I woke up a few minutes before my alarm, and for a fleeting moment, everything felt right in the world. I stretched in bed, smiled at the peace, and thought, How lucky am I to have a few quiet moments to myself? Ah, yes, everything was good. (If the peaceful first sentence didn’t tip you off, calamity was definitely on deck.)
Wah! Wah! Wah! My Sugar Pixel (our CGM alarm system) exploded into full DEFCON panic mode, and I promptly rolled right out of bed in shock. Honestly, there should be an option for a gentle nudge and a whisper: “Hey friend, sorry to interrupt your peace, but your child’s glucose might be falling off a cliff.”
But no. Sirens. Panic. Floor. Wah! Wah! Wah! I picked myself up and checked the screen: 40 mg/dL. Double arrows down.
40 mg/dL. DOUBLE. ARROWS. DOWN. HOLY SH#T! (This blog is a little like Disney+—mostly PG, but sometimes we go PG-13 for dramatic effect. Ratings, am I right?)
Now, here’s the irony. On the one day Owen hits his lowest CGM reading in six months, I had zero low treatments by the bed. (Yes, we’re a two-diabetic household. Yes, our other kids know where the treatments are. Yes, this has happened before. No, I still haven’t learned.)
Parenting a kid with T1D is like being part detective, part EMT, and part stand-up comic—all before 7 a.m.
So I sprint to the kitchen like it’s a juicebox relay race, grab a cup of juice, a straw, and a few “WWWWs” (whatever weird waffle cookies were within reach), and dash back to Owen.
“Owen! Wake up!” He wakes up easily—bless him—and I hand him the juice. He starts drinking but spills juice all over himself and the bed. No big deal—it was the day to wash the sheets anyway.
As he gulps down the juice, I check his CGM graph: 150 mg/dL all night—thank you, Tandem Sleep Mode. You rock! But then, suddenly out of nowhere—BAM—a massive drop. Suspicious. Wait a second… was he sleeping on top of his sensor?
“Hold on, bud—let me check your blood sugar manually.” Here’s where instinct battles logic. When a CGM screams 40 mg/dL, every cell in your parenting body yells, “Feed him!” But if it’s a false low, and you over-treat, it’s insulin and regret city.
So I grab his meter. Quick fingerstick: 261 mg/dL. “Thanks a lot, Dad!” Owen groans. “Now I have to take insulin!”
He pulls out his iPhone and starts punching numbers into his bolus calculator. But then I pause. “Hey, bud… was that the same hand you spilled juice on?”
He looks at me. “Yeah…”
“Mind washing your hands real quick? Let’s check again.”
Cue dramatic sigh. “I’m not running to the bathroom,” he says. But he goes. Freshly washed fingerstick: 160 mg/dL—right around where his CGM had been before the nose-dive.
The Diagnosis: Sensor Pressure & Juice Fingers
Owen had been sleeping on his sensor, causing a “compression” or “pressure low”—a false CGM reading caused by physical pressure, not low blood sugar.
Remember, CGMs like Dexcom, FreeStyle Libre, and Medtronic don’t measure blood glucose directly. They measure glucose levels in the interstitial fluid (the fluid between your cells), which tends to lag behind blood glucose by 5–15 minutes.
The problem occurs when pressure—like from lying on the sensor reduces blood flow to the area and disrupts glucose movement. This can trick the sensor into thinking glucose levels are much lower than they are.
It’s not a sign that the sensor needs to be replaced—it’s just one of the limits of what we have to work with.
Then, we did a complete 180 (or was that a 360? Look, I never passed Geometry before coffee) when we tested his finger—the same one covered in orange juice—and got a falsely high reading.
When sugary liquid like juice is left on the fingertip and you do a fingerstick, the meter picks up sugar on the skin—not just the sugar in the blood. Again, nothing wrong—just another challenge of the tools we rely on.
In the end, we had two false readings—one scary low, one frustratingly high—each of which could have led to the wrong decision if we hadn’t looked a little deeper.
And Owen? He was fine. Back to bed.
Me? I needed a juice box of my own.
Lessons from the Juice-Sticky Trenches
This wasn’t bragging. (There’s very little in this world I can brag about, and this isn’t it.) I’ve missed these signs before. But after 40+ years with diabetes, you learn to spot some of the weird stuff.
Like how:
- CGMs can lie (not their fault—it’s just the data they have to work with).
- Juice on fingers is the enemy of accuracy.
- And parenting a kid with T1D is like being part detective, part EMT, and part stand-up comic—all before 7 a.m.
“Parenting a kid with T1D is like being part detective, part EMT, and part stand-up comic—all before 7 a.m.”
(Feel free to share that one. It’s free.)
Image Credits: Cartoons were designed at Google Gemini