Did you get your child a pump or CGM first? Did you go just pump? Do you just have a CGM and do MDI? Do you wish you had a CGM if you don’t? Have you had a CGM and found you didn’t use it? Did you go with Medtronic for the combo? Is carrying two receivers at the age of 7 when Dx’d less than six months ago a bit fast?. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, you all are always so helpful. 
We did the MM pump and cgms combo initially, due to the integrated cgms. I love MM pumps, but I do not love their cgms…it seemed high maintenance for us. We are now using the Dex and it suits us a lot better (but everyone is different). As far as your child handling 2 devices…it really depends. How much support do you have at school? I would probably prefer to have the teacher watch the Dex and perhaps the school nurse (or whoever is helping with insulin) hold the pdm. I would not want to give up my cgms. It seems like so much of our T1 care is a bit of a guessing game – How many carbs are in Grandma’s Apple Pie? How many carbs in that restaurant bread, etc, and then you add in growth hormones and puberty and sports activities - cgms allows us to respond quickly to changes.
We have one of our gilrs on the dexcom, and MDI’s. That combo seems to work the best for us. We all LOVE her dexcom! it has taken out a lot of the guess work, and made her diabetes much easier to handle. Before the dex she was averaging 12-15 finger pokes a day, and we still had awful numbers. we were also needing to get up a minimum of 2x a night to check her. She is a brittle, and her numbers can really go crazy. Now i am finally starting to sleep again, instead of roaming the house terrified that we misguaged her numbers. She loves the dex because now she only needs to do 3 - 5 finger pokes a day. I know some people have had accuracy issues, but since we have gotten it 3 months agao, we have only had 1 time where it was way off, and a calibration quickly fixed it. As the previous post listed, it has enabled us to correct quicker, and helped with guessing some carb amounts, because we know sooner if we were off or not. She is also finally starting to sense lows again now, since her dex alarms as soon as she drops below 80. Like i said. we love it, and couldn’t imagine being without it.
Very little school support, it’s a small private school and the nurse is a volunteer parent who is at the school when she can be ( no set schedule). I go and check Naomi every day at lunch myself and I’m still getting up at least once a night. We’re on day 3 with a MM CGM trial and it hasn’t been something we could really count on being accurate at all, is the Dexcom a lot more accurate? We’ve been doing the calibrations properly and everything.
Thank you for responding, it’s very helpful information!!! Sleep does sound nice.
I should also add that our other T1 who has very easy to manage D now wants a dex also, since her sister has to do so few finger pokes, and we always know where she is, AND where she is going. That has also been the other big plus. we can adjust doses because we know if she is climbing or dropping or staying stable. As to the accuracy. When we did the trial, and then got our own, it did take about 3 days for the dex to “learn her”. So the first few days we just did business as usual, with all the finger pokes and calibrated her every time she poked (we still do that). After day 3 it started to follow her pretty accurately, and then we were able to cut down on the pokes, and now we can usually trust it to be right on (within 10 points of her meter), as long as she calibrates 3 to 4 times a day. The one time it was off it was WAY off, about 100 points, but we were also on day 10 of her sensor and switched it out the next day.
Does each new sensor change take 3 days to start following your daughter accurately or was that just at first?
That was just the very first sensor, and then the first couple after that took a few hours (up to 10) to get dialed in as well, but by the end of the first box that no longer was true either. Now they are pretty spot on as soon as they start reading her.
My son wanted a CGM almost as soon as he was diagnosed, but we ended up going with the pump first only because that’s the way the endo and the insurance went. Now he would definitely pick the pump before the dexcom. We went with the omnipod because he tried the animas and pod and hated the animas and loved the pod. He’s very active and can’t stand the thought of a tube. But I know lots of people happy with both.
We went with dexcom because everyone I know personally who has tried the MM has switched to the Dexcom (even if they have a MM pump), the insertion needle is smaller, it lasts a whole week (and sometimes 2), and for us has been very accurate.
We usually end up callibrating at night and almost every new sensor has a ??? time that first night, after shooting up way high (even though he isn’t high) but by the morning it’s usually spot on. The dexcom people told me it’s probably because he’s so thin and wears it on where his love handles should be, it takes some time to “settle” into somewhere it can read accurately.
We also have the “low” alarm setting pretty high (80 I think) because when he falls quickly, the dexcom can’t keep up and often when the alarm goes off for 80, he’s in the 50s.
