OK, so yesterday morning, I started the MM CGMS....... The day was ok..... however last night, the stupid thing did nothing but keep me up....... It alarmed that it had a weak signal, then it lost the sensor, then it didnt calibrate last night, so at 3:30am I had to check my BG and it was 500.... ( My DR. has me on a lower level of insulin at night, becuase he is afriad of my nightime lows) when I went to put in the BG it only goes up to 400....... I hardly slept last night and do not want to go through that again!
I also started my mm cgm yesterday. I didn't have any of the problems you did, but I am very sore around my sensor. If I move or bend it is very painful and also painful to touch near it. My CDE told me to try to keep the pump as close to the cgm as possible and so far it has been doing very good. They set my low alarm at 90mg/dl and my high at 240mg/dl. Due to the lapse in time between blood and interstitial fluid readings. This way I wont be at 45mg/dl when I get an alarm for hypoglycemia and it won't aggravate me after I have eaten if it should rise or I mis calculated my carbs. The CDE told me to keep an eye on the readings after my meals to not let it get this high of course. Hope you have a better night tonight!
I spoke with the on-call dr. and they raised my basal rate up to .6 per hour, rather than .5 They were concerend over my overnight lows, but I havent had any...... Hopefully, I will have a better night tonight! My low is set at 80 and my high at 300, as I am on a conservative rates, until we fine tune everything.......... I'm sorry to hear that your sensor site hurts..... I know The needle freaks me out and I will probably have to have my husband do it for me, as the areas where i can put it, are hard to manuever...... The only thing that hurt was the needle coming out of the site, not going in.........
Have you tried that tape to put over the site? I had it on yesterday, but when I took a shower today, the tape came undone.... so I took it off..... The sensor has been fine, the only drawback to the tape, it that when you remove it, it leaves the sensor and the area sticky....similar to when you take a band-aid off........
I hope ou sight feels better! Good Luck and let me know how you make out!
Sam, I also had some pain when I started the sensor, but after some time, the pain never happened again (ok, maybe once again!). At the beginning though, it was painful since you know how you have to insert the sensor at a certain angle? Well, lets just say that I barely got a B in high school geometry for a reason! I wasn't inserting the sensor properly. Once I learned from my mistake, life was much less painful.
As for my alarm thing-a-ma-bob, since I was pretty controlled before I got on the pump and sensor, my nurse put the alarm at 80 and at 220, but over time I have changed it to 75 (b/c it keeps beeping at night when at 80 when I was always fine) and my high is now set at 180. So far so good!
Kristy, you mentioned that when you inserted the BG, it only went up to 400? Isn't your glucose monitor's code inserted to your pump so you can get the readings sent directly to the pump? But either way, I was playing around with my pump right now and the BG's allow me to far exceed the 500s (I didn't exactly see what the max was). Or is it that I just didn't understand what you meant? Hmmm....
Well, I wish you all the best of luck with your CGMs! Let me just tell you that it has truly helped me out since I had never realized some of the peaks I was having during the day!
This is an interesting conversation that could be very helpful to others. You two should consider keeping this conversation going until you've settled in to a comfortable and working routine for each of you. Thanks for sharing.
IN all honesty, I do know wexactly what I was doing, as it was 3am......... I didnt want to calibrate the damn thing, becuase it wasnt a tsable BG, but I wouldnt shut off (UGH!) I actually wound up watching a movie until 430am with my husband, so that I could check to see that my BG went down after my bolus.......
MY CDE shut the auto feature off, as it would make the sensor alarm and mess up the calibrations....... I'm hoping that tonight will be better, as I need my ZZZZZ's....... MY on-call up'ed my basal at night, so well will see how that goes........
Sorry, think i got off track...... My meter goes up higher than the sensor, the sensor only registers from (40-400) made me calibrate it at 3am ( ilost the signal when I calibrated it the last time.....
Have a good night, I am off to bed hopefully without any disctractions tonight!
I got the same MM CGM a year ago (almost to the day), and I've figured out a couple of things that might help you out:
1) If you want to wear your sensor at night while it's running, put it in in the morning, between the hours of 9 and 5. Then, after you've done the initial calibration, take your blood at night, right before bed (like at 10 or 11). That way, you won't have to calibrate again until twelve hours after.
2) If you don't mind not having it running for one night, but want to have it ready to go in the morning, but the CGM in before you go to bed, but don't turn it on. Once it's been in your skin overnight, you'll be able to wake up, immediately turn it on and calibrate it, plus you won't have to do the whole getting up thing to calibrate.
I'll tell you, though, man, those overnight alarms are ANNOYING. I went to England with my old college roommate, and every time the pump would go off, she'd wake up and yell at me. (Not that she isn't an awful *#&@& becuase, as I learned on that trip, she is, so eventually it started to become my passive agressive way of getting back at her.) But it IS annoying at 3 AM to have to get up for a calibration.
In regards to the original post, ditto! My doctors told me when I got mine (I have the same, MM CGM) I'd probably want to throw it out the window the first night. Seems funny, but boy were they right! A lot of my alarms were false, meaning my blood sugars really weren't low or high when the CGM alerted me. If this is the case, try calebrating (my doctors say "when your blood sugar is stable and you aren't going up or down," but when does that ever happen??) and eventually it should even out. Also, about the alarms themselves (this may be completly off topic) vibrate is less annoying in middle of the night, but more me it is also harder to wake up to. Don't know if this helped... :)
OK, I ifgured that I wil just keep putting BG's in that are stable. that way I wont have to calibrate at 3am......
