracle.  This fall is kicking my butt, but I keep telling myself, hard work, big rewards.  And candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.  You know, for as much as I joke about drinking, I don't actually drink much, but it makes me feel better to talk about starting.  You know, like some people say they're going to start a new diet?  Start exercising? Me, I'm going to start drinking.  Cheaper than a padded hospital cell.  I can't complain too much.  My schedule is nuts, but I'm not in the SAC office, having to be all touchy-feeling and pretending to be everyone's friendly neighborhood advisor.  Woot!

Anyway, Bob got a brain (Bobette) on Monday.  More specifically, I got a continuous glucose monitor.  It took a year and three appeals to BCBS, but I got one.  And let me tell you, it's fantastic.  Fan-freaking-tastic.  Seriously, life changing.  So, this little gizmo has wires that I put in with a needle the size of a harpoon (amazingly, using the harpoon-gun-inserter-thingy, it doesn't hurt to put it in).  These wires wet over the course of almost 24 hours with interstitial fluid and send signals to the transmitter plugged into it.  The transmitter beams me up scotty sends info to Bob, who displays a 3 hour graph and my current reading.  So, by calibrating it periodically with fingerstick readings, it's pretty accurate.  So far, it usually reads 2-20 points different from my meter, but that's nothing.  It has algorithms that predict lows and highs, and I have alarms set to let me know when I'm low or (here's the amazing part) 15 minutes before I'm going to be low.  The second night, I thought I had a fire alarm going off in my pajamas (it's LOUD) because Bob and Bobette decided that I was going to have an insulin reaction.  My bloodsugar was 120 at the time, but I had double arrows pointing down.  So I got up, ate a small snack and went back to bed.  I got up the next morning with a bloodsugar of 100.  People, do you know how amazing this is?  Do you know what it's like to stumble out of bed in the middle of a great dream with a bloodsugar of 45, eat like you'll never eat again because all you want to do is feel better, then wake up higher than the Empire State building the next morning, feeling like complete crap?  If Bob wants to scare the beejeezus out of me in the middle of the night to tell me to eat something now so I prevent all that later, I'm gonna listen.  When I was pregnant with Ian, I had a reaction in the middle of the night with a bloodsugar of 32.  I sweated so much there were drips on the kitchen floor.  Dave got up the next morning and asked if we were attacked by bears because, strewn over the kitchen counter, were candy wrappers, Little Debbie wrappers, a peanut butter jar, a bottle of honey, half a loaf of bread, and some cracker remnants.  Not kidding, even a little bit.  Don't feel sorry for me for a second, though.  I wake up.  Not everyone does and I've known several people who have seizures because they don't wake up, so I consider myself damn lucky.

Mom pointed out something that I thought the second wonderful day with Bobette.  "Your pregnancy would've been so much easier with one of those."  Oh hell yeah.  And the bloodsugar nazis recommended that I consider a pump.  But at the time, I had no idea CGM was a possibility, I had hated my last pump, and I was a hot hormonal mess.  I believe my reaction was to burst into tears and to ask Chris if that meant the nurses didn't think I was doing a good enough job on shots.  Geez.  I look back on my pregnancy with awe, wonder, and laughter.  It was the best, most precious experience of my life, but damn, could I have cried a little less?  For the record, I shut the door to my office one day and sobbed hysterically to Dave (who thought I was having a miscarriage or something) that "I had a freaking Ph.D. but I was hungry and didn't know if I could have a snack because my bloodsugar was high."  I also cried because I had to eat a bedtime snack every night and I had gastroparesis really bad and was still super full from dinner that wouldn't digest (I believe that I was holding a corndog and making it soggy with my crying at the time).  Everybody has their funny pregnancy stories. :)

But so far, this is seriously the most life-changing piece of technology that I own.  I thought I could love no device more than my iPhone, but Bobette has knocked the iPhone down one notch.  I feel so happy that BCBS decided to cover the cost because like all good medical technology, this ain't cheap.  I feel like writing them a personal letter thanking them for realizing that Jesus was not going to give me a new pancreas no matter how much I prayed, exercised, or promised to stop eating potato chips.  Just joking - I never actually promised anyone that I'd stop eating potato chips.  Anyway, on to achieving my semester goals, like becoming a chain-smoking alcoholic, with Bob and Bobette. :)