When I am calibrating the Dex, I try & make a point of washing my hands first just to make sure I am not putting in readings that are way off.
I don’t use One Touch, I’m on the Freestyle that is built into the PDM that comes with the OmniPod.
To minimize chances of infection, I clean the sensor site with special care before inserting a new sensor. I wash the site with soap and water. Then I scrub the site many times first with TacAway wipes and then with alcohol prep wipes. I do this with enough vigor that my skin becomes a little pink. This cleans the area really well. After this careful cleaning, I find the standard DexCom adhesive with stay tight until I remove the sensor. So far I have not had any indications of infection. As a matter of fact, when I remove the sensor after 14 days there is hardly a mark where the sensor probe pierced my skin. Of course skin sensitivity is very variable from person to person. I consider myself lucky because I do not have the reactions reported by others.
This is a very helpful thread!! I just got my Dexcom a few days ago and had some pretty wild readings for the first 36 hours. There were some periods that it functioned well in that settling in period but other times that it was dangerously inaccurate. For example, when I had finished a morning workout the Dex meter said 103 and continued to stay at 103 for some time. In fact my BG had dropped to 49! I will make sure to ignore the readings or at least double check them during periods of rapid BG change (like exercise) during the settling in period.
Has anyone else experienced a 36 hour settling in period? I hope this is not the norm. I think that I may have calibrated improperly initially and that this is why it took 36 and not 24 hours to settle in. By this I mean that I did not wait long enough between the calibrations and may have done it at an unstable BG period. Not sure, but it is working great now!! Lots of great comments here.