New Dexcom G6, interesting first experience

#1

Well I finally received my G6 and the experience has been interesting so far.

The inserted worked nicely and I didn’t even feel anything, but I did have a rather large amount of blood start coming out. After it finally was warmed up and stuff, it started off pretty accurate, but that only lasted a few hours. In the middle of the night it started going really wacky. Constant urgent low alarms, though that isn’t too new as my G5 would do that on the first night a lot of times too. That, or be reading falsely way high. At some point it seemed to have given up and both my phone (with Xdrip+) and the Dexcom receiver (have not managed to update my tslim yet because I don’t have a Windows or Mac computer anywhere) just kept saying there was no data/no signal. It has intermittently started back for a little bit and then stopped again a few times so far today, though it seemed to be accurate when it did start back up. Currently it just says “Sensor Error” and “please wait”. Xdrip also shows “sensor error”.

Is this normal on the first day of an insertion? I always had crazy inaccuracies on the first 1 - 1.5 days on a new G5 sensor, but it would still show something. I have to imagine this is not normal, and I have some feeling that perhaps the blood flow at insertion time has something to do with it, since it is intended to read interstitial fluid and not blood. Anyone had these issues on the G6? Wondering if maybe I have one of the famous bad sensors that I will have to call Dexcom to get replaced.

#2

Blood right on insertion isn’t a good sign, I’ve never had that. I’ve had just minor and trivial amounts of blood noticed on removal, and that only once. I’m now on my fifth sensor so I’m a bit of a newbie myself.

But it’s actually kind of normal to get whacked out readings from a G6 sensor especially in the first 12 hours including completely bogus hypo alarms and other completely random unreal rapid variations. Several of my G6 sensors acted that way. Just have some test strips and meter handy. They started settling out in 12 hours and by 24 hours were on the money.

All that said: call Dexcom Tech Support. They will tell you what to do in your circumstance and likely Fedex you a new sensor.

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#3

You guys are reinforcing my desire to stay with G5 which I can get to work on day one, by soaking for a day prior to installing the active transmitter. Word online re the G6 is that the newest xmitters don’t allow soaked sensors to work and that seems to be the only way (soaking, I mean) for either G5 or G6 to have great first-day numbers.

#4

I just had the same issue with a G6 sensor (using the new 8G… transmitter). Upon insertion I did not notice anything unusual, and it was working initially for about 12 hrs then it started dropping out with sensor errors and low readings, they increased and in the course of the workday there was 5 of them lasting upwards of 30-45 minutes. Needless to say Dexcom replaced it when i called saying I was going to insert a new one which they agreed with. Upon removal it was fairly blood stained (never saw that before) - so I guess that was it. All of my others have been fine.

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#5

Fortunately I haven’t had any bleeding at the insertion point with the G6 so I haven’t had that experience. Occasionally I would have bleeding at my G5 and G4 insertion sites. I don’t think it negatively impacted accuracy (but then again it’s regularly calibrated). For me it would often lead to shorter sensor lifetime and tenderness at the insertion site during use.

#6

Things seemed to stabilize after a while and other than a few instances where it stopped reading for a while, it has been pretty reliable. The blood happens occasionally for me with G5 sensors, though this time was a lot more extreme. I will find out later if it was a fluke, or what I should normally expect, since this is just the first insertion.

I gotta say I am pretty impressed with the consistent accuracy while not calibrating at all. Both Xdrip and the receiver have almost always read the same reading. I updated my tslim to the Basal IQ software, and I have been using it instead of the receiver now and it maintains the same accuracy. So far the basal suspension has not prevented any lows that I can tell, but most of my lows are due to bolus miscalculations and there is nothing it can do about insulin that is already in me.

So related question: Xdrip keeps telling me that the “G5 transmitter battery is low” even though I specified I was using a G6. I am guessing that the voltage of the G6 is lower than the G5, so what is the cut off voltage for the G6 so I can change it?

#7

Yes and no.
It can’t prevent your bolus that you manually do. But it can take away the basal that would be occurring to make it an even worse low. Kind of like borrowing from your future insulin. It works pretty good this way when you want to be more aggressive with a bolus.

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#8

Wellp. I think the weirdness I had was all due to the blood gush that happened with the first sensor. My second sensor only had a little bit of blood visible and it has been working pretty flawlessly so far, even just after initial warm up.

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#9

So something I have noticed is that if I calibrate on my pump, it seems to automagically calibrate on Xdrip shortly after as well without me having to enter anything. Is the calibration something that happens in the transmitter on G6, as opposed to G5 where I always had to enter it in both devices (and therefore I assume the calibration was on the devices and not the transmitter)?

#10

If xDrip is set to Native, the calibrations of the sensor by other means will calibrate xdrip. I keep mine on Native because I don’t like descrepancies between my receiver and my phone. Don’t calibrate xdrip if it is on Native and u use Dexcom to calibrate!

#11

OK, thanks. I didn’t calibrate it, as I thought it must be receiving some sort of calibration from the transmitter to be updating like that, and since I just use the sensor code and no initial calibration with blood, it doesn’t have a regular “enter calibration” option, only initial calibration.

#12

What I do is soak a sensor for a day, alongside an active sensor. When it comes time to switch to the new sensor I first turn off “Native” on xdrip so that I can avoid the 2 hour wait. I switch transmitters (active xmitter moved to the 1-day soaked-sensor; place the soaked-sensor-xmitter back to my stash drawer) and tell xdrip that I installed the sensor a day ago, then I can calibrate in under 20 minutes. I also tell my receiver to START SENSOR, and in 2 hours I will calibrate. A while later, I will switch xdrip from NON-NATIVE to NATIVE, so that the 2 systems will match. Works great for me and I dread getting stuck on the G6 in the future.

#13

Did you mean the opposite, since earlier you say you turn off native.

I just did something similar with G6 and xDrip. (Older 81xxxxx transmitter).

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#14

Yes, I wrote it backwards. I’ll fix it now. good catch. and I know someone is reading. :slight_smile:

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#15

Yeah I have thought about doing this sort of thing, but I simply don’t have the real estate available for 2 sensors at once. I have to use rather large dressings UNDER the sensor, so they take uo a lot of space, and then I have to be able to fit my infusion set in the few areas where the absorption is still good. Also, my skin is very sensitive so I have to wait for a previously used area to heal for a while before reusing it.

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