Real User Stories
What My First CGM Sensor Taught Me About Managing Diabetes
Published: Sep. 17, 2026
5 min read
The content in this article should not be taken as medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider regarding your individual health needs.
For those who have met Sandy Struss, her joyful approach to life is hard to miss. A Senior Marketing Manager at Dexcom Canada, she is known for her warmth, honesty, and enthusiasm, qualities that extend to her experience of living with type 1 diabetes since her diagnosis at age 17. Like many living with diabetes, Sandy had to rely on awful fingerpricks and educated guesses for decades to manage her diabetes, doing her best without ever having a clear picture of what was happening between fingerstick readings.
It wasn’t until she first started using continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) that that picture came into focus, and with it a flood of information that was, at times, overwhelming. But true to her growth mindset, Sandy came to see that data visibility not as a judgment but rather as an opportunity to learn, adapt, and approach her own diabetes with more grace and compassion. It’s a way of thinking she now proudly calls the “CGM mentality”.
Here’s how Sandy remembers the first time she put on a CGM sensor and what she’s learned along the way.
Seeing glucose in real time for the first time
The first time I ever put on a sensor, I was having lunch at the office with my colleagues. I had a sandwich and some tomato soup that had been brought in by catering. I took what I thought was the right amount of insulin for the bread and made my best guess for the soup. Then, I watched my glucose go up, and up, and up over the next 30 minutes.
I started to feel angry and wondered why my insulin wasn’t working, so I took some more. Thirty minutes later, I was still high. So I added even more. It’s called “rage bolusing” for a reason!
An hour later came the crash. My glucose was trending down with double arrows, and I had to eat again to cover all the insulin now coursing through my body. I vividly remember having a colossal meltdown in front of everyone, feeling utterly defeated and frustrated beyond measure.
A million thoughts were racing through my mind. How am I ever going to get a handle on this thing? If this roller coaster is happening routinely, it is only a question of time before complications set in. Even after all these years of living with diabetes, how is this still the reality? I’m smart. I take my insulin. I don’t rebel or do foolish things. So why are my levels all over the place?
I always thought I was doing just fine, but that day I got really scared.
I started to question whether wearing a CGM was even worth it. Before wearing a glucose sensor, I had spent 25 years trying to navigate an ever-changing condition with only finger pokes and no idea what was happening between them. I knew I couldn’t fix what I couldn’t see, which was the whole point of wearing a CGM. Ignorance is not bliss, but being faced with the reality of what’s actually happening can be hard to accept. We are all only just human, after all, and it can be hard to resist the temptation to base our self-worth on what we see on that CGM screen.
"I knew I couldn’t fix what I couldn’t see, which was the whole point of wearing a CGM."
Advice I wish I had when starting CGM
1. Don’t fixate on the numbers
When you first start using a CGM system, it’s natural to feel curious and to keep checking the display to see where your glucose levels are at: How about now? And now? Now?
It’s normal to hyper-fixate on data you’ve never seen before, and to want to do something about it. But the best thing you can do is resist the temptation to change anything right away and give yourself at least a week to simply observe what’s happening. Watch and learn. Glucose patterns take time to emerge. And any meaningful changes should be made with guidance from your healthcare provider.
2. Make one change at a time
Once you see a pattern, it’s important that you focus on adjusting just one thing at a time. That might mean changing the timing of when you take your insulin. You might want to add a walk after your lunch or dinner. You may decide to cut certain things out of your diet. Your doctor may prescribe a different insulin or a new medication.
It’s tempting to want to fix everything at once, but you need to be patient. Finding what works for you to keep your glucose levels in range as often as you can is essentially a science experiment. It requires watching, learning, consistency, patience, and most importantly, time.
3. Accept that managing diabetes is an imperfect science
Diabetes is complicated and very individualized. And only those who live with diabetes can truly grasp the complexities of trying to balance food, insulin, activity, and everything else life throws at you.
