Wednesday, March 31, 2010
When I was a kid, my mom used to work on Easter gifts with creative frenzy. We would work on coloring eggs for hours and explore new ways to color them. Gifts included plastic eggs filled with items like jacks, crayons, jewelry and ribbons for my waist length hair. Mom also was an avid fan of L...
I've had the Dexcom CGM for several years and have recently upgraded to the Seven Plus. In my case the insurance company covers 100% of the charges. It is a great tool but its use is benefitted by relatively frequent calibrations (four per day, not just when it "demands" it). And my experience is that it sometimes does not detect a hypoglycemic condition (e.g., reads 89 when a stick test reads 35). So try to be very cognizant in how you "feel". And even sometimes this is not a sufficent protection particularly as a long-time diabetic (47 yrs. in my case) increasingly may not recognize a hypoglycemic condition. And, while you can "recycle" a given sensor performance tends to drop off. I'd stick with the one week time period.
Thanks Geoff! I am very aware of the issues you're talking about! I did a week with both dexcom and medtronic before (2 years ago) as a trial and sensors were far from perfect. My intention, and most CDE's will tell you, that the cgm should be used for trends and not meter readings. My ranges have bugged me for the last year or so and I just felt like I needed to see day to day for a while to determine what happens for me in daily routine. This will not be a replacement for testing, more an addition to see patterns.
When I went to a JDRF meeting last year and a VP from J&J talked about the problem with sensors, as did Aaron Kowalski. Much of the success of the Artificial Pancreas Project rests on the improvement of sensors. So I suspect that we will see improvements over the next couple of years as they push to get these performing better!
Thank you for your great information!
btw, I just hooked up and am sitting here in the 2 hour start up window. tap, tap, tap...