Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Lulled Into Forgetting.

Maybe it's because I see and work with so many numbers throughout any given day. Perhaps it's because I'm on Twitter so often that my brain patterns have started to mimic the news feed - constantly updates, with information that's only seconds old getting shoved out to make way for the new. Maybe it's because I'm getting old...ish.

Whatever the reason, my short term memory is totally biffing it sometimes.

Thank goodness my One Touch meter doesn't have this problem, because I often forget the number it spits out immediately after it's off the screen and have to wake it back up to check what the result was. The same goes for the bolus history on my insulin pump. Asking me to recall when I took that last correction dose is like asking me what I ate for lunch on Thursday, two weeks ago. (Which was probably a salad and some greek yogurt - but that's because I eat that pretty much every day. You get my point.)

How the heck did I do this before having a meter with a history on it? Or before an insulin pump?

Oh, right. I actually wrote things down then. And I did a whole lot of guessing - educated and otherwise.

I forget about downloading my CGM and pump data for weeks at a time. When I was new to the Dexcom party, I was diligent about downloading everything once a week. The data was a fascinating new window I could look at my body through. And it's still that, most of the time - but other times, it's just that really annoying reminder of how much I sucked at guessing how many carbs that pasta/sandwich/espresso drink had. Those brightly colored CGM graphs and pie charts have lost some of their initial sparkle, and I don't get as excited about seeing them.

And I feel like a complete moron when the meter battery finally dies - because even though it reminded me before every single blood test I had done for the past eight days, I'd forgotten about the warning by the time each test was completed.

I appreciate that technology is helping me with the remembering - but it also is a glaring indication of how dependent I am on it in order to not do the forgetting.

No comments:

Post a Comment