Hi All! Kennedys sensors have come in and we are setting up initial settings, she's 12 and new to cgm, I dont want to freak her out too much with this thing... I think our endo told us initial settings for a finicky preteen might be 80 for low and 250 for high, then tighten them up at a later time once whe gets used to the device. Does that sound right? What are other preteens/teens doing with settings? Any and all feedback so appreciated!!
Thanks!!
Natalie
That sounds like what we did - although I think at first we had even wider settings. My son is 12 and he has had the Dexcom for almost three years. At first we just wanted to see how it worked and what it looked like and I didn't even care if it went off at all. So I think we might have had it set all the way to 300. I find it's most useful for helping adjust insulin dosing anyway so I wanted to see trends, how food affected him, sports etc. Now he definitely uses it more for alerting highs and lows than when we first got it - and it's set at 80 and 200.
Make sure you set the sleep on the highs, else it will continue to bother her even after she has corrected a high. This is especially bothersome to me if I have a high in the middle of the night. If the sleep timer is set on the high it will continue to buzz off when all you want to do is correct it and get back to sleep. The low sleep time I set to 5 minutes so that each time the CGM checks it will buzz or sound off if still low.
thanks!! do you find that that low alarm at 80 is about right?
Yes. The CGM can be about 10 off up or down, mostly down in my use. For example you can finger stick a 120 and the CGM reads 130 so 80 could be 70. If she is concerned about 80 then set the alarm to 90. Keep it calibrated as well. If you fingerstick throughout the day I would say at least 4 of those enter as a calibration point. With that many the CGM gets VERY VERY accurate.
I'm sorry you didn't reply to my post. I may have inadvertanly jumped in there and answered something meant for Natasha.
I agree - 80 seems right. You have to evaluate the number with the trend - so sometimes 80 is fine - if the trend is either pretty even and they aren't about to do anything strenuous, or they are on the way up. However if they are on the way down you want to know when the Dexcom says 80 because odds are that they are actually already lower due to a delay - especially if they are crashing quickly. But if you set it higher it will go off all the time when they are in a perfectly good place, which would be very annoying.
I'm not a pre-teen but I can relate on setting the numbers too tight :D My first week I put the numbers where I kept myself with MDI, which was between 65 and 120. Big mistake! The advice here is sound. Though I would watch the 250 high alert. The G4 is great at showing trends, so when the meter is reading 250 you may already be on 270 or higher.
I would recommend 80 and 200. When you set the "alert" just make sure you set it to sleep on the high's. That way it will at least tell you that you are above 200 and give the option to 'wait and see'.