OK, who’s actually tried it yet? I am very fortunate to have tried all three: the DexCom 7, the Minimed Guardian RT, and now the Navigator.
Please see my first review installment and comparison of the three at
http://www.diabetesmine.com/2008/07/human-guinea-pigs-how-to-tell-if-your-insulin-still-works.html
You can post questions over there, too.
Cheers,
Amy
I have a FreeStyle Navigator. Only used 4 of the sensors because of major reactions from the adhesive. The first two just made my skin itchy. Annoying but I was able to deal with it. However I had to remove the 3rd and 4th sensors only after a few hours because of itching and burning. I am talking about major reactions here, something akin to a chemical burn with blisters and such, took 2 weeks to heal. I have to find another way of wearing the sensors. I use OmniPods without any problema but there adhesive padding is more cloth like the plastic like. I was thinking of putting down an adhesive pad that I do not react to then laying the sensor with it’s adhesive pad on top of it. Any thoughts on this?
Also with the first two I had major differences with what the Navigator CG said and what my BG was from either a stand alone meter or what the Navigator Blood Test actually were. Also had many False high and false low alarms. But the worst scenario was the 3 low events that I had and the Navigator gave no low warning. In fact my BG 48, 52 and 59 taken with blood test and the Navigator CGM said with was 90, 130 and 85 respectively. This was not acceptable to me, I spoke to Abbott, spent hours on the phone with them. They are trained just like most customer service clerks working from the true or false manual. Did you do this and what does this say and what does that say, what is the lot number of this and what is the registration number of that, and so on and so on. The question I had for them was “Are these extreme differences between what the Navigator CGM BGs says and what my manual blood tests say normal and if not what can be done about it?”, never really got an answer.
So did I just waste $1500.00 for nothing? I don’t know. I will keep trying once I figure out a way around the skin reaction. I will call Abbott again when I think I have enough patience to deal with them and their routine 50 questions before you can even ask them a question. Any advice that anyone here can give would be greatly appreciated.
No way! I totally had skin reactions, too.
See this:
http://www.diabetesmine.com/2008/07/medical-adhesives-my-allergy-hell.html
Wow, I guess this is pretty common. Too bad, 'cause otherwise I quite liked this one.