Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Sensor Sensitivity

My insurance company finally made the decision to cover continuous glucose monitors.

I didn't waste any time.

I did a week trial of the Dexcom Seven Plus, liked it, and ordered one for myself.

It arrived a few days ago.

Today, I started using the Dex officially, after a rep came to my house and showed me exactly how to put in a sensor and hook the thing up.

I'm used to manually inserting my pump infusion sets, and I typically go really slow when injecting something.

When I tried that today with the Dexcom sensor inserter, it hurt.

Like four-letter-word hurt.

I'm glad I only have to insert these things every week (or longer, depending how long the sensor will last.)

But any advice? Those sensors sort of scare me right now.

6 comments:

Bernard said...

You can change the angle slightly when inserting and that sometimes helps. I've found it stings badly about 30% of the time. As I type I'm still on my first sensor on the Dexcom 7+, that's after 11 days!

Anonymous said...

I feel like I'm totally following in your footsteps lol, I started the Ping a little while after you, and I've been thinking about going ahead with the Dexcom, as well...I even checked out their website a couple of days ago bc I heard that my insurance just started covering CGMS, as well - I have an endo appt. in 2 wks. so I figured I'll get the script then and go from there...looking forward to reading your thoughts on it all!

Scott K. Johnson said...

Congrats! That is great news! I mean, not the hurting and stuff, but the coverage. :-)

Anne Findlay said...

congrats. What insurance do you have?

Anne Findlay said...

kaiser permanente. still won't cover me unless I start having more severe lows or start passing out all the time.
I'm annoyed (to put it politely). I might have enough lows but I usually have a bunch of lows and then not as many rather than a certain number every week (<50), which is the requirement.

Michelle Kowalski said...

Go fast with the inserter. I was expecting more of a pop like my MM quickserter, but didn't get that. Find skin that isn't at a bend point. I put a sensor in a place on my abdomen once that I didn't realize was so flexible and got horribly choppy readings and the adhesive only lasted about two days.