It's great when it works...

Or why I had a pretty sleepless night on Thursday night, why I was not at my best all through Friday (lack of sleep) and why I've had the sleepiest, least productive day for a while today.

I've been using a Libre 2 for monitoring my blood sugars for two and a half years now, and this is only the second failure of tech I've had in that time. 

The normal routine is new sensor goes on on Wednesday night, as it seems to work better when it's had a day to get used to me, the old sensor dies on Thursday evening, I activate new sensor, and it all goes off seamlessly.

It's also been edging later and later on Thursdays, I'd been meaning to bring it back to an earlier time by finishing the old sensor an hour or so early, but I do like to get the full value out of all my diabetes stuff. 

This time, the sensor just gave me messages saying Glucose reading unavailable right from the start. I wanted to go to bed, so did finger prick test with my trusty meter, and reminded myself I'd be fine. When I checked when I woke in the night if it had decided to work I encountered 37 messages telling me the sensor had failed and to apply a new one.

If I'd had any sense, but I rarely do at 3 in the morning, I'd've left it until the morning at least, but I grumpily applied the new sensor there and then, and remained awake for the hour's warm up to check this one worked.

This is also the first time I'd really struggled to remove any sensor and the fact the adhesive patch came right away from the sensor meant I had a glimpse into what's in it!

There's every likelihood I will have to be upgraded to the Libre 2+ at my consultant's appointment next week as these are being phased out but I I have to hold onto this defunct one until the company who makes them decide if they want it back to see if they can decide what went wrong. 

In the meantime, I now have to decide if I keep to what is now a well established routine, (Wednesday/Thursday) which will mean cutting this sensor short by a few hours in a fortnight, or accepting the change of night for now. The Libre 2+ lasts 15 days rather than the 14 days I am currently used to, so I've not got much longer with this routine anyway... 

No wonder I had a very sleepy day after all this thinking about tech!