We just put our 11 year old on the dexcom cgm last week and honestly I’m not sure how useful it is. At this point the numbers have been off enough 20 or 30 points at times that I still have her check her sugar. Although it’s comforting for me to have an extra safe guard at night, I’m not sure it’s worth the pain she goes thru putting it on. I would like to ask other parents out there what their experiences or major benefit they see?
Thanks
Russ
We couldn't imagine being without a CGM now. There are, however, a lot of small factors that take a bit of time to get used to. As far as precision is concerned, in practice you can expect something around +/- 20 points when below 80 and +/- 20% when above. There is also a 15-20 minutes lag which means that if he/she is climbing or rising fast, the CGM may be even a bit more "off". At first, I would suggest relying on it for trends and analysis (what does that meal do, what is the impact of that exercise) and alerts that you might have otherwise missed (see a steep climb and being able to correct it before it goes too high). Then, as you get used to it, you'll be able to be get much more value out of it. You'll know when you can trust it and when you can not.
My son has been on Dexcom for about 9 months and love it. Yes the data is never quite 100% accurate, but the predictive alarms have been a Godsend. And the trending gives us information that we were never privy to before - a window into her pancreas so to speak. We sleep better at night and know when to get up and have been able to catch both highs and lows in the middle of the night and correct them by morning. In terms of pain of insertion, we use a numbing cream that was prescribed by his Endo and then its a breeze. Honestly when he isn't wearing it, we feel in the dark.
Back to back fingerstick meter readings can also vary by 30 points so what you are also seeing is that bg monitoring whether with a meter or a Cgms in general is not a precise thing. It’s all a ballpark but it’s the best we have right now in terms of accuracy.
I agree with the previous poster take a few weeks to watch the trends and see how things go. When I first started using CGMS it took me a few months to figure out how to use the numbers effectively when insulin still takes 3 hours to work.
Thank you all very much for the comments. They were all helpful. Sometimes its easy to look past the positives and focus on the negatives.