For those of you following along at home, I gave up on using the Medtronic Revel continuous glucose testing because it was, in a word, antisupercalifragilisticexpialidoscious. This was no spoonful of sugar we're talking about. It was definitely the rain on the chalk pavement pictures.
Today I started using the NEW and IMPROVED Medtronic Elite model of CGM, and so far I am thinking pretty highly of it. For example, the length of the sensor itself is dramatically improved.
This is the Soft Sensor that was used with the Revel. The needle there (it's encased in a plastic protector) is just about as long as a dime is wide, and it's the largest gauge needle I've ever seen. I think you can give an elephant a tranquilizer with this needle. It went in at a strange angle, as you can kind of tell (the plastic part just above the needle was supposed to be flush with my skin. I say supposed to because it was really a crap shoot over whether that would happen or not.) Also, because it went IN at an angle, you had to pull the needle OUT at the same angle or it just stayed stuck, which was always good for a panic attack.
This is the Elite Sensor. Much shorter, and it goes straight in at a 90 degree angle which makes taking it OUT really easy. Also, I can leave it in for 6 days as opposed to 3. Already we're making a better impression. I'm sure it has quirks I will have to get used to, but the relationship is young and its still trying to impress me. I knew after only a couple months that things with the Soft Sensor weren't going to work out, but I can see the Elite and I making a long commitment to one another.
Perhaps it's just because I'm already listening to Christmas music and for some strange reason my XM/Sirius radio weirdly started working again even though the trial subscription ran out last week, but I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the new gear. I know I was fairly optimistic about the other Medtronic CGM, but the trainer I was working with today had little nice to say about the Soft Sensor and lots nice to say about the Elite, so I'm hopeful that they have done some serious improving.
So, recently I started nosing in around my Google+ profile because more of my friends are using it. I have to say I have the same issues with it that I do with Facebook- they take my information and make it available to anyone they want to without consideration of my feelings. Personally, I miss letter writing, because then you could stay in touch with people you were friends with and not have your entire conversation plastered all over a social media webpage that automatically shares all of your private information with search engines and complete strangers. I know there are ways to set your profiles to "private" but that shouldn't be something you can DO, it should be something that happens AUTO-FREAKING-MATICALLY, and only if you WANT to share things should you have to go in and make changes to the defaults that some jerk programmer in Silicon Valley thought would be acceptable to everyone.
I know this isn't necessarily about diabetes, but here's the thing: if I want to share this blog with people (which I do, even complete strangers, because I think it might be helpful to people) via Google+, I HAVE to link it to my personal account, which means people I don't freaking know now have access to "learning more about me than I may be willing to share." Because of this, you will learn almost nothing about me from my Google+ profile, even if you're my husband, because I have almost every single solitary thing that I can set to "Only Me" set to "Only Me." And that makes social media basically a giant steaming pile of waste of time.
I spend more time changing the defaults than I do actually posting stuff.
What I share on this blog I share because I want to, not because the privacy deficient morons at Facebook changed the privacy settings yet again so that things we thought we were posting in private are now searchable by Yahoo. And yes, I know that this blog makes me sound like a ranting lunatic who wears aluminum foil hats to keep the government out of her head (I don't, mostly because they could get around that if they wanted to), but the fact of the matter is, people, that what you put on the Internet, even in private, is FOREVER. Those Tweets you deleted? Yeah, anyone who gets your tweets sent to their phone still has them. The Library of Congress has been collecting Tweets for years. Some server somewhere has a cached memory which your tweet still resides on, and is still searchable by any search engine. Armageddon will happen, cities will be leveled, the human race will be destroyed, and you know what? Those Tweets you deleted will still be there, and the cockroaches will be reading them while they eat Twinkies under the radioactive sky.
Now back and more resilient than ever.
Where am I going with this? It's kind of a rant, and I think I lost the point... oh yeah.
So now my blog is connected to my Google+ account, because frankly Google dominates everything and eventually we'll be calling them our lords and masters anyway. Why do I use them, then, you ask? Because I'm the only one who misses letter writing, and I see the positives in what social media can offer us, if used responsibly. I will say that at least Google makes it fairly simple to opt out of sharing things you don't want to share, whereas Facebook is run by the NSA or something considering how little they care for user privacy.
Shit, did I just get political? I'll shut up now.
Long story short, if you go to tag me in a picture or add me to an event or say we work together/went to school together on any social media, do not be surprised if I UNtag myself, say I'm not going even though I am, and refuse every single request to acknowledge that I do what I do for a living where I do it or that I matriculated from any one institution. Also, don't trust that birthday app that tells you when my birthday is, because 1) I don't allow them access to my profile and 2) Facebook doesn't know when my birthday is. Yes, I am the crazy lady. But when you've been pricking your fingers for over thirty years, you have tasted insulin as your blood stream shoots it past your taste buds because you injected it in the oh-so-wrong place, and you have spent more hours than you can count worrying about your physical health like I have, you're entitled to the crazy. At least a little.
Or in the case of Freddie Mercury, as crazy as you want.
It's National Novel Writing Month, and I've been working on my diabetes novel. I wish I could say it's going well, but it's going slow, and that's not really the same thing. Having my lap top crap out on me didn't help...and neither did the fact that I logged into Star Wars: The Old Republic today and started to play that again. And "Thor 2" came out, so we'll likely go see that tomorrow...
I may never get this novel done.
It's not that I don't want to get this written. I do. It's just I know that once it's written no one's gonna read it. The idea for it started last year when I did a blog for the YALSA Hub and the idea has been germinating in the back of my head. I figured it would be a good thing to write a book for teens with a diabetic main character...one that wasn't too preachy, or had the sole focus of the book be diabetes. Should be easy-peasy for me...right?
Didn't happen last year.
Is coming along a little slower than I'd like this year.
My method of writing isn't the NaNoWriMo method. 50K words in a month? No time for editing, no time for finesse...just push out the words and let them fall where they may. Oh my lord it's the scariest thing ever. I'm totally stressin'.
So, here's a video of Tom Hiddleston showing why Loki is better than Thor. I need to get back to writing.
