I am almost afraid to ask this question, but has anyone on this board ever used their Dexcom receiver past the 1 year guarantee period?
My Dexcom receiver, sensor and transmitter are self-pay because my insurance (Medicare) will not cover it nor will the secondary insurance cover it. I’ve been using my current Dexcom since August 2, 2010 and the past few weeks it has been giving me readings that vary greatly from my actual blood glucose meter readings. It also displays the ‘out of range’ icon on the screen more often than it used to do. I just have a real sick feeling that my poor Dexcom is dying. Has this happened to any of you?
I got about 16months out of my first receiver…but that is after replacing about 3 months in once we figured out that the original receiver was bad. The symptoms were loss of signal much more frequently than visible from the receiver itself…could only be seen from the data once downloaded. First had to replace the transmitter to rule that out…but once the new receiver was in place…it worked pretty much flawlessly until it died just after warranty lapsed. Once it started going bad it had symptoms you described for a couple of weeks and then had a fatal error code.
I think these units are really not built strong enough to go much beyond a year. Otherwise, I think they are awesome and I can’t believe how accurate they are in week two.
I’ve past the 2 year mark and mine works great. I have a second one as a back up and switch about every month. Do not know if that is helping the life cycle or not.
I got about 18 months out of mine before a hardware error. bummer as it was past warranty to had to get a new one.
My advice would be to change the site, including cleaning the sensor and the site really well before, and see if after a few days you have some better readings. It might be the site location or something that is causing some of your issues. You are just now past warranty I believe so try and make it work as long as you can.
After about 12 months my first receiver started giving me more out of range errors than usual. I am about 9 months into the current one, and it is starting to generate the error too. It really ticks me off when the receiver is only about 12" from the transmitter.
I am not looking forward to Medicare. I currently have fantastic insurance. After a $250 deductable per year, they pay my Dexcom Sensors/Receiver/Transmitter and my (Omni) pods at 100%!
Brad - You do seem to have wonderful insurance. As far as I know, Medicare does not cover the OmniPods. They didn’t last year when I went into Medicare, so I had to switch to a traditional pump. And as I mentioned in my original post, Medicare doesn’t pay for any CGMS either.
