I have given shots for 64 yrs and now I take 5 or 6 daily and all of my skin is perfectly fine. I too, was very lean when I was dx because of losing so much weight, since nobody knew what was wrong with me including my pediatrician.
I feel extremely fortunate. I don’t bruise much either. I certainly hated the thick needles that I used for years. Luckily I was just taking one shot a day then.
My Dexcom doesn’t seem to bother my skin either and it is rare that I need a patch over it. It sticks just fine the way it is. When I take it off, I usually can’t see any evidence of having worn it.
I have never worn a pump, so I don’t know if wearing one would affect my skin.
I also don’t pay much attention to where I inject. My fingertips show some wear, but not too bad.
When I get a “signal loss”, the first thing that I look at is the relative position of my G6 sensor/transmitter and my pump/receiver. Example: I wear my sensors on the back inside of my arm. If my arm is too close to my body … say when I am sleeping or reading a book … and my pump is on the opposite side of my body, I will frequently get a signal loss error. Why? Electromagnetic waves such as Bluetooth signals do NOT transmit well through water … and we are mostly water. So, if the path from transmitter to pump/receiver is largely through your body, I believe you will get a “signal loss”. Plus, if that happens, moving your arm or pump/receiver location so that they are more “line of sight” always takes longer than I think it should to see a recovered signal.
As to getting a “backup” transmitter, that is a bit tricky. As others have mentioned, you can get one if you are “lucky enough” to get a transmitter failure early in the 90-day life of a transmitter. The other way … that only works when you are upgrading to a new “generation” … works as follows. I mention this now because many of us will hopefully be upgrading Fromm G6 to G7 in the coming year.
When that G7 transmitter and sensors come in, I suggest NOT using them immediately but continuing your G6 components. If you can continue to use you G6 components for a full 90 days after receiving your G7 components, you should then have an extra transmitter and sn extra 9 sensors because your second 90-day shipment should be arriving about the time that you begin to use your first G7 components. Of course, the G7 is sn integrated sensor/transmitter … but extra integrated sensor/transmitters will still be extras.
I’ve only had overt T1D for 45 years, and don’t match your profile or experience.
When diagnosed, I was an adult male and chronically lean, frequently bruised from activities. My pre-diagnosis weight loss was from severe dehydration. I wasn’t growing. I didn’t have a layer of fat cells to be starved by weight loss. I had injection site reactions from beef and to a lesser extent, “purified” pork insulin. I was taking 3 shots day or more with multiple types of insulin or more most of the time. I kept very careful logs and knew that the reaction time and strength varied with where I injected. The onset could vary by an hour between sites, and still does today with CGM, pump and a boringly constant daily routine. I have infusion sites where half the insulin vanishes with no effect, I can move the cannula 1 inch and it starts working fine.
One of my happiest days was when I first used human synthetic insulin and didn’t itch any more. Now that I’m getting older I can see and feel the irregularities and lumps under the surface in the band where I had to inject until I gained weight in late middle age.
Sounds like a good idea. The only problem with keeping G6 supplies as backup is they
have limited shelf lives. The transmitters lives are shorter than the sensors because their batteries deteriorate faster than the wire coating degrades.
To extend both their lives, I’d put them in an sealled container with some desiccant and store them in my unheated basement which is 55F all year around. I did this with photograhy film, BGM strips and camera batteries that went out of production.
The transmitter batteries slowly lose charge in storage, shortening transmitter life. So keeping backup transmitters isn’t feasible. Better plan is to request the next one allowing some extra time.
I always use the oldest whatever first. So although I have a couple older transmitters for Dexcom, I’ve used earlier orders up before getting to my more recently received supplies.
If/when I transition to the 7, I’ll keep using my 6’s up to (and marginally past) their expiration date. Hope I’ll have a few unused 7’s by the time I start so I have a backup of them by that time!
This is why I also operate my pump manually and don’t use the code for my Dexcom G6 but do the required calibrations. I noticed just how inaccurate the CGM is - especially when you allow for the lag time - and knew there was no way I could trust my pump to dose myinsulin based upon an automatic response to my CGM. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Dexcom, but I also recognize that it is a tool that isn’t perfect and I don’t rely on it being perfect. Staying on top of my blood glucose levels using a CGM PLUS my meter and manually working my pump allows me to avoid a lot of potential problems caused by too much or too little insulin at the wrong times. I also recognize when circumstances require me to change basal rates or timing. Diabetes is a moving target, not a static one size fits all condition.
My routine is constant, the response of my body is predictable is predictable. My
extended meal boluses have bern tuned to incorporate the lag time. It’s probably too boring away for most people to live but it works for me.
Startup inaccuracy is but since I’ve gotten experienced at checking snd troubleshooting failures of sensors and infusion sites it’s an annoyance more than an aggravation or a source of dosing inaccuracy.
It bothers me that Dexcom dishonestly markets a product that by its intrinsic technology and application cannot be calibration-free.
I accept it only because I know that using it is an improvement for most people with diabetes. The more you know about managing blood glucose the less benefit you get from using the newer technology
