Dexcom: Latest G5 Update is worrisome and troubling

Mine says Version 1.7.1
I don’t think I’m having issues with the alarm feature?
I haven’t had my DND on for a couple of weeks though.
But I do think the last session expiration alarm was very loud and thinking I didn’t remember it being that loud.

DND?

Edited to add: It finally came to me. I think your acronym decodes to “do not disturb.”

Besides silence, there also needs to be the option to modulate the volume on the alerts. Loud alerts are fine sometimes, but sometimes I want audible but not jarringly loud ones, and the all or nothing of that makes my Dex so much less useful, since I feel the need to keep it on vibrate most of the time now, and I miss the alerts as a result.

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Yes :relaxed:

I think unnecessary alarm fatigue that leads to missed urgent alarms makes a persuasive argument. This could all be settled so easily if Dexcom would simply allow some customizable user settings.

I have no inside knowledge but I would expect the intrusive G5 alarms will be changed for the G6. I fear the G5 is now stuck in Dexcom/FDA cement.

The antidote to this is a robust and well-funded user study before submission to the regulators. I’ve never been able to find documentation that describes this process. Maybe it’s another one of those “proprietary” details that companies wish to hide.

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I keep my phone on vibrate which works well now that I have an Apple Watch. Although I miss a lot of vibration alerts on my phone, I don’t miss them on the watch very often. I think that I get one (or two?) chances to dismiss the Urgent Low 55 alarm before it sounds.

My biggest annoyance is that unlike the first generation of the Apple Watch G5 app, I have to respond to alerts on my phone. I can hit Dismiss on my watch, but the alerts keep coming back until I dismiss it on my phone.

As much as I am a fan of Dexcom, I find it hugely intrusive and not necessarily giving me more protection as it gets more intrusive. Occasionally at night when I need it the most for safety, I have been known to shut it down so I can get some decent sleep. I think a lot of my frustrations come when I am hovering near 70 or near 160 (my thresholds) and I keep getting an alarm every time I pass over the threshold. Or when I’ve corrected a low and I keep getting alerted because it takes the Dex such a long time to recover.

It’s been a long time since I used Medtronic sensors, but back with my 523 I could silence all alarms for a certain period of time. Say an hour or two if I was going to be in a meeting or at church. I have always wished that Dexcom had that feature.

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Goodness, yes this! When it wakes me up and I correct/eat it takes a while to work and in the meantime I just want to go to sleep! Lately I just change the alert so that I don’t hit it again while it sorts itself out, but then I forgot to reset it back…

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I remember one night in particular when my upper threshold alarm, set at 140 (7.8), woke me up. I took a small insulin dose to address it. Then my blood sugar line oscillated about the 140 line over, under, over, under, as if it had demon eyes! I think I finally boosted the threshold but by that time my night’s rest was thoroughly compromised.

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This might be answered in the previous 2 or 3 pages. I too am quite annoyed by the alert sound level - it is only really useful if you have hypoglycemia unawareness.

As well, if I see that my BG is 71 and so I eat 20g glucose. Then my BG drops down to 64 which is below my “urgent low” threshold of 65 - either because my BG was already dropping, or because my pancreas managed to still produce a bit of (unneeded) insulin - and the alpha cells don’t work anymore.

Either way, I get an extremely loud beep, which I don’t need - I already know my BG is low! As well, for some reason I don’t start to “lose function” until my BG goes below about 40, even though I know that it’s low. (Or lower - why my body can seemingly function normally all the way down to 35 sometimes, I have no idea…)

Does anyone have the IPA file of the old app? (Or will I have to jailbreak the phone and figure out how to hack the app, or figure out how to use xDrip? Or I suppose just put up with it, but I’d rather not.)

I do hope that Apple only lets very critical applications have this “Override Do-Not-Disturb” entitlement.

I had the same problem with the alarm volume. My husband said it was so loud that it might give him a heart attack! It was seriously disturbing, and I went back to the G4.

Does anyone know if progress has been made on this issue, as of June 2017??

I’m still on the G4, but the receiver goes way too crazy when I’m low. I don’t understand why it has to alert me again when my blood sugar is rising and passes the low threshold!

I am now using an Apple Watch and it has somehow muted all sound from my phone aside from the urgent low. Really helpful for at work!

Are you using the Apple Watch direct from the transmitter to the watch or is it still going through your iPhone first and then retransmitted to the watch?

This is very doable anyway—it’s only the urgent low alarms you can’t turn to vibrate. My issue is that I can’t easily switch them all from audible to vibrate with the phone’s own button, because I now just keep them all on vibrate (except urgent low and rising/dropping) and I tend to miss alarms as a result… that said I haven’t recent updated the app, so I’m curious, anyone who has, any thoughts/issues/improvements in the latest version?

The calibration alert cycles every 12 hours so you have to be aware that if you calibrate at 3 in the afternoon the alert will come on a 3 a.m. You can reset the 12 hour cycle by calibrating at, say 7 in the evening so the next alert will be a 7 in the morning.

Haha.
Have been hating the new unsuitable unmutable alarms.
And also this with temporarily turning up phone volume to max. I suppose I almost blasted some speakers today, at least scared my kids. It is a Sonos system, and if you start some old Madonna track on the WiFi controlled speakers, then leave the phone which goes into sleep mode. Now the volume up/down on the phone means turning sonos system up/down. Guess what happens when I get a Dexcom alarm… Madonna becomes really loud.

Hi there. I share your grievance about the
inability to mute Dexcom G5 alarms. I’ve called their customer service and they couldn’t
do a thing about it. It may have had something to do with getting FDA approval by
having this alarm immutable. Who knows?
On the one hand, I’m glad that Dexcom is looking
after me and it motivates me to “take care of business”. On the other hand, I wish that the whole world didn’t have to know my business about blood sugars!

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Which version of the app are you having the problems with and is it the Apple or Android app?
I ask as we are not having this issue on the Apple v 1.7.1.

Currently available for Apple download is v 1.7.2 - which has the very unhelpful description of changes as:
“Performance enhancements and bug fixes”

I agree 100%
I will not wear the Cgm until this is fixed.
I cannot go to a library, put my grandchild to bed or rock her for that matter without scaring her from these horrible beeps.
How do you go to a movie, church, a funeral, out to eat or attend a meeting?
Where are the choices?! Mute, vibrate…?
They need to fix this fast.
Unacceptable!

Agreed!