It dries and does not seem to attract much to it. There’s a small bit of shirt lint but it doesn’t stay sticky.
Same results as Terry, doesn’t stay sticky, given time to dry.
Do those of you who use skin tac on top of the transmitter fabric bandage, also use a tape film like Tegaderm over the whole thing?
This morning I tried the Skin Tac on top of the sensor adhesive. No extra tape. It dries so it’s not sticky. It seems to have practically bonded the tape to my skin. However, within hours my site started feeling irritated, so it seems my skin still hates Skin Tac even with minimal direct contact. I hope this stays on for a month— though it could be a very long month with this irritation. 
I currently don’t use anything but skin Tac to start and then add tape as needed. But I am thinking I may try something over the whole thing and see if I can get more days out of it. I usually only get around two weeks now, give or take.
I was worried about that when you thought it might help with the Skin-Tac on the bandage top. I know it does soak through; that’s what makes it work. I hope the irritation and itchiness is livable for you.
It’s calmed down a lot today. If this holds a sensor on firmly for two weeks, it’ll be worth any itching! When I do eventually have to tape over top of it, I plan on trying the same thing with the second layer of tape.
No matter what products I use, I cannot use Dexcom on my abdomen. I get an allergic response and occasionally “Dexcom rash.” Doesn’t matter whether I use Skin Tac or anything else. On the other hand, I use sensors for as long as 3 weeks on my upper arms with no problems.
Odd! The part of the body I use doesn’t seem to matter. I had a really bad rash on my arm when I wore the sensor for 46 days, and back when I was still trying to use plastic infusion sets my arms and legs reacted just as much (if not worse) than my stomach. I seem to go through periods where sensors and infusion sets annoy me more than others, and right now is one of those times (the infusion set I put in 24 hours ago started feeling really irritated around noon today, and I’ll probably replace it this evening, although my blood sugars are fine). It seems to correspond to when my allergies are bad in general, so I’m sure they’re related.
@Jen, I agree that some of the skin allergies are tied into systemic allergies. What is very weird for me is that if I get one Dex or infusion site that has a bad allergic reaction, some of my old sites in other locations flare up with red marks that are exactly the shape of the Dex/Comfort Short adhesive. I have started putting a rectangle of Opsite Flexifix under my infusion sets and that has helped a lot.
Do you insert the sensor thru the Opsite Flexfix? I’m always looking for better ways to make the sensor stick.
I’ve experienced the same thing with infusion sets and allergy shots. I googled it once, because I thought it was so weird, and apparently there are “memory” cells in the skin that are part of the immune system and re-react when the immune system encounters the allergen again in other parts of the body.
I don’t put Opsite Flexifix under sensors. Only under infusion sets and I do insert them through the barrier tape.
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Hi gang – I want to chime in on this thread now. I scanned through it a month and a half ago, and ended up right here on Marie’s post. I ended up buying some of the plain rectangular patches (a 57 year old guy don’t need no hearts or turtles on his arm, c’mon…).
I was right on time for a new sensor, so I slapped one on and put one of the grips over the top. It lasted for about a week, then I was going CRAZY with pain!!! I pulled it off…
As you can see, the Grif Grip was put on over the top of the existing Dexcom sensor, and it held it down really well, but this is what my right arm looked like…
Oh my god, that hurt (it’s now a month later, and there is still a dry itchy patch on my right arm, FFS!). So, I had to figure something else out. While the grip itself held everything down really well, it just seems that _some_thing has changed in the makeup of the Dexcom sensor adhesive, though they tell me they have made no changes whatsoever.
I hit upon this idea then: I would create a patch to go UNDER the Dexcom sensor! This is what I did, step by step:
I cut off the edges of the sensor adhesive to make it a small rectangle, to the width of the grip:
I sacrificed one of the grips, using it as a template, then cut out that section of grip to go under only the reconfigured sensor adhesive:
NOTE: I can use that same cut up grip for a few more sensors now—maybe three more of them?.. four, possibly?..
