I may have had diabetes for more than three-quarters of my life, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t make silly mistakes with it from time to time.

But I must admit, I still surprise myself on the occasions that I make a slip-up that’s incredibly stupid…and incredibly avoidable.

For example, one morning my Dexcom started alarming, and I thought that I knew exactly why it was sounding off: It sounded like the signature triple buzz of a high alert, so I did what anyone else would do when it’s very early in the morning and not quite time to wake up yet…I ignored it and fell back asleep.

But true to typical Dexcom alarm nature, my sleep was interrupted again by continued buzzing. Rather than pick up my phone to dismiss the alarm, though, I decided to bolus for a couple of units without ever verifying that I was, indeed, high.

Yikes. Can you say rookie mistake?

Fortunately for me, I really did have to get up and start my day within a couple of hours of taking that bolus. Thank goodness I did, because when I got up, I immediately glanced at my Dexcom and was taken aback to see that my blood sugar had not ticked up past my high threshold in the last several hours…it had actually lost reception completely.

Ahh…so that’s what it was trying to tell me. Oops.

Furthermore, my blood sugar was inching below my low threshold – the two units I’d carelessly taken had kicked in, and all I could feel in that moment was relief that I hadn’t taken more insulin.

This story could’ve had a very different ending. I’m still kind of in disbelief that I didn’t just roll over to check my Dexcom and confirm the reason why it was alarming in the first place. I mean, that’s what I do any other time it goes off, regardless of the time of day. I suppose that I was just overly confident in what kind of alarm it was. Coupled with the fact that I was barely awake when this all went down, then it really isn’t all that crazy that this happened…but it doesn’t make me feel any less dumb.

Lesson learned. When it comes to Dexcom alarms, always check them, and never make assumptions.