At Home With Dad

My seven day trail with the Dexcom Seven Plus CGM is over. It was a sad day for me to turn over the demo unit. As I walked away, I felt a little naked. A little vulnerable. No longer could I just look down and see my current blood sugar. Each finger stick didn’t bring comfort, but rather a series of questions. Is my blood sugar heading up? Is my blood sugar plummeting down? If so, how quickly?

So as I walked out to my car, I knew that I had to get a Dexcom Seven Plus on a more permanent basis for myself.

My experiences with CGMs began with a bad office visit late last year. My A1C was continuing to drift higher for the fourth time and I was concerned. I knew someone with a Minimed CGM and thought I would give it a whirl for a few weeks to get things settled out. The experience was frustrating, but I was able to get my basal rates set-up perfectly. But the constant alarms and sensor issues, had me thinking I wouldn’t consider buying this device. The annoyance just wasn’t worth it. Then, I began to research other CGMs and found the Seven Plus.

After seven days with the Seven Plus, I have to say I can’t wait until my own unit arrives in the mail.

During the trial, the Seven Plus was very accurate when compared to my finger sticks. During exercise, it was able to alert me when my blood sugar was low and allowed me to make the necessary corrections before trouble hit. At night, it alerted me two high periods that didn’t result in me being high for 8+ hours, but rather be normal upon waking.

But to be honest, at the doctor’s office this week I saw a chart of my blood sugar readings spread out over the course of the week using the Dexcom software and was a little embarrassed. If I could design a roller coaster ride using my data as a template, I could make millions. The highs (340+) soaring to incredible heights and the terrifying lows (40s). What an incredible ride it would be if only I could construct it. I’ll never construct this structure, but I do live it every day.

(As a quick side note, when using the Minimed CGM it seemed to level out, or smooth over, a lot of the highs and lows. So when looking at the charts, they never really showed the true highs and lows, but rather seemed to average them to a more palatable (yet inaccurate) level. When viewing the same type of data on the Dexcom, I was shocked. Any way, back to my experiences…)

Living with diabetes day after day, you know there are highs you are treating and lows that you have to correct – and quick! You are very aware that some days are truly miserable. But in the end, you think you’re doing a pretty good job of managing your diabetes. But when I  looked at that chart from the past week on the Seven Plus I could easily see why things needed to improve – and hopefully very quickly!

Things I really enjoyed about the Seven Plus include:

• Accuracy – the lows were brought to my attention in time to make the corrections. During exercise, the Seven Plus brought let me know that I was heading too low before I got there.
• Comfort – the sensor is low profile and didn’t constantly remind of its presence on my body.
• Sensor Duration – I liked being able to keep the sensor in for 7 days rather than 3 or 4. There are reports on line of folks wearing them for 14 days fairly regularly, which is even better.

Things I didn’t really enjoy about the Seven Plus include:

• Bulky Receiver – Carrying around the receiver was tedious. A couple of times I forgot the receiver when I moved around the house. I chose not to carry the receiver on my belt due to its bulk. Instead,  I would slip it into a pocket fairly well, but I just had to remember to keep it with me.
• Charging the Receiver – Every three days or so I had to charge the receiver. This is a simple enough procedure, but it did require me to stay close to the receiver while charging or lose data. While told not to, I charged it overnight with the receiver on my nightstand. I was told it would affect the RF signal, but I didn’t notice any issues.
• Giving it Back – The worst part of my seven day trail was just giving back the demo unit.

Yep, needless to say I have my insurance company figuring out my benefits to pick up one of these for myself. The process takes a little longer than I would care for, but that is pretty normal for insurance companies, right? All that aside, I’m eager for my own.

Other blog posts about my seven day trial are here: Part One & Part Two.

So I am half way through my seven day trial with my Seven Plus and things are going very well.

During the Minimed trial, I was ready to throw the thing in the pool after the first couple of days of alarms and errors. In contrast, the Dexcom Seven Plus is proving to be very accurate – often within 7-10 points of a finger stick reading – and without all the crazy errors of the Minimed Paradigm. The Minimed would beep and shake with an erroneous error far too often my enjoyment.

The Seven Plus is bringing to light both highs and lows that I was unaware of over the past four days of use. In short, I love it! The sensor is thin enough that I don’t notice it on my body at all. I think I’ve bumped into once and thought, “oh yeah, that thing is still with me.”

If I had one issue with the Seven Plus it is the receiver. It is just too big. As a man, I just don’t like carrying it on my belt like my pump. With both of them on there, it is just too much junk hanging off me. Instead I’ve been carrying the receiver in my pocket or coat over the past few days. A couple of times, I’ve left the receiver in a coat pocket and lost reception. For a woman, I think keeping the receiver in a purse would work well, but I’m not ready for the man’s bag just yet. Give me a few more years of frustration and I might be ready, who knows?

