This extra chapter was cut from The Journey Back to keep the book focused. The physical paperback is $12.95 with free U.S. shipping. Any $17 PDF-and-audiobook bundle is a separate optional digital add-on, not the price of the paperback.
By the time the Dexcom arrived, I was already turning my recovery into a dashboard.
I had owned a blood-pressure monitor before the hospital, so I could begin checking my pressure as soon as I came home.
I wrote every reading down.
Alen had also given me an Oura Ring for my birthday a couple of years earlier. I wore it constantly. The ring tracked information such as my heart rate, resting heart rate, sleep, and activity.
Then there was Carb Manager, where I recorded what I ate.
Then the glucose meter arrived.
I had blood pressure on one page.
Heart rate and sleep on another.
Food in the application.
Blood glucose on the meter.
The numbers gave Alex and me something concrete to watch.
I remember the blood-pressure readings coming down during the first week after the hospital while I was taking the medication I had been prescribed.
Whatever the precise sequence was, I could see movement.
That mattered.
The medication was doing its work. My routine was changing. The numbers that had once felt like an emergency were beginning to move in a direction that gave me hope.
Alex and I became fascinated by every reading.
When I pricked my finger, we would hover over the glucose meter like two teenage boys who had discovered their first Playboy.
The number would appear.
We would write it down.
Then we would Google it.
We would open the food log and ask what I had eaten.
We would compare the reading with the meal, the time, and anything else we thought might explain it.
We were not conducting sophisticated medical research.
We were a father and son trying to understand a body that had frightened both of us.
The process was exciting because every reading seemed to contain a clue.
It was also exhausting because each clue required another needle.
That was why the continuous glucose monitor appealed to me.
A CGM could collect readings throughout the day without requiring me to keep puncturing the same sore fingers.
I ordered a Dexcom.
Then it arrived.
The device sat on my desk while I looked at it.
I had already watched videos showing how to apply it. I knew the applicator was designed to perform the insertion quickly. I knew people did this every day. I knew the part remaining under the skin was a tiny sensor filament rather than the large needle my imagination had created.
None of that stopped the cold sweat.
I have a genuine needle phobia.
Pricking my finger had required almost everything I could summon. The lancet was small, and I could see exactly what it was going to do. The Dexcom applicator looked like a device capable of doing something larger before I had time to change my mind.
This happened over Thanksgiving weekend, only about two weeks after the November 12 hospital crisis.
I was with Brandy.
I did not want her watching me apply it because I knew I might whine like a baby.
So I went into another room.
I prepared my arm exactly the way the instructions and videos had shown me.
I positioned the applicator.
Then I triggered it.
The sensor was on.
I walked back out and announced, ‘Honey, look. I did it. I did it.’
I wanted the moment to look triumphant.
My body told the truth.
I was pale.
Brandy looked at me and asked, ‘Are you okay?’
I told her I was fine.
She asked whether I wanted some water.
I had successfully attached the device, but I looked as if the device had successfully defeated me.
Still, it was on my arm.
I had done it.
Then it would not register.
After all that fear, the sensor did not begin producing the readings I expected.
I read that the device was a one-shot application. I could not simply peel it off, reposition it, and try again. Once the applicator had fired and the adhesive had attached, the attempt was committed.
I contacted Dexcom support.
Because it was Thanksgiving weekend, I did not expect an immediate answer. I assumed somebody might respond by Monday. I later learned the company offered extensive technical-support availability, but at that moment I was simply relieved when someone helped me.
Their customer service was stunning.
The representative asked for information about the device and what had happened. After reviewing the situation, the explanation was that the sensor had not inserted or initialized correctly. There could have been several possible reasons, and I do not want to state a technical cause I cannot verify.
The important part was that Dexcom replaced it.
I was genuinely excited.
The first attempt had failed, but I no longer had to wonder whether I could survive pressing the applicator button. I had done that once. I could do it again.
I told myself I would become accustomed to wearing the sensor.
I used an overpatch to help keep it attached. I wanted the Dexcom to become part of my routine, another device feeding information into the dashboard I was constructing around my body.
For a while, that felt possible.
Then my arm began itching.
