This is my first post – I’ve had diabetes 21 years and am 27 years old.
Now I’ll get to the point. I have been using the Dexcom G5 sensor since March 2016. I love it – and can say it has changed my life for the better (5.9 a1c in Oct).
But there is one new feature in today’s update that frustrates me, and was seemingly implemented by a non-diabetic. The fact that one can not set the Urgent Low alert to vibrate is quite unfortunate. In the past, if I was in a meeting at work, for example, and I feel a vibration when my blood sugar drops below 55, I quietly step out of the meeting and quickly fix my blood sugar — no big deal!
Because Dexcom decided to add the vibrate only option for everything but the urgent low really makes me frustrated. My phone automatically updated to the new software today, and I had the pleasure of interrupting an important meeting with the president of the organization and a few colleagues, with the loud “dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun duhhhhh duhhhh duhhhhhhh” urgent low glucose alarm. Then, with a bright red face, I proceeded to walk out the door to fix my blood sugar. When I checked my phone to turn the Urgent low alarm to vibrate, I found that there is no option to do so!
Hey Dexcom, isn’t the point of having a CGM to help diabetics to live a more normal life? With the latest software update and the blatant restriction of freedom, it surely doesn’t feel that way.
Please update your iPhone software to include a vibrate only feature for urgent lows.
I believe all diabetes devices should allow a wide latitude of customization. The 55 minor-key alarm of doom allows no choice and Dexcom, I’m sure, will blame the regulators. Luckily, things are changing quickly in the D-tech world. We, as patients, need to express our interests and hopefully it will have some effect over time. If the Dexcoms of the world choose to ignore our wishes, then we might find a solution from the hacktivists of the “we are not waiting” movement.
Hi Colin - did you have your phone on silent/vibrate? My phone is almost exclusively on silent/vibrate and when I get the urgent low it just vibrates. May not be ideal, but I would assume in your meetings your phone is on silent anyway???
Regardless, your point is valid. Would be nice to have the actual option but as @Terry4 mentioned my guess would be that it’s a regulatory thing.
Yes it is, the new software update has a feature called “mute override,” where even if your phone is clicked to silent, you still receive Urgent low noises (and there is no way to silence the app). If you are a Dexcom user, I suggest waiting to update to the new software.
Yes and I also hate this. This was the main reason I liked using the phone so much over the receiver. On the receiver there is no way to disable the urgent low alarm, but before you could always mute it on the phone. It got through the the FDA before being muted so why would it have to be changed now?
I am pretty certain that this is a liability response spurred from the recall of receivers that weren’t alarming. This has FDA written all over it. I suppose the FDA doesn’t trust all users to make appropriate settings themselves. Seems to me that if you could at least change the 55 number threshold, more people would be satisfied.
The alert vibrates first, THEN it audibly alarms when you ignore it… you’re making a far bigger deal out of this than is necessary. If you were to carry the receiver on you, it operates in exactly the same way.
Don’t ignore the alarm, and you’ll have no problem.
With the hackapp xdrip+ on Android, what’s described here is simply not an issue. I can create as many alert targets as I want, set whatever alert tone I’d like for each, enable/disable vibration, etc.
I just love it. I have more than one ‘low’ alert set (100 and 70 mg/dl), with the 100 disabled most of the time. I turn it on when I’m trying to come down from a stubborn high and want to catch things getting in line well before hypo may occur, so I can look at IOB and see if maybe I need to pre-emptively have a little sugar.
Really, xdrip+ makes the Dexcom receiver, and functionally similar iPhone software, seem like crank-starting a car by comparison. My G5 receiver went south a few weeks ago, and I still haven’t called Dexcom yet to get it replaced. I need to, but just keep forgetting.
I sense from many of your comments that you are a strong Dexcom supporter/defender, which is fine, but the notion that if you just “don’t ignore the alarm, then you have no problem” is not a sufficient answer to many real world situations, including the one that started this thread.
Imagine this (possibly) hypothetical situation:
You go to dinner before a symphony. As always, restaurant food is something of a carb mystery, and this time you overestimate your bolus and, as you’re going in to the performance, you see that you’re going low. To yourself, you thank your cgm, because this is exactly what it’s great for.
You correct. After all, this is only the millionth time something like this has happened.
You’re not hypo unaware, so you know your correction is working and your bg is recovering just fine, even though your cgm is lagging and still going through the bg trough.
You’re in the performance and your receiver wound up next to a glove or something in your pocket and so you don’t feel the vibe alert. Now you’re at the quiet part of the opening piece and your receiver is screaming at the whole auditorium.
I’m sure most people on this forum who use a cgm could provide a different but equally applicable example of when a mandatory audible alarm is both unnecessary and unwanted.
I agree completely with @Terry4 and @Colin_V, it should be customizable. Everybody has their own needs.
I completely agree, I don’t need everyone I work with to know when my sugars are high or low because of the annoying alerts! It’s a very private matter that is all of a sudden very public because of how loud they are.
I have tried all the possible options of silencing the alerts and of course nothing worked. I just had an epiphany and tried plugging in headphones to see if that did anything…and SUCCESS!! I fibbed some low glucose numbers right now to see if an obnoxiously loud alert woke everyone up in my neighborhood and nope, no alert!!
So try that out, but I’m testing it out at the moment myself so not guarantees. Good luck! I hope Dexcom is getting lots of complaints to fix this issue…
The other night I was awoken twice in the middle of the night because of a FALSE low. The new software woke me up. Both times it was because I rolled onto the sensor. I was at 90 flat-lined for all of the night. I was NOT LOW.
Also, on Day 1 of sensor I usually get several FALSE lows.
So, unless Dexcom fixes the FALSE lows then I don’t want to be alarmed at 3am! Period.