I then put the grip up to the bottom of the sensor, and tapped a pen to mark the ‘hole’ that the sensor thread passes through:
I then bent the grip in half, and cut a hole through which the sensor thread could passes unabated…
…and ended up with these two parts:
I then peeled the backing off the sensor…
…and wed it to the back of the grip:
NOTE: You can see plenty of room for the señor thread to go through, bypassing the grip:
I then peeled off the grip backing…
…and slapped it on my left arm:
I snapped in the TX as per normal:
And, finally, I put a full Grif Grip over the top of everything:
Because I’d left a bit of the original adhesive under the grip, that thing has now been on my arm for THREE AND A HALF WEEKS, with NO ITCHING AT ALL! I don’t remember the last time I was able to restart a sensor FOUR TIMES (maybe never?..), but I am now halfway through the fourth week with this baby! I don’t actually think it will last much longer as the grip adhesive is finally wearing out, and the entire grip is starting to slough off.
Hope this helps.
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I tried it more or less this way on my most recent two sensors. In my case I put SkinTac under the patch as usual before inserting the sensor, but also painted some over it. Both sensors have lasted well out past the 14 day mark without using any Tegaderm. I did have to put some clear medical tape over the corner of one of 'em where it had started to loosen up, but basically they’ve been holding up great without any of that Tegarderm rigmarole, which is one of my least favorite parts of wearing these things. It may help that the weather has cooled down so I’m not getting so sweaty when I go biking.
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Wow, that is a LOT of work! But it looks like it’s working for you so awesome! I just clean the skin with wipes, use skin-tak, Install the sensor, then put tegaderm over top of the sensor and the surrounding path/arm (with a hole cut into the tegaderm so that the sensor isn’t covered by it.) My son (2 years old) wears his for 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks, it’s not even the tap that’s an issue…we have to use plenty of uni-solve to remove the tegaderm/sensor. The issue at the end of 2 weeks for us is that the transmission gets spotty, loses connection a lot, hourglass and question marks for a lot of the day…when this happens, we know it’s time to change it out.
It IS a lot of work, but this process is the only thing working for me (currently). What you do is very similar to what other folks have written in on this posting, and I am glad it works for you (though the extraction process sounds awful for your son), but skin-tac and tegaderm and all that does NOT work for me. What I posted here is the ONLY thing that works for me since Dexcom changed whatever adhesive they use*.
* This is my conjecture, of course. Whenever I have spoken with folks down at Dexcom, they claim they have changed NOTHING in the makeup of their adhesive, but why then have I been able to use their sensors since October '11 WITHOUT INCIDENT of any kind, then overnight this past winter '16, every single sensor I have installed has literally BURNED my skin!!! I do understand that folks sometimes develop allergies to things, but in this case, the switch was immediate, which just didn’t feel like the onset of a new allergy. I have no other allergies except Codeine, which I have had since I was 15 (42 years ago now… time flies…). And I may not even be allergic to Codeine—I just had a terrible reaction to it when I was 15, and the folks dealing with me at the time said, “Just tell everyone you are allergic to Codeine from here on out.” So, that is what I have done. Never been actually tested for an allergy to the drug.
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My arm site is not so much the back of the arm as the side plus a few inches toward the center of my body. I was at a Diabetes meeting and a woman in front of me had it on the back of her arm. I was surprised that someone could make it work. I realized I was staring and apologized.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. How can you wear your sensor there? I can’t stand sleeping on my sensor–plus it makes my numbers be weird all night. How do you do it?”
“It doesn’t bother me and it works fine. The sensor doesn’t give me any problems.”
I think that Abbott did some research about this when they were creating the Libre and they found out that the back of the place where you have the least risk of bumping into stuff with the sensor but also the place which has the least exposure to external impact, in the sense of pressure. I think that the only problem may be for people who sleep on their back.
Which is what I do. Lying on my side makes my shoulders get messed up and stomach is for infants. Besides, stomach would have me sleeping on my infusion set. I slept on my infusion set once and it itched/ hurt for a few days. When I removed it during a set change blood exploded out of it and the bleeding wouldn’t stop for quite a while. Not cool.
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