Welcome to the fourth installment in my blog series, Living Well with Lee. Here, I talk about my journey living with chronic conditions — while still living my best life.
I believe that we all have more power over our conditions than ever before. I believe in taking control of my health and making the most out of each and every day. And I love sharing thoughts, tips, and tricks with people like you.
As my dad always said, “To do the job right, you need the right tool and you need to use it the right way.” It doesn’t matter what the job is. Painter. Plumber. Carpenter. Whatever. As far as I can tell, the same rules apply.
Take my doctors. They’re the best, but like everyone else, they’ll always be limited by the tools at their disposal. They see me a few times a year. They prescribe, advise, run some tests, then send me on my way. But digital health (I talk about that here) is changing that, and becoming one of the best tools in the chronic care toolkit. But it’s not just the tool. It’s how you use it. And in this case, it’s how I help them use it.
The BlueStar®* app has become part of my daily healthcare routine. Think of it like brushing your teeth, only digitally. I go onto the app a couple times a day.
There’s a place to record everything: what medications I’m taking, what I eat, what my blood glucose reads. And there are ways to do it automatically, too.
Those daily entries are important – for me and for my healthcare team. If I’m looking at the “Time of Day” graph and notice my blood glucose level starts to spike at certain hours, I can send a message to my doctor. Anytime, anywhere.
No more waiting for annual checkups.
No more endless games of phone tag.
And being diligent about logging my data pays off when it’s time for a visit to the doctor’s office. It pays off big time. After all, information leads to understanding, which leads to improvement.
That’s just what the BlueStar app’s SMART Visit Report™ helps me see: improvement. The SMART Visit Report summarizes all the data I’ve entered into BlueStar over the past thirty days.
Sharing this with my doctor before a visit helps us have a more meaningful conversation about my health. It keeps me informed about what’s going on with my chronic conditions.
Most importantly, it ensures that I’m a key player on the care team — what I like to call, my super care team.
