Buying yourself Christmas presents is SO not overrated!

This year I am proud to announce that I bought myself a Christmas present: the new Dexcom G4 Platinum Continuous Glucose Monitor.

Ta Da!

This newer model of the Dexcom system I am currently using has a lot of really great upgrades and technology that I cannot wait to start using. Just like the current Dexcom meter I use, this one is made up of two components: (1) the wireless sensor that is attached to my abdomen and (2) the hand-held device seen in the picture above.

As far as I can tell the sensor attached to my abdomen hasn't changed much. I change it once per week and then it wirelessly transmits blood sugar readings every 5 minutes to the hand-held device. The hand-held device, however is definitely different, in a lot of great ways! Below you can already tell the difference between the the one I have been using (top) and the new one (bottom).

The new one is a lot smaller, almost looks like an iPod, and it came in this cool pink color, which makes me feel so much more comfortable to carry around. The screen, I am told, is also in color and comes with upgraded features such as customizable high and low blood sugar alerts and a range of 30 feet from the sensor on my stomach. (The old one had a 5 foot range). Now I can roam a little more freely without taking the hand-held device with me everywhere I go.

I can't say enough about the technology of continuous glucose monitors and the benefits for blood sugar control. Since starting to use the original Dexcom in March of 2011, my overall blood sugar control has never been better and I am even more confident in managing diabetes. Despite still having days when this disease is a real downer, I can't help but be thankful for the resources I do have to make living with diabetes a whole lot easier.

They call me Iron Woman

The other week I was doing my very best to help a good friend of mine out with some assessments for her students. I had finally found about an hour in my day to waltz over to the Kindergarten class to begin to take children out one by one to to do individual phonics assessments. This task included asking each child to participate in a series of "fun" activities ranging from counting how many syllables are in a word to affirming yes or no if two words did or did not rhyme. I really tried my very best to be excited for these children and play up how oh-so-exciting these tasks were ... but completely understood when one little friend started to get a little distracted.

I was sitting at the table with one of the children whose hand started to wander a little closer every second in my direction. Bit by bit I saw his hand stretching further across the table and as I looked up at his eyes I could see that his gaze was fixated on my Dexcom continuous glucose meter. Curiously I watched him for a second and right before he was about to grab my meter I said, "Please don't touch that." He looked up at me with widened dark brown eyes knowing he had been caught!

"But what is that?" he replied. Wanting to stay on task with the phonics assessment I matter-of-factly stated, "It's my medicine," knowing full well that this was barely an explanation. I was ready to move on but this little boy's curiosity wasn't about to end. "Does the side open and you keep your medicine in there?" as he pointed to the rubber encased Dexcom meter.  And right then, I knew we weren't going to be able to move on until I gave him a sufficient answer.

"Actually, I press this little button right here and it shows me a number. There is also a machine attached to my stomach that this part 'talks' to," I stated, ready for a barrage of more questions and possibly even a "Can I see?" But to this explanation my little friend nonchalantly summed up my situation better than I could to any other Kindergartner, "Oh, so you're like half human, half robot. Cool!"

I mean, despite how hilarious this sounds I had to give this 5 year old some credit.  And with the Kinder class' current affinity for superheros, this totally made sense. My little friend just smiled up at me, obviously so proud of his discovery, and all I could do was smile back, smirk just a little, slowly nod, and say, "Yes ... yes I am." And within a split second that answer would suffice for my little friend and we were on to the next phonics task.

I'm not going to lie, I feel pretty cool right now and halfway tempted to dress up as Iron Woman for Halloween next year.