Underwhelmed with first 24 hours on the Dexcom

Just thought I would provide an update, and thank everyone for the advice because the last two weeks have been awesome.

  1. I had the bad luck of running into a bad patch of sensors. That was a total buzzkill, but Dexcom’s customer service quickly got replacements to me.

  2. I thought that every BG reading should be entered for calibration purposes (makes sense, right?), but as many people pointed out, that’s dead wrong. I’m entering maybe four readings per day while I’m at a steady state, and the Dexcom has been eerily accurate at telling me my blood sugar. Dexcom’s user manual is not so good on this point.

  3. This device is indispensible in catching highs. With the info I’ve received from the Dexcom, I have become religious about bolusing well before meals, and I have reprogrammed my nighttime basal rates to better compensate for dawn effect. This would be all but impossible with a standard glucometer.

Despite a very rocky start with bad sensors and a user manual that could use some revision, they’re going to have to pry this thing from me. Thanks again to everyone for their help.

Wow - that’s a great update! I’m glad it’s working so well. I was very excited the first few hours Caleb was using it. Since then we’ve had many bumps and I am quite less enthused.

Caleb has yet to have a night without a large blackout period. Essentially, Dexcom has not been at all useful at night. After the first 3 nights, we changed the sensor. Then had 2 nights on a new one with slightly better results and then the receiver dies. Just finished another two nights with a new receiver and the majority of the time was ??? and then this morning woke up to a LOW alarm and he was 131.

I have watched Caleb at night and the transmitter is not at all constrained - he is not on a waterbed nor does he use an electric blanket. Days are pretty much spot on with Dexcom, but I have now come to expect that once Caleb falls asleep I will see ???. It’s like when Caleb sleeps so does Dexcom.

I need to call Tech support again, but based upon the conversation we had the first time with this, I’m not expecting any revelations.