If you take insulin, one of the things CGM teaches you is that insulin takes time to work. For example, while it may be called “rapid-acting” insulin, it can take as long as 20 to 30 minutes to start working, then peaks in its effectiveness in an hour or two, and then slowly tapers off over another couple of hours. As much as we wish there was a simple formula for managing diabetes, it is not straightforward, and no two bodies are the same.
"As much as we wish there was a simple formula for managing diabetes, it is not straightforward, and no two bodies are the same."
Matching food with insulin dosage is one of the most challenging parts of diabetes management. Counting grams of carbohydrates, or carbs, is just one piece of the puzzle. How quickly (or not) those carbs break down into glucose in your bloodstream depends on the type of carbs, and also what you eat with them as part of a meal that may slow down absorption into the bloodstream. Whether or not you take insulin also plays a role. CGM can show you how different kinds of foods and food combinations impact your glucose levels, and that’s how you can learn what works best for you.
4. Take it one day at a time, and track your progress
Let’s be honest: managing the function of your pancreas is hard.
You can only do the best you can with what you know at the time. Once you know better, you do better. And your body changes every day. Hormones, stress, illness, inflammation, menstruation, exercise, heat and hydration all impact glucose levels. CGM can help you understand how these different factors impact your diabetes, and experimenting to see what works for you takes time.
Consistent actions over time lead to progress. One of the biggest gifts of CGM is seeing progress and having something to celebrate and be proud of. Instead of waiting every three months for bloodwork and getting your A1C “report card”, you can track patterns over days and weeks and see your “time in range” data week over week, giving you a more holistic picture of your diabetes management. This arms you with incredible insights, which you can work on with your healthcare provider to set realistic and meaningful goals to stay as healthy as possible.
5. Go easy on yourself
The mental game is as hard as the numbers game. There are so many factors that influence glucose levels beyond just food and insulin, and it’s impossible to know exactly what may cause a glucose spike from one day to the next. The most important thing to remember is not to judge or be hard on yourself if you are not in your target range 100 percent of the time.
Managing a chronic illness is a daily challenge, and the reality is, there will be good days and not-so-good days. Coming to terms with that can be a challenge, and finding the courage and resiliency to “keep on keeping on” every day is hard work that often goes unseen, but it still matters.
Living with diabetes is about so much more than just managing “the numbers”. In the diabetes community, there’s a symbol that captures this idea better than words:
Remember, your glucose numbers on your CGM are just numbers. Data. They don’t say anything about who you are as a person. You are not “good” or “bad” because of an A1C result. It is just information. What you choose to do with that information is in your control and in partnership with your healthcare provider. The story you tell yourself about what that means is just as important.
The lesson I keep coming back to
One of the great misconceptions about diabetes is that at some point, you’ve just got it “handled”. Even when things are going well, I remind myself that life ebbs and flows, things change, and the job of managing a broken pancreas is never truly “done”. Accepting that reality takes incredible depth and resilience. So does the willingness to keep learning, adapting, and showing up for yourself every day. Managing a chronic illness is not for the faint of heart.
A diabetes diagnosis is life-changing, but I’ve found that as I learn more about my body and discover what strategies work for me, I move through the world with greater confidence and pride in who I’ve become in the face of it. Technology has come a really long way over the past few decades, making diabetes easier to navigate. The introduction of CGM has brought visibility to what was once invisible. And that visibility has given me perspective and the knowledge to keep fine-tuning my diabetes management while responding to what each new day brings. I can now let go of chasing perfect numbers and instead, use data to learn and adapt, not judge.
If you're thinking about trying a CGM for managing diabetes, my advice is simple: be curious, be patient, and be kind to yourself. The data may not always tell you what you want to see, but it can teach you things you could never learn otherwise.
The goal isn't perfection. It's learning, adapting, and giving yourself grace along the way. Some days are harder than others, and that's okay.
One day at a time is enough. In fact, it's exactly how all of us do this. 💚
-Sandy Struss
Living with type 1 diabetes since 1989 and still going strong!