It's alive... and more interesting information
What a day it was... I inserted the new sensor yesterday around noon after giving up on the old one, waited two hours, did the calibration... and it didn't work right out the gate. Similar behavior; "???" most of the time, gaps with fingersticks, etc.
Eventually I spoke to Dexcom's Christine again (who has been tremendous but must be getting tired of me by now) and she suggested what I already knew - restart the sensor. I did so, and lo and behold, it started working normally!
Two things about this:
1) it goes to show how addictive the system is. I was literally depressed friday night and yesterday when I couldn't use it, and became quite irritable. Once you get on it, it's very, very difficult to consider not having it.
2) there is an important distinction to be made between weird behavior on the first 12 hours and after them. Apparently, although the symptoms were similar, the first sensor was indeed failing. The second, however, did not fail. Instead, what was going on is that it didn't get fully saturated during the first 2-hour period, leading to the messy readings.
When this was explained to me, I could immediately correlate it to something else. The first sensor I put in felt comfortable in 20 minutes or so. The second sensor, maybe because I put it at an odd angle or was struggling too much after insertion or whatever else, still felt a little awkward several hours later - I could feel the little needle, quite easily if I pressed lightly on the transmitter. That feeling eventually went away sometime before I did the rest. Related? maybe.
Eventually I spoke to Dexcom's Christine again (who has been tremendous but must be getting tired of me by now) and she suggested what I already knew - restart the sensor. I did so, and lo and behold, it started working normally!
Two things about this:
1) it goes to show how addictive the system is. I was literally depressed friday night and yesterday when I couldn't use it, and became quite irritable. Once you get on it, it's very, very difficult to consider not having it.
2) there is an important distinction to be made between weird behavior on the first 12 hours and after them. Apparently, although the symptoms were similar, the first sensor was indeed failing. The second, however, did not fail. Instead, what was going on is that it didn't get fully saturated during the first 2-hour period, leading to the messy readings.
When this was explained to me, I could immediately correlate it to something else. The first sensor I put in felt comfortable in 20 minutes or so. The second sensor, maybe because I put it at an odd angle or was struggling too much after insertion or whatever else, still felt a little awkward several hours later - I could feel the little needle, quite easily if I pressed lightly on the transmitter. That feeling eventually went away sometime before I did the rest. Related? maybe.
posted by Blinkered at 8:06 AM
1 Comments:
I generally try to put a new sensor in around 10PM. Then I don't restart it until first thing the next day. So it's several hours before I try to switch it on. That generally gives me really good results.
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