Good luck!
Natasha
Yes, we have found the Dex to be more accurate than the MM. Calibrations are easier too - it will still give data if you miss a calibration, and if your Dex is off a calibration seems to get it back on track, plus you don’t have to be stable to calibrate. I was frustrated by MM saying if the sensor is inaccurate – don’t calibrate (how else can you let it know it is way off track?) If my daughter calibrated the MM at the wrong time it would be a mess, so often she wouldn’t calibrate and then the sensor would stop giving data. Dex is also more comfortable for my daughter and the wear time is longer. Dex is really pretty kid proof and low maintenance. Hands down I would go for the Dex.
Our experience is similar…I don’t count on the first day being super accurate (it can be 20-25 pts off on day one), but after that it is usually within 10 pts of meter, sometimes less.
I am also very impressed with how fast the Dex trails my DD when exercising. There will be some lag time, no doubt - but Dex follows her glucose a lot closer than MM ever did.
My daughter has the MM pump and CGM. We started on the pump and a year later added the CGM. The fact that it was an all-in-one thing did play into our decision. She was not crazy about the idea of carrying a pump around attached to her all the time, so I knew that she would not want to carry a separate receiver. We love our MM pump and CGM! After reading the other comments, makes me want to try a Dex to compare. But, not having anything to compare it to…we do not find it to be high maintenance. I do wish that the sensors last longer (they say 3 days…but we restart it and get 6 out of them with good readings usually until through the 6th day). Again, maybe b/c we don’t know any different, we do not have a hard time callibrating it. The only thing is that you cannot callibrate when their bg is changing quickly…so we callibrate with a finger stick before each meal and that works for us. It is not always an accurate number, but I’d say that 95% of the time it is. You get used to the fact that there is a lag time and so even though we consider her low at 70…I have it set to alarm at 90.
Thanks everyone for your posts! I just inserted our first Dexcom sensor yesterday afternoon. How do your children who have CGM’s carry them? The clip on the Dexcom doesn’t seem to be holding it on her pants when she plays (jumps on the trampoline, runs, etc…) very well - it flops around and is bugging her. Any suggestions?
Our Animas Ping ETA is April 12th!!!
Thanks again!!!
The only thing I can recommend is once again a spibelt or another type of belt with pocket. Sometimes my son uses his pump clip for his pump and spibelt for his dexcom the only downside is you have to take it out to see what the readings are. I think spibelt also makes a belt with two zippered pockets on it as well. Animas and dexcom are working together to integrate into one system which will eventually do away with the second device but not the second site that will be a big help.
My son wears his in a spibelt. We use safety pins to keep it as tight as he wants it and he wears it ALL the time - basketball, football, soccer etc.
He actually stretches the fabric and when he hits a button can see through the fabric to read it, so he doesn’t have to take it out of the spibelt.
Hello~
We use the MM Revel pump with the integrated CGM and love it. I don’t have issues with accuracy, and we do about 3 calibrations a day. I do it at times when her BG is stable, so I don’t really have issues with it her BG falling rapidly (wake-up time, bedtime around 8pm, then at my bedtime around midnight) I love that she doesn’t have to use a 2nd device and I do the insertion at night while she sleeps after applying emla cream.
Re: how to hold the pump & CGM…I love this website that has pump pouches and double pump pouches (they carry both pump & CGM device). I love that some pouches have a clear screen so you can see the sensor readings better. www.toosweetboutique.com. We used to wear a pump pouch, but now that we have the sensor, it bothers me to have to unzip it all the time to view the screen. If we needed to wear the pouch, I would definately switch to using the pouches with the clear vinyl.
Hope this helps!
Jessica
I would add that the Revel helps with the lag time, so it gives predictive low alarms, which has almost totally cut out her low BGs. Her A1Cs are “healthier” since she’s not swinging around as much.
My 6 year old has a Animas pump and a Dexcom. She is 50 pounds. We have several belts from Tallygear.com which are perfect. She picked out the designs, and they carry the pump and Dex and still let her stay very active. We even put starburst in one of the pouches in case she gets low. It is worth spending the extra money to get a “window” on the belt. We just press the Dex button through the window which eliminates the need to take the dex out. Now she doesn’t have to carry her meter or a snack with her at school…she is hands free. I also have Type 1 and have the animas pump and dex. I can’t imagine how we ever lived without them.
Shelley