Started new sensor Sat mid afternoon, first 24 hours little off on readings, then fairly stable second day, now beginning of 3rd day and am almost at the 3 hr mark of the dreaded ??? Dex tech says "wait the 3 hrs, if no readings, pull sensor, start new, and call it in in morning."
Do you all try to turn it off, then restart as a new sensor to see if will read before pulling?
Note - new user, this is 3rd sensor for me. 1st used the 7 days but probably could of run more, second ran full 14 days - it did good with low drops but was slow/missed high on second week.
I just got off the phone with Dexcom concerning their advice about what to do with inaccurate or failing sensors. They told me to enter three blood glucose values 15 minutes apart, 3 hours after the ??? appears. They told me not to restart their sensors (something that I’m sure most users would disagree with).
I had a sensor that was giving me wildly inaccurate readings (from 40 to 400) when my blood glucose levels were between 75 and 110 when measured by a One Touch Meter. I ended up restarting the sensor twice, before I finally trashed it in the middle of the night because the low blood glucose alarm was going off every 5 minutes despite the fact that my glucose was in the normal range.
I never used to restart my sensor but, after some discussion over at the Dexcom forum regarding the ??? issue, I have decided to start looking at the state of the transmitter before trashing the sensor. My last sensor started returning ??? after 10 days, which is a good run but not typical. When I removed the sensor, like others, I noticed some moisture underneath the transmitter.
Next time this happens, I’ll try cleaning the transmitter first before I trash the sensor.
I would probably just restart the sensor. But thinking on it more, if you can remove the transmitter without disturbing the insertion site, wipe it off and put it back before restarting - why not give it a try?
