The first time I did this, the sensor was very painful going in, but this time there was no pain at all.
Well, I am coming up to the 3 month mark. I never thought about the latest early morning low being a compression low, because I am very careful not to lay on the side with the sensor. I did have a few compression lows in the beginning.
I have readings every day or two which are too high or too low for no reason that I know of. Maybe I am too particular, but I don’t appreciate the readings which are off by 20+ and I am flabbergasted when a reading is off by 60 to 100. It is easy to add or subtract lower numbers to match what a finger stick would show, but the higher differences are unpredictable. I finger stick test about 4 or 5 times a day and more of course in the first 24 hrs after placing a new sensor. I seldom eat or take insulin without finger testing.
Two questions because when this happened to me in the first few months, I was always able to trace it back to a self inflicted event which was either food related, over correcting the Dexcom receiver or compression related.
When you are off by that much is Dexcom usually way under reading your finger stick?
When this happens do you ignore it and rely on finger stick or do you re-calibrate receiver?
The 3 month mark is based on a learning curve during three months of your normal lifestyle. I did not think your lifestyle was normal and stable for a 3 month period. Keep the faith and have yourself a wonderful holiday!!!
The G6 inserter is super easy, you basically hold it to your skin and press a button.
The only thing you have to watch out for is not to push it against your skin too much when pushing the button.
Especially when you have lots of Skin Tac applied to the adhesive and you don’t want it bunched up from pressing so hard…not that I’ve done this lol just saying!
It doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t love some spiked egg nog and a couple of Christmas cookies. I probably would still indulge if I didn’t have two heart stents.
As a 1 time test, you may want to let the high reading stay there until your next 12-hour calibration. I never calibrate more than 1 time every 12 hours to sync finger stick to the Dexcom receiver. Every time I tried to re-calibrate more often, the algorithm was affected and then I got more subsequent screwed up readings over the next several days. I was occasionally out by close to 100 points and by the time my next 12-hour calibration was due finger stick and Dexcom was exactly on the same reading without any re-calibration in-between.
I am an eating creature of habit so pretty much know what my reading should be even without CGM. My large variations in the first few months were due to forgetting to calibrate with a horizontal trending arrow. By that I mean a horizontal arrow for at least 15 minutes (3 dots). Sometimes I just saw the flat arrow and calibrated but when I looked carefully, the 1-2 preceding dots were either higher or lower than the current dot with the horizontal arrow.
The second thing that would create a wild high was when a granddaughter would do the look grandpa I just made you a special cookie and without thinking I ate it to find out it was loaded with flour and sugar. My BS could be fine for a few hours and then go through the roof on the CGM yet fingerstick would just show a mild rise and again a few hours later the numbers came back together on their own. This was the worst scenario because you have to really think about anything ingested in the past several hours and sometimes we just do stupid little things out of habit that later we say I can’t believe I actually did that.
Our diets are not the same so you may have something different popping that high CGM reading, but my guess it is more food-related than anything else. When you get them try to remember if there is repeated intake of the same food or even something like a spice.
You are going to get this sorted out, I know you are.
I always calibrate when the arrow is horizontal, but I will pay more attention to it now. The next time I have a reading that is really off, I will try to analyze the situation more carefully.
Marilyn,
Looks like you got great advice you need for G5.
I will say, the G6 is simple to insert. Scary simple and I find it to be 99% accurate. I cant believe I do not test but once a week anymore.
I eat like you so that helps with the accuracy too. LFPB easy on the sensor.
Best wishes!
I have seen several comments like this. But if testing only once/week, how do you know how G6 compares to BG on average? I still test 2-3 times/day, in beginning and after extending sensor, and get mixed cases of how accurate it is.
Oh my goodness! Having only every used the G6, the G4/5 inserter looks primitive and just terrible!
What a pain in the butt. Though I guess worth it, if it works for you. I never saw an insertion video for them before.
The first month, its hard to NOT test. Once you see how accurate it is, there is no need. Th trust factor is real. if ever, I think it is wrong, of course I test.