At night, the receiver is doing great just resting on my night stand, which is much better than being clipped to me. The alarm awoke me several times without any troubles. One night I wish that it would just understand that I ate too much Mexican food that night and would rather sleep than try to fix the high levels all night, but, again, it is just doing it’s job.

And a fine job it is doing. I return my new friend in a couple of days and I’m really ready to make the purchase and start wearing this thing full time. With the MiniMed Paradigm, I left the trial thinking maybe I didn’t need it, but I’m really enjoying the accuracy and simplicity of wearing the Dexcom Seven Plus.

Other blog posts on my seven day trial: Part One and Part Three.

Yesterday I met up with my Dexcom representative to test drive the Dexcom Seven Plus continuous glucose monitor. This handy device will help me manage my type-1 diabetes by testing and graphing my blood sugar readings every 5 minutes. With this data, I can adjust my insulin pump to achieve the best possible control of my diabetes.

In researching the Dexcom I found some great websites that helped me choose between the three different continuous glucose monitors on the market right now. There might other CGMs out there, but these are the ones that seem to be most popular and supported. The three  systems are:

• The Navigator by Abbott.
• The Paradigm/Guardian by Minimed.
• Seven Plus by Dexcom.

In addition, I found some sites that compared the different systems.

• Children with Diabetes Comparison
• London Medical
• Diabetes.net
• Diabetes1.org

One of the most informational sites I found described an author’s experience with the Dexcom and Minimed systems. Wil who blogs at LifeAfterDx really tipped me towards the Dexcom. He was a multi-year user of the Minimed system, but after a seven day trial with Dexcom decided to make the switch over to Dexcom’s Seven Plus. He wrote several blog posts on his experience and I highly encourage anyone considering a CGM to at least take a quick look at his observations.

After reading through Wil’s blogs, I was also inspired to share my thoughts on the Seven Plus as well. As a bit of history, this will be my first CGM, but I did wear a Minimed system on a trail basis as well. After seeing consistent discrepancies between my blood glucose meter and the Minimed CGM, I grew a little skeptical of its accuracy.  Through reading many of the websites above, I found this was a common complaint and went on a search of my own for the best CGM for me.

I read and read about the different systems and joined several different forums involving discussions between actual users of different CGMs. As a result, I felt the Dexcom was the system that best fit my needs. Accuracy was one of the main issues for me and water resistance was another. Dexcom seemed to be the leader in both of these categories. On a side note, I loved what I read about the Navigator, but a ten hour start-up period every time I would change the transmitter seemed a little daunting and took it out of the running on that basis alone.

So… On with my experience with the Dexcom. I met up with the Dexcom rep at my doctor’s office. Together we spent about half an hour going over the basics of the system while waiting in the lobby. Then, it was time to head into the doctor’s office for the “stick”. I had been dreading this all the day. While the idea of getting the CGM was very exciting, I still really dreaded the insertion. The Dexcom insertion is a more manual process than the Minimed system and that didn’t thrill me. The user has to manually push a plunger to insert the needle. The good news is that you don’t have to stare at the needle at all. I never saw it. When trying to insert the Minimed needle, I just stood frozen with it ready to insert for about half an hour. The Minimed needle is very long – not all that painful, but still very long. Huge. Ok… maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but it did take me forever to take my eyes off of it.

So, I plunged the Dexcom needle manually into my abdomen. No problems. Little pain, but nothing terrible. Then, it was just a matter of waiting out the two hour start up time before blood sugar readings started coming. The good news was that I immediately following the start up period had an alarm for a low blood sugar reading, which I hadn’t detected on my own. Great! This is the main reason I’m getting this thing. Immediately it is doing it’s job! The bad news though was upon awaking the next morning it was 80 points off from my blood sugar monitor. Not sure what to make of that.

Turns out that many folks state that the first 24 hours of a new sensor is highly inaccurate. After that, things start to fall more in line. I have yet to be able to report on that. On the other hand, the low alarm from last night was excellent! See, the Minimed system missed several low incidents. Having the Dexcom alert me of one right out the shoot is very encouraging. It was accurate with the low, but not with the high in the morning (254 v. 170).

Over the next couple of days, I’ll share my experience with the Seven Plus. (Part 2 can be found here. Part 3 Here.)

I’ve been able to play with a continuous glucose monitor the past couple of weeks and the technology is amazing. This incredible device checks my blood sugar level every five minutes. As a result, I can look down and see my blood sugar levels at all times without having to pull out a test kit.

In addition, I’ve seen countless patterns as my blood sugar levels rise and fall throughout the day. With this information, I can make adjustments to my insulin delivery for maintaining optimum levels at all times.

After talking with my physician, looks like I might be able to get one for myself. I’m looking at the Dexcom Seven Plus, which is looking to integrate with current Animas insulin pump in the future. With this new technology, I am hoping to control my diabetes much better than I have in the past couple of years. I’ll keep you posted on the process.