At Home With Dad

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.)