Attempting Another Libre Sensor

So yesterday I put another Freestyle Libre sensor in.  

Earlier in the week I spoke with my diabetes nurse.  She in turn had talked to the Freestyle Libre rep, who had recommend I try spraying Flovent on my skin prior to inserting the sensor.  I'd never heard of Flovent before, but it is primarily used as an inhaler for people with asthma.  Apparently it is sometimes recommended for people who have skin reactions to the adhesive their insulin pump infusion sets.

When I went to insert my sensor yesterday, I wanted to see what people said about using Flovent first.  I honestly couldn't find much more than this Tu Diabetes forum post, which mentioned using it, and this FU Diabetes post that recommends cleaning the site then spraying the Flovent on.  I couldn't 100% remember what my Nurse said to do (beyond letting the Flovent dry completely and that it will leave a white film on my arm), so I went with the advice from the FU Diabetes post.  So now I'm over 18 hours with the new sensor on and so far my skin hasn't had that telltale itchy feeling that it's been getting when it starts to react, so hopefully this is going to work! (I am a bit concerned though that the sensor readings have been really out so far, but hopefully that will fix itself within the next day or so).

Oh, the rep also recommended I get vet tape to affix the sensor in place on my arm for activity.  It's supposed to be really cheap and easily available at a pet store.  So I went to a pet store last night and they didn't have it. :/

The girl did recommend getting hockey tape though, saying it is the same thing.  I'll have to do a bit more research on it before I try that (and I'm going to try phoning around to all the other pet stores to see if they have any).

Wrong Size Insulin Pump Tubing :(

I am so sad.  I normally buy the 43 inch tubing.  This time I accidentally bought a box of 18 inch tubing (plus shorter needles).  It's fine through most of my day, but the tubing is way too short for sleeping and other things.  :(

I need to suck it up until the box is done, but I'm so sad about this.  Diabetes Express (who I usually order my supplies from) changed their ordering page so I didn't notice or change all the options.  I'll have to be way more careful during my next order.

Weight Update for Sept 27

I feel like I've been eating absolutely horribly over the last week so I was a bit afraid to see what the scale had to tell me:

weight: 205.2 lbs
fat percentage: 43.7%
hydration: 38.7%
muscle: 27.7%
bone: 10.8%
cal: 2318

That was a pleasant surprise: nothing changed from last week. :)

Aftermath of the Tegaderm Fail

So my arm was getting a bit itchy where the last Freestyle Libre Sensor was (the one from Tegaderm Fail). Sure enough, it's reacting too. The bottom circle patch is from the original rash (it's mostly healed now but still not 100%) and the top one is what happened after having the sensor with tegaderm on my arm for only 12 hours.

In light of this, I'm thinking I'm going to be letting everything heal before attempting anything else (well unless my diabetes team tells me otherwise - I have to phone them tomorrow to talk about this).

Tegaderm Fail

Well, I had a major failure with the tegaderm plan: after walking to work, the tegaderm the sensor was on fell off.  I think that was partially because everything was too high on my arm (it seemed to be in a spot where the muscle moves a lot).  On the plus side, even though the Freestyle Libre sensor was only on my arm for maybe half a day, the skin underneath seemed fine. So I think the next thing I'm going to try is putting the sensor on a piece of tegaderm then cutting the tegaderm so it's a little bigger than the sensor.  I'll secure it all with a second piece of tegaderm over top (with a hole punched for the top of the sensor..

I'm going to wait to try this though until I hear back from my diabetes nurse; I emailed her about this plan last night and want to see what she says.

Weight Update for Sept 19

I decided to weigh myself today since I will be getting up too early to weigh myself tomorrow:

weight: 205.2 lbs
fat percentage: 43.8%
hydration: 38.6%
muscle: 27.7%
bone: 10.8%
cal: 2318

I've eaten like crap all weekend (way too many chips, which also made my glucose go way too high) so I was glad to see I mitigated the damage.  I'm happy to say that most of the chips are gone and I'm trying to get back to eating more normally (although I'm still struggling with that a bit: today there was a meeting at work and I ate two donuts.  Not the smartest plan in the world, but I kept them in my calorie allotment for the day so it should be okay).  I have to get through tomorrow (which is going to be a day long eating fest I think: it's lots of meetings at work) then hopefully it'll be smooth sailing from there.

Looking Down on My Arm

Here it is under the light of day. I think this is the worst rash I've had yet. It looks the worst right around the edges too so I wonder if my skin was reacting to the Skintac too?

More Arm Troubles

Well I pulled another Freestyle Libre sensor off today.

I noticed after the first day or two of putting this sensor in with Skintac that my arm was itching. I was hoping that it would be okay. Well a few days ago part of the sensor came off my arm. The skin underneath looked a little red but I was hopeful it would be okay. I tried putting a bit more Skintac onto it to hold it down; when that didn't work I put a bandaid to help (I bought a new box of them specifically for things like this!)

Earlier today, the other side started falling off. There was also some dried gooey yellowish stuff on the edges of the sensor adhesive. I figured that might be dried up Skintac (I've never used it before so I have no idea what it should do/look like) and wasn't too worried. I put a second bandaid on to hold it down. 

