D: Techie Style!

I have alluded to it a couple of times, but I will now say it.  I am a techie/gizmo/gadget girl.  I come by it honestly.  My momma taught me well.  I still have my original 32gig iPod (with the wheel), she works great and hasn't failed me yet.

I mentioned last week that I had ordered the new Telcare meter to eliminate the log battle with my son.  Well when I got home from parent/teacher conferences yesterday afternoon, it was sitting on my porch waiting for me.  So we are now managing D, totally Techie...I am sure none of my friends or family are surprised.  :)

DISCLAIMER: These are my own thoughts and opinions of this device.  These are my first initial thoughts and experiences, I will write a new post once we have had a chance to more thoroughly test this out in our rural market.  Please be mindful that we live in RURAL Alaska and as such have unique conditions that come into play with a product like this.

We ripped into the box and excitedly read the directions that said:  Plug in for 12 hours before first use.  I knew it had a rechargeable battery, but I was anxious to try it out.  We plugged it in and watched the screen light up. Ooh...pretty, shiny...fun.  :)

The directions also said when you first turn the Glucometer on, it can take up to 15 minutes to find a cellular provider.  Alrighty then.  The 3 of us took up positions around the breakfast bar and waited for the X that was on the cell bars to go away.  And waited, and waited, and waited.  We did some chores and checked again, nope.  Cooked dinner, nope.  NOW...I need to say, this was one of my fears given that we live in Alaska.  We don't have a lot of the cell providers that the lower 48 has.  My son suggested that we give it a rest and let it charge overnight before we started worrying too much.

When I got up this morning at 3:00 am to check Seth's BG, I had a hard time falling back to sleep.  Finally at 4:00, I came downstairs to check.  Still a big X.  Drats.

One of the issues that I have had, is the toll-free number does not work from Alaska.  Telcare is working on fixing this, but for now I have been given a cell phone number as well as the email address  of one of the managers, who has been AMAZING.  So I decided to email my manager friend and let her know of my cellular problems and to ask if she had any troubleshooting ideas.

I went back to bed and when I came back down at 6:30, I had an email waiting, telling me they had checked for cell phone providers up here who would be compatible and there were plenty.  She then asked me to bring the meter to work with me and she would call me on my lunch hour so we could troubleshoot.  When I went to put the meter in my bag, I glanced at it and saw that the X was GONE!  In it's place was the name of one of our local cell providers.  OHMYGOSH.  ITSWORKING!!!  I ran upstairs and tested my son again and we anxiously watched the tester:  DATA SENT SUCCESSFULLY. 

There is a computer portal you can access and a free app that I got for my iPhone to check the results, here are a few pictures of the iPhone app:

This is a snapshot of Seth's day.  Now...I am supposed to be able to check this on my phone, so I know what his tests are during the day.  I work in a concrete school and do not get great reception.  Even so, I was home for about an hour before my results updated this evening.  I will keep track of this as I also want to use this as a tool for when Seth stays the night at friends and for when he goes to Scout Encampment this summer.  I was able to access the portal from work, so I still knew what his numbers were, but I may not always be around a computer and I ALWAYS have my phone with me.

When you test, you attach an activity to the testing time, before breakfast, after breakfast, fasting, snacktime, etc.  We had a couple of oopsies today with Seth forgetting to attach the proper activity and you can't edit once the data has been sent.

On the iPhone app, you can also enter the insulin injections as well as the carbs consumed.  Which is nice.  But I am confused as to why those are not options on the tester, it wouldn't be that hard and then all the input would on the device.  It is a little bit of a pain to have to use the device and the iPhone to log (since we invested in this to do away with paper logs).  They have a forum and they ask for feedback, this is something I plan to bring up.

Tomorrow will be his first day at school with the monitor.  I'm anxious to see how it goes.  I'll keep you posted.  :)