Curious for those on pump and CGM, how long did it take you to fine-tune your settings?
I'm more than three weeks in to using the Dexcom and am still trying to get my overnight basal rates sorted out. My basal rates have changed A LOT in the past three weeks and my blood sugar is slowly improving, but even now it's still varying by about 2.5 mmol/L (45 mg/dl) overnight. This is less variation than I was getting before, but my basal rates have changed drastically, so I'm really surprised that there hasn't been a bigger impact. I'm hoping that over the next week I'll be able to get it right, just in time for me to send this trail Dexcom back (so lucky the rep let me try a second sensor!) and buy my own a couple of weeks after that.
Also, I started the last sensor right around the start of my hormonal cycle, and it's been really interesting to see just how much it impacts my control. My hormones "kicked in" just over a week ago, and my average blood sugar shoes it. Excluding the first half week of sensor use, my average three weeks ago was 6.8 (122) with 70% of readings within range. My average two weeks ago was 7.8 (140) with 54% of readings within range. My average this past week was 8.5 (153) with 42% of readings within range. This is despite increasing my basal rates and ratios throughout the past week or so - basals have gone up by 3.6 units, I:C ratio has gone from 1:9 to 1:6, and ISF has gone from 2.0 (36) to 1.5 (27) - and still the big increase in average and decrease in readings in range. As I get my basal rates and other settings worked out, I'm hoping that I'll be able to be more aggressive with increaing my settings in the future (though part of the problem is the first few days of "hormones" is always a mixture of highs and lows, which makes it hard to increase settings until I'm consistingly high...). I'm not sure this trial sensor will last long enough for me to see the huge crash back down that should happen in about 10 days or so...
The other thing I have learned so far is that I really do have to change infusion sets every 24 hours. I was noticing that every second day I was runnig high, and I would start going low within hours of changing sets (because usually I changed sites and did a correction). Before, I figured if my site didn't feel super irritated it was probably okay, but even the "normal" irritation I get seems to degrade things.
Once I get my overnight basal rate sorted out I'll move on to fasting throughout the day to work on those. If this overnight one is any indication, they may each a month! After that I'll have to test my carb and correction ratios.
I get my next A1c in about a month and will be very curious what it will be - and even more curiosu what I might be able to achieve six months from now.