ok just now after quite a few no problem hours i got the ??? again is it supposed to be a common thing this is the 1st time ive had it in the 4 weeks ive had the dexcom
ok… the way the "???"s were explained to me from DexCom is that it is what shows up when the number being transmitted doesn’t make sense to the receiver. So first question they asked me was if my pants could have been rubbing up against it or if I was wearing clothing that was tighter than normal… then I was told to just wait out the 3hrs… Good luck!
I use to have problems with the ???. I now insert a new sensor, connect everything, but do not start Dex until anywhere from 6 to 8 hours (overnight).
If you are sleeping on the sensor, if you are putting pressure against it with tight fitting clothing or by carrying something that presses on it or leaning against a counter for long times it may mess the readings up.
If your sugars change very rapidly either from a low reading to a high reading or from high to low, it may give you the ??? as it cannot keep up with the rapid blood sugar changes.
Your insertion of this sensor may not have been as “good”, you may have had a “bleeder” with a new insertion which may mess it up.
Most of the times the Dex will correct itself - it may ask that you recalibrate with 2 finger sticks after 3 hours - with all the ??? I have dealt with, I was able to allow the Dex to work through it’s problem, recalibrate if the Dex ask me to, and have gotten 2 good weeks out of each sensor.
No, it is not common for us. You should call Dexcom and see what they say. They will likely tell you to pull it and replace it. You could try stopping and restarting it though, but I think that you have a bad sensor.
After taking a shower last night, I got the ???. I waited two hours. Nothing changed.
I took out the transmitter out of the sensor, dried the housing of the sensor with hot air. Cleaned the transmitter with alcohol, put back the transmitter and pushed it in tight by hand.
Ten minutes later, the numbers showed up fine.
A lot of situations could cause the ???, Moisture in the sensor is just one of them.
Interesting that you could take the transmitter out and put it back in without having to restart it. We hardly ever see ???, until day 14, but this is something that I never would have thought to try. With the Navigator, that wasn’t possible. As soon as you disconnected, you would have to wait the 10 hour warm up time. Thanks!
I just had that issue on Sunday and I just stopped the sensor and then restarted it and its working fine now.
I have had ??? from two different things. One is from laying on the sensor for too long. I think the circulation gets cut off and it starts generating out of range numbers, the graph right before it dies is either going way up or way down then it cuts off. Changing position gets it working again within a half hour.
The other situation is water getting in the sensor. I wear mine in the hot tub several times a week, sometimes for as long as an hour or more. Usually this isn’t a problem, but from time to time, I will get the ??? after getting out of the hot tub. Even waiting till the next morning doesn’t clear it. Carefully removing the transmitter from the sensor and cleaning the sensor contacts and the surface of the transmitter with an alcohol pad, waiting a minute for the alcohol to evaporate and reinstalling the transmitter on the sensor usually fixes it. Once I had to stop and start the sensor again after doing this because it was giving very high numbers and wouldn’t correct. But, after the restart and two hour wait, it fell in line again.