At first, itching did not seem like a major problem. Adhesive was attached to my skin. I was wearing something unfamiliar. I thought perhaps I only needed to tolerate it.
The itching continued.
When I returned to Charlotte, I told Alex, ‘This thing is itching.’
I began peeling away the overpatch.
The skin underneath was red.
Then I looked at the area beneath the Dexcom adhesive.
That skin was red too.
The redness was not simply at one edge where the patch had rubbed.
I decided the sensor had to come off.
Removing it created a new version of the needle fear.
I was terrified that the sensor or what I imagined as a needle might break away and remain inside my arm. I peeled slowly, fighting the adhesive while my mind supplied every possible thing that could go wrong.
Eventually, it released.
Underneath was a rash.
I concluded that I was reacting to one or both adhesives, either the Dexcom patch, the overpatch, or both. I searched online and discovered that some CGM users experience skin irritation or sensitivity from adhesive products.
I applied what I remember as a Benadryl product, covered the area, and watched it. The redness took approximately a day or two to settle down. That was my response at the time, not a recommendation for someone else to treat a device reaction without medical guidance.
The rash changed the decision for me.
I had already overcome the insertion fear.
The adhesive gave me a reason to fear leaving the device on.
I read that there were possible workarounds involving site preparation, barrier films, different patches, and conversations with a healthcare professional. Some people find ways to continue wearing a CGM despite skin sensitivity.
I was not ready to experiment again.
I thought, ‘I will go back to pricking my finger.’
That statement captures how strongly the rash affected me.
Only days earlier, I had bruised a fingertip by testing repeatedly. I had ordered the CGM because I wanted relief from finger sticks. Now the adhesive reaction made the lancet feel like the safer and more predictable discomfort.
I chose the pain I understood.
A finger stick stung for a moment and gave me a number.
The patch itched continuously, hid what was happening underneath, and made me wonder whether my skin was becoming more irritated every hour I left it attached.
So I stopped using the Dexcom.
I eventually gave the unused sensors to a friend with diabetes who was still checking glucose through finger sticks. I did not want something expensive and potentially useful to sit unused when someone I knew might benefit from it.
My intention was to avoid waste, not to recommend that people exchange medical devices informally.
The experience did not end my interest in data.
It changed the tool I was willing to use.
I continued checking my blood pressure.
I continued wearing the Oura Ring.
I continued logging food in Carb Manager.
I returned to finger sticks when I wanted glucose information.
I was learning that no device solved everything.
The blood-pressure cuff could show a reading but could not explain every change.
The Oura Ring could show trends but could not diagnose what had happened to me.
Carb Manager could estimate nutrition but could not tell me exactly how my body would respond.
The glucose meter could produce a number but required blood and technique.
The Dexcom could provide a stream of data but introduced cost, insertion fear, device failure, and skin irritation.
The dashboard was useful because each tool offered a different view.
It was dangerous if I treated any single tool as the entire truth.
That distinction became part of my journey back.
I wanted to measure everything because measurement reduced some of the helplessness I felt after the hospital.
Numbers gave me a way to see movement.
Blood pressure coming down.
Heart rate changing.
Sleep improving or worsening.
Glucose rising after one food and remaining steadier after another.
But measurement also had a cost.
Sometimes the cost was financial.
Sometimes it was a bruised finger.
Sometimes it was a rash shaped like an adhesive patch.
Sometimes it was the temptation to watch every movement so closely that the number became more important than the life I was trying to improve.
The first Dexcom never gave me the effortless certainty I imagined when I ordered it.
It gave me a failed sensor, remarkable customer service, a second confrontation with my needle phobia, and an angry red patch on my arm.
It also taught me something useful.
The goal was not to wear every device.
The goal was to gather enough reliable information to make better decisions with my medical team while still being able to live inside my own body.
For me, at that moment, that meant peeling off the Dexcom, treating the skin, picking up the lancet again, and continuing.
Want to see how I connected the dots?
I wrote The Journey Back to share my experience and explain the Four Metabolic Loads framework. The physical paperback is $12.95 with free U.S. shipping.
→ See The Journey Back Paperback ($12.95)
Educational only, not medical advice. Charles’s experience was alongside physician-supervised care and prescribed medication. Individual results vary. Talk to your doctor.