Welcome back to Day 2 of Diabetes Blog Week 2012!

The topic for today is “One Great Thing:”

One Great Thing – Tuesday 5/15: Living with diabetes (or caring for someone who lives with it) sure does take a lot of work, and it’s easy to be hard on ourselves if we aren’t “perfect”.  But today it’s time to give ourselves some much deserved credit.  Tell us about just one diabetes thing you (or your loved one) does spectacularly!  Fasting blood sugar checks, oral meds sorted and ready, something always on hand to treat a low, or anything that you do for diabetes.  Nothing is too big or too small to celebrate doing well!

One thing that I do really well is to keep snacks on my nightstand. This is a really simple concept, but one that I didn’t adopt until I started using a Dexcom continuous glucose monitor (CGM) a little less than a year ago. Why the change?

Well, usually, before using a CGM, I would wake up in the middle of the night from being low when I hit 45 or 50. Then I’d stumble downstairs and eat practically everything in the pantry before heading back up and getting in bed. 

With the Dexcom, I have my low alert set to 70, which means that it starts vibrating and/or beeping if my bloodsugar reaches or goes below 70. This is a good thing because I’ll know before I fall too low that my bloodsugar is heading down. And, overnight, the Dexcom will wake me up before I get too low.

Since I’m only about 70 when it starts buzzing, I don’t have to eat the entire pantry to raise my bloodsugar to a decent level. Instead, I’ll eat the recommended 15g of carbohydrates and wait until my bloodsugar goes back up before indulging further. With snacks at my bedside, I have those 15g of carbs within reach (usually a small box of juice or sometimes a granola bar) so I can eat or drink up and go right back to sleep, knowing that good ol’ Dex will wake me again if my bloodsugar decides that 15g of carb just isn’t enough.

And there’s an added bonus! Since I’m not gorging myself on everything in sight, I don’t usually experience the rebound high anymore. It’s such a simple concept, yet it’s relatively new to me, and I’m glad I’ve adopted it!