I haven’t used my G5 in over a week and I don’t miss it. I have had two higher readings that I could have caught earlier then I did, but most of my many fingerstick readings have been where they should be.
I sleep so much better without wearing the CGM. I don’t mind finger testing at all and do it often. It is much easier to do this now that I am not working, but I didn’t find it very difficult then.
I know that you all think I am a bit nuts because I don’t use the latest technology, but I have had very low A1c’s for almost 20 yrs.
I would never go without a CGM if I didn’t always wake up when low. For some odd reason while awake I am becoming like I used to be, very aware of where I am even without testing. For awhile I couldn’t tell when I was low, but now I can tell when I drop below 75. I can’t tell when I am high though and I like to stay below 165, so for me that means a lot of testing or wearing my CGM.
So sorry to hear that it has not worked out for you so far. Hope that you give it another try some time next year. It sounds like you set your alarms for what you determined were your high and low tolerance limits. Perhaps, if this is the case and you decide to take another try at using the CGM, you establish anticipatory alarms. These can be based on the rate your BG is climbing or falling or you can set a tighter tolerance. With a tighter tolerance, you get more alarms but they start way before your BG goes high or low. The advantage is that you catch a slowly trending low or high before your sleep time and can correct so that you do not get those pesky alarms between midnight and 4 AM.
In the meantime, Dexcom algorithms will certainly get even better so there will be less tweaking and fudging on the part of the patient.
I am not surprised based on your good control history that you shun the latest and greatest technologies. I am surprised, however, knowing how pig headed (in a good way of course) you are that you gave up the CGM and hope to see you give it another try next year.
Best wishes to you and your family for this holiday season!!!
Me, pigheaded CJ?? Me? Yep, you got it. LOL I figure that is one of the reasons I have done so well all these years.
I was talking with some non diabetic friends the other day who were saying that they just listen to their doctors and take what prescriptions that they are given. They don’t question and don’t look up side effects. I can’t imagine, I really can’t. Life might be easier though. I can’t imagine not questioning professionals.
I will probably put my CGM back on in a day or two. I set it for 70 and 150 during the day and 55 and 170 at night because I don’t like to be disturbed. Without the CGM I have been going to bed with a glucose reading of about 120 and waking up at 6:30 with a reading of 70-100. I usually test once during the night, but haven’t needed insulin. I sometimes wonder if I am calmer not having to worry about which side I am sleeping on or if an alert is going to go off.
Sometimes I will have readings that I can’t account for, but that isn’t too terribly often. If I eat something unexpected which is rare, I give a shot.
May I ask why you don’t use a pump? I would think that you would enjoy the technology and be very good at figuring it out.
My endo has always felt that using my digital pen that doses in 0.1u increments, although more work than a pump, gives me better control. I have been able to stay 100% TIR with a std dev 0f 17-18% over 30 day periods on Dexcom Clarity with BG range of 55-150 6AM-10PM and 55-130 10PM to 6AM. This time of year with holiday, birthday and office parties I get a little out of hand and drop to 97% TIR. The real reason, however, I have not gone on the pump is that until recently for the past 10+ years I was commuting to my offices in China and India every 3 weeks from the East Coast. The back and forth across the International dateline was raising hell with all time sensitive electronics, even items as simple as blood glucose meters and if I did not adjust for the approximate 12 hour time difference depending on time of the year, the software for all these would show me eating breakfast, for example, at 8AM for a few weeks then 8PM. When it came to taking insulin after crossing dateline in one direction software would say I missed a few doses after advancing BG meter/CGM etc. 12 hours and in the other direction that I can’t take insulin when setting my units back 12 hours because I had already taken insulin for those times. Drove my endo nuts trying to adjust what the charts were saying and comparing.
Great answer. I can’t imagine figuring all of that out. I also can’t imagine using less than 1/2 of a unit and it making any difference to me. I am happy that I have a Novolog pen that measures in 1/2 units though.
