Okay, I was finally able to convince my insurance company to cover the CGM - as most of you know, that’s no easy task. The Abbott labs diabetes educator came to my house to help me install my first sensor. The first five days were absolutely great — I was pretty much able to keep my blood sugars between 80 and 140 at all times because the system was accurately predicting future high and lows. However, the next two sensors I tried to install on the back of my upper arm, blood started gushing out. Thus, it hit that “tape stripe thing on the mount” and had to throw the sensor away. My third sensor, I tried to calibrate when I had a low blood sugar. Thus, the error message regarding “unable to calibrate” appeared and wasn’t able to ever get that sensor to work. Once, you get that error message you might as well throw the sensor in the garbage - it’s doomed. Fourth sensor, it was giving me inaccurate readings and the tape fell off. Fifth sensor, I was able to calibrate afte 10 hours. Then on the 12 hour calibrate, that error message appeared again that states, “unable to calibrate.” Furthermore, my sugar was fine. So, there was no reason why that error message appeared. Calling the helpdesk at Abbott labs is completely pointless because they just read the manual back to you and ask you, “if you needed to go to the hospital because their device doesn’t work.” Anybody else having these sorts of problems with the Abbott Freestyle Navigator? I am started to think with the inaccurate readings, time involved in stopping the blood upon inserting a new senor, all the beepings noises, carrying the stupid receiver around, having tape all over your body to keep the stupid thing on, this CGM is just a big waste of money. I am starting to think I am just better off buying more test strips and testing more often than having this device. If you use the device, tell me what you think and if you think I should send the stupid thing back.
Sorry to hear about this experience. I have never had a CGMS so I can’t give you any specific advice. BUT I know that many people who had trouble with CGMS were able to figure out a few tricks that really helped. I hope that you can get more ideas and figure this out!!!
Some of your issues are ones that I, and friends of mine, have experienced with the navi. There are some tricks that can help save you some of the frustration which I would be happy to share, but would prefer to do so via email. Feel free to shoot me a message at tim.powell67"at"gmail.com if you want.