I am a new tudiabetes member and a new Dexcom G4 user. Inserted my first sensor yesterday afternoon. All the anxiety about the actual insertion immediately changed to anxiety about the actual sensor staying put for an entire week. For one, when I pushed the adhesive down, I missed a portion, so it folded over. Two, I put it too low on my belly, it's still above the beltline, not under my pants, but more like where the skin on my belly folds. I use IV prep, tagaderm film and some tape I had in the medicine cabinet. It ain't pretty, but for my first attempt, I think I did pretty darn good.
I was pretty stable overnight, I have my low set at 70 and my high at 180. I woke a couple of times during the night just to check my Dex, and one thing I noticed was the trend arrow was missing. I wasn't rising or falling and when I checked my glucose meter, I was 113. Any thoughts on that?
Also, my sensor site is a little tender, it's hard to tell if it's the actual sensor or all the tape tugging at my skin. It almost looks like there may be some blood under the unit. It's hard to tell, as I think the plastic part of the sensor has a purple tinge to it.
One other question, it hasn't asked me for a 12 hour calibration. I inserted the sensor at 5:45, calibrated at the two hour mark, and then when I tested my glucose meter at 1:00 something this morning, I calibrated it then. Will the 12 hour request to calibrate come at 8:45? The Dex will alert me, right?
Thanks for reading, I'm so excited to have this unit. Michelle
Regarding the lack of arrows - if your numbers aren't reading a particular trend, it won't show the arrow. (If you look, your dots probably go up a bit then down a bit, etc and the CGM is having trouble determining the trend direction) I find this happens most often on the 1st day of the sensor as the Dexcom is figuring things out.
The calibration alert is for 12 hours after the last time you calibrated. If you've been inputting numbers more often, you won't get the alert. So if your last calibration input was 1 am, you'll get an alarm at 1pm (if you don't do anything at lunch or dinner times.) If my meter number and CGM numbers are running reasonably close, I'll only enter numbers 2-3 times a day and allow the Dexcom algorithm to do its thing.
Congrats on getting your CGM. I love mine. It's not perfect, but it helps a lot and has lifted some anxiety from my life. My suggestion in these early days is to not obsess about each individual number and just look at the trends to figure out what works for you.
Trend arrows do not appear when there are glucose data gaps (see Chapter 9, Section 9.4, System Glucose Error). If the glucose reading error symbol ???, the wait symbol [the hour glass], the out of range symbol [the antenna with a red circle and cross out], or the blood drop symbol appear at the top of the trend graph, the trend arrows will not appear.
I'm not certain that this list covers all the instances of this happening. It usually returns a trend arrow in a short time. When you add a calibration number, I think that the displayed number adjusts but removes the trend arrow until the next sensor transmission to the receiver. I'll need to observe more closely.
Yes, the Dex will alarm when it wants a calibration. That's usually 12 hours apart. So if you calibrated at 1 a.m. then it should ask for another calibration at 1 p.m. You may want to time your calibrations such that it doesn't ask for one while you're sleeping.
Blood leaking at the sensor site has almost always meant trouble for me. If it's just a little bit, it's been OK for me. If you start to get wildly moving numbers from high to low to high, then I would pull the sensor and replace with another one. Dexcom will replace a sensor that last less than 7 days. Just call customer service; they've never given me any grief over this request.
I find that the first 24 hours or so as the least reliable performance, but not always. For this reason I like to insert a new sensor in the morning in the hope it will settle down and minimize/eliminate alarms while I sleep.
To make the sensor adhesive last, I paint some liquid Skin-Tac over the top of the fabric. It soaks through and I dry it with a hair dryer. This almost always last me 14 days or more. I also wash my site before insertion with soap and hot water and thoroughly dry before I insert the sensor.
Good luck. It's a great tool that I wouldn't want to live without.
Good luck with your dexcom, it will get easier as you get more familiar with it.
For the alarms, it will always vibrate first, no matter which setting you have. Then 5 minutes later it will vibrate again, or beep in the mode that was selected. If you don't respond to the second alarm (first beep), then 5 minutes later it will beep louder, and repeat every 5 min.. But it you acknowledge it at the first vibrate, you never hear the beeps.
I also learned that if it alarms several times, and you never acknowledge it, but your BG then rises/falls back into range, then it stops alarming without acknowledgement.
At night time, I like to use the Attentive setting, and put the receiver under my pillow. I'm more worried about the cats getting at my pump tubing ! They pretty much ignore the dexcom.
I just started my Dexcom G4 this week, after trying the Medtronic one last week. I am VERY impressed with the Dexcom! My numbers were off the first day, but I am now on Day 4 and Dexi (as I call her) is spot on just about everytime! The first day, I called Dexcom because of the wonky numbers. One of their CDE walked me through when to calibrate. Here is what I have learned so far.
1. Never calibrate when your trend arrow is going up or down. It should be straight across.
2. If your meter says 80 or below....then the Dex should be within 20 points of that number. For example, if my meter says 69 and Dex says a number between 49-89....I'm good and should leave Dex alone. However, if she says a number outside of that range...then I need to calibrate.
3. If your meter says a number that is above 80....then you need to take the number on the meter and multiply by .20 (which is the same as 20%). For example, my meter says 150. I multiply 150 by .20 and get 30. So, Dex should be 30 points above or below 150. The range would be 120-180. If Dex says a number in that range...don't calibrate.
4. The CDE also recommended that if Dex is WAY off...which she was the first day...by like 100 points...then it's good to calibrate 3 times....15 minutes apart to help get the sensor back on track. We did this and it worked perfectly. I haven't had a single problem with my dex being off since I've been following her advice for calibrations. The first two days...I calibrated a lot. But now, I just need to do it every 12 hours!
What's really great is Dexi woke me up this morning when I dropped down to 49! By the time I made it to the kitchen I was 41!!! That's how fast I was dropping!!!!! I think Dex saved my life because I was in a deep sleep and I never, ever feel when I am low.
What's really great is Dexi woke me up this morning when I dropped down to 49!
This is why I don't want to live without a CGM. Catching a low while sleeping as it starts not only improves your overnight safety, it also minimizes or eliminates the nasty hyper-BG bounce that can last till noon.
What's really great is Dexi woke me up this morning when I dropped down to 49! By the time I made it to the kitchen I was 41!!! That's how fast I was dropping!!!!! I think Dex saved my life because I was in a deep sleep and I never, ever feel when I am low.
For me, getting low BG warnings, particularly at night is the most important reason for CGM.
What have you set your warnings at? I set my low warning limit at 4.4 (80) and also set the alarm for one down arrow. I think it is important to set it to warn you BEFORE you get hypo rather than after. If mine warns me during the day when I am at 4.4 but the level is steady I can always choose to ignore it, but I would rather have the advanced warning. If you can set up your warnings so as to try to avoid having any hypos even mild ones, you may find that your hypo-awareness starts to return.
I'm leaving in GERMANY and my language is german ...... but since august 2013 I use the DEXCOM G4 .... and it is a very great helpful tool. "normally earlier I had about 1 to 4 hypos per week ... for more than 72 years of diabetic TYP I..... and NO MORE hypos now as the systems makes malways warnings.... best I ever got.
BUT .... be careful with the DEXCOM-Studio-software, there are errors in it! First .... when using on netbook ore tablet ... monitor 11 inch or less .... you see only parts of the monitorred pages ... you cannot see the lower part with dates on so on.
Second... hard erors when using your system (like me at home on a windows PC and for vacations on my netbook ..... so I transferred data by the Dexcom-software with patientdata store ... and .... patientdata load ...... twice dexcom-meter-data were missing after the transfer!!!!