I have to say that I dont know if this thing really does any good..... I'm finding it very off from my finger sticks....... and it seems more like a pain in the rump than anything else (or it could just be that I had a BAD day at work today) either way, I'm slightly crabby, after having some wacky BG's today (stress seems to bump the BG's up and up and up)
So glad to hear everything has calmed down with your cgm. I had to remove mine. The pain got worse and upon the advice of my CDE and MM rep (who is an RN), they think it got infected or I am having an allergic reaction to the platinum. They want me to insert a new sensor, but the last one was so painful I really don't want to. I know exactly what you mean about the stress. My life lately has been one huge amt of stress. I hate this time of year for one. It is very depressing. The weather, memories of those who have passed this time of year and all that. But among other things I have been having terrible pain in my legs. For quite a while now. After mentioning it to the Doc, they think its either Peripheral Artery Disease, or blood clots. Wow great news! I also have some leakage in both eyes. And also other health related issues. As far as my job goes... I like my job, make excellent money and have a killer pension plan. My insurance sucks. I have to pay for all of my pump disposables every month out of pocket. They do pay on the insulin and test strips but thats all. Since they payed 85% on my pump they feel the least I can do is buy the $200.00 worth of supplies every month. I have exhausted my options fighting this with no luck what so ever. My job is very hard physically on me as well. And with all the health problems piling up I don't know how long I can keep doing this type of work. I want very bad to go back to school and get a degree in something that would not be so physically demanding and have better insurance. But due to family and mortgage, and health debts etc. thats not an option. So I can also appreciate what the stress is doing to your BG and general well being!
Sorry for the rant, and stream of "whoa is me" but I needed to vent I guess.
Hope everyone has a very merry, safe, and blessed Holiday!!!
I understand what you are saying about the CGM, my son( 6 yr old ) wears one periodically to fine tune his basals. He is actually wearing one tonight. We go 7 days, our educator mentioned to us that the CGM becomes more acurate the longer you wear it. Hmmm.
He has been using it on and off since last year and we have found that: the alarms are annoying but for us, very reassuring for the lows at night, a pain to calibrate , as you said " when is the BG stable", where to find enough fat on him to put it so it is functional , how accurate is the info. He complains about the pain on insertion even with Emla cream and my husband can't stand the size of the needle, so we only use it now and then. Maybe someday the needle will be smaller, the CGM more accurate, and cheaper.
OK..... I have about had it with the MM CGMS........ I am at the point where I only wear it when I am adjeustung rates...... I have called MM support a few times, becuase on more than three occassions, my CGMS said my BG was over 150 and I was really low, like 50's or 60's......
When i called to report this, they said it could be a calibration error, so I stick to the 2 times per day when my BG is stable......
I also found that sometimes one sensor is better than another..... My husband says the CGMS is more trouble than it's worth(especially when it alarms at night waking him up!)
anyone else disappointed with the MM CGMS? I know it's not perfect, but it doesnt seem worth the pain with insertion for all the problems!
I have a Minimed CGM and it is very very very important to only calibrate when you have not eaten anything and not when you are experiencing a high or low blood sugar. It will cause the exact things you are mentioning. I calibrate 3 times a day. Two times isn't enough to calibrate because then you miss the whole middle of the day.
This is how I do it.
I wake up I check my blood then I calibrate...
Then at about 4pm I will calibrate again. It is enough time after eating lunch and before dinner to get the sensor really working well.
My next calibration isn't until right before I go to bed around 11pm. It is a good time to calibrate too because I eat dinner at around 6-7pm and the CGM won't wake you up at 3am to calibrate which is probably what is happening to you because you only calibrate 2 times a day. The way I do it overrides the automatic calibration in the pump.
It has only been a couple of days since you are wearing it you have to get yourself on a schedule with it and learn the alarms etc.. and work it out for your own body as well.
I have also had pain in certain areas of my body where it hurts more than others. I noticed the higher up in my abdomen the more it hurts and my CDE said sometimes the way you inject it in may not be at an actual 45 degree angle and that may cause the pinching feeling you get. Sometimes you hit capallaries too and the site will bleed. I have had all these kind of things happen.
As far as your lows there is a lag between the cgm and when you actually become low. For me it was a lot of trial and error but I finally have it down. I was writing down all of my lows and what the cgm said. I then noticed when I was at 90 on my pump, my finger stick was 70 so I put the low setting on the cgm to 100 this way it starts beeping before I am hitting the 70 and there is time to do something about it.
Now, If you have high readings during the night that are driving you crazy you can set your HIGH setting to 250 or above... this way you arent waking up a lot. It will only start alarming if you are low which is more important when you are sleeping. The beeping does drive me crazy as well but you can also put your setting to vibrate.
When you signed up to get the CGM you knew it wasn't going to be easy. It is still a piece of machinery that isn't perfect adjust it to your schedule and what your body tells you and you will see that the CGM will work to your benefit.