Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Notes from a Spinning Planet: Manual Check

Manual check. Oh wait, I never read manuals, preferring instead to spend 45 minutes on hold with a CSR, to find a solution to my problem. I hate trying to find something in a book.

My diabetes educator called today. I guess both she and my (8 months pregnant) endo are getting tired of (un)meshing method from madness and want something easier. When I saw the DE last month, I brought I written log and we downloaded pump/cgm reports there.

The problem with my pump reports is, I don't consistently input carbs, even when I do bolus for them. So later, there's a string of erratic numbers & data that I don't remember what it may have been caused by. Throw in a Dexcom graph and a did-it-the-night-before log and it's a yoyo effect from who knows where.

So she suggested using the "Event" marker on my CGM. Confession: I've never used them, which explained my utter amazement when I found out that you could input units of insulin/carbs/minutes of exercise(and severity), alcohol, illness, menses, etc. WOW! When I updated my Dex last year, I never even heard about all those options. I just figured it was a "x" marks the event kind of deal, and you couldn't get specific. This is awesome, because now I can put it all in my cgm and have the insulin/bg/etc. data all together in one report.

I should read manuals, it would make my life(and other people's) so much easier. Putting it on my resolutions list.

And, in other news, my insurance co has decided not to cover diabetes education anymore and I have a nice (not so little)$250 bill from January's appt. They have always covered them 100%, so I'm not sure what's up, but I sure won't be going again until I can get this resolved. Beginning of the year sticker shock, it happens every year.(even when you think you know what tricks they might pull)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Education is flat out not covered anymore ever? REVOLT

Ellen

Scott K. Johnson said...

I don't care WHAT method you use - remembering to enter all that stuff that makes our data meaningful is damn hard. It is overwhelming to be expected to do it for long.

And I love how you didn't know about the insurance change (could it be a coding error or something like that?) BEFORE you went to the appointment and incurred a large expense.