From there, things deteriorated quickly. The sensor stopped working - it told me I was Lo when I very clearly wasn't (blood glucose at the time was 8.0 mmol/L). This sensor hasn't been super accurate (it's been about 1-2 mmol/L off all the way along), but I knew this wasn't right. Also the new bandaid suddenly had a wet spot on it; the goo was actively coming from my arm (not dried Skintac). So I pulled it off and sure enough, my arm was disgusting underneath. I'm really glad I pulled everything off when I did; who knows what it would have looked like if I'd left it on for another 6 days.

So now I have a new plan: I'm going to try using Tegaderm as a barrier between my arm and the sensor. I used a hole punch to punch a hole through the tegaderm for the needle; I really hope I lined it up correctly (you can see some lines I drew on the Tegaderm as I tried to line everything up). I'm hoping this works since the problem last time seemed to be from the Libre adhesive, not the Tegaderm. 

As to my other arm, I've cleaned it up as best as I can (it really stings when I touch it right now) and put some cortisol on it to help it heal. Hopefully it will feel better soon!!!

Skin-Tac Arrived

I mentioned that I ordered Skin Tac last week after my skin reacted to my Freestyle Libre sensors.  The Skin-Tac arrived on Monday, so that night I put another sensor in.  I had no idea how I was going to get the Skin-Tac on properly so I watched this video by Michelle Lord:

I attempted to make the donut like she suggested but I don't think I did the greatest job; I'm a bit worried that I didn't get a good enough layer of Skin-Tac on my skin because after a few days of wearing the sensor my skin started getting itchy underneath it.  But we'll see what my skin looks like when this sensor comes off!

Weight Update for Sept 13

Well I've been off from work all week.  I've had some pretty active days (on Wednesday I walked 50 minutes in the afternoon, then another hour later in the day).  But I also haven't been eating the best (I've been hanging out with friends and family which seems to inevitably mean food).  So here are my numbers from yesterday:

weight: 207.0 lbs
fat percentage: 44.3%
hydration: 38.2%
muscle: 27.4%
bone: 10.7%
cal: 2328

I weighed myself this morning too just to see if there was a difference but the numbers were really similar so I didn't even bother to write them down.  

Weight Update for Sept 6 and Sept 7

I weighed myself yesterday.  Unfortunately it was the tail end of my period, so my weight was still a bit higher than normal:

weight: 207.8 lbs
fat percentage: 45.9%
hydration: 37.1%
muscle: 26.6%
bone: 10.7%
cal: 2333

Now that my period is done, I weighed myself again today (even though I knew i should probably wait a few more days). Here's what I got:

weight: 205.0 lbs
fat percentage: 44.0%
hydration: 38.5%
muscle: 27.6%
bone: 10.8%
cal: 2317

In other news, my skin is an absolute mess right now.  I thought I had broken out in hives, but it turns out I have a crap load of bug bites all over my legs!  So now I'm dealing with that on top of the rashes from my last few Libre sensors.

In terms of the rashes, they are healing.  When I went to the doctor about the bug bites, she gave me a prescription cortisol cream to help clear them up.  I haven't put a new sensor in yet because I wanted to wait for my arms to heal up.  I'm also waiting to get some Skin-Tac, which I'm going to try using.  I've heard that the Skin-Tac works as a barrier between skin and the adhesive, so I'm hopeful that will help!

Oh, and a random extra tidbit I got from my diabetes nurse: you can't cover the Libre sensor completely - you have to poke a hole over top of it so air can get through.

The hole in the tegaderm needs to match up with the hole on top of the sensor.

I was rather annoyed with Abbott (the company who makes the Freestyle Libre) for not saying anything about this to me when they were recommending I try using tegaderm.  But oh well, at least I know now.  What I don't know is if poking the hole in the tegaderm will help stop my skin from breaking out or not.  But at least I now know how to properly cover a Libre sensor.

Skin Reaction to Libre with Tegaderm

So a few days ago, the sensor I had covered with tegaderm came to an end.  I pulled the sensor off and found my skin underneath was a gross, scaly mess!

The red rash was exactly the outline of my sensor.  I've never experienced anything like this before with the Libre, so it must have something to do with the tegaderm holding it down (but it's not a reaction to the tegaderm because the skin surrounding where the sensor was is totally fine; plus I've used tegaderm in the past to secure sensors like in this pic and never had a problem with it).

I went looking online to see if other people have experienced skin problems/allergies with the Libre.  On this thread that I found, it sounds like quite a few people do (and tim2000s (reply #7) even mentions that the reaction seems to be worse when the sensor is held down by something like tegaderm).

I should note that I almost lost a sensor a few months ago because I was gardening for about five hours and my arm got too sweaty for the adhesive to stick properly.  I couldn't find tegaderm at that time, but I put a regular band-aid over the sensor to hold it in place and didn't have a reaction.

So now that I've had this reaction, I'm going to try just using tegaderm while I'm swimming; I'll make sure to take the tegaderm off as soon as I'm dried off. Hopefully that will help me avoid a skin reaction again!