Insecure CGM

"I think it's just insecure mom."

This is what my son tells me as his dexcom asks for calibration, again.  What a crack-up he is.  He has the greatest attitude about all of this.  When we got our diagnosis in December we knew right away that we wanted to take advantage of the option to have a continuous glucose monitor but we had to wait 30 days.  It actually took quite a bit longer than that to get everything situated with our insurance company but thankfully we worked it all out.  

I'm frequently amazed at how quickly we humans can get accustomed to new situations.  We haven't even been handling type 1 diabetes for 6 months yet but it has fit itself into our routines and our lives and I have to make a conscious effort now to recall how things were before (most of the time).  Sometimes I do feel frustrated by the inconvenience of it all but then I remember that my child gets to live a full and productive life and that wasn't always the case for people with diabetes so I quite my whining.  

So we've been using the dexcom for several months now and are on our seventh session.  This time though our dexcom was struggling for some reason.  It started as soon as the session warm up ended and the alert went off asking for a calibration.  My son and I looked at each other in confusion.  We do sometimes calibrate it on the first day because we find it reads low for him and we don't like to treat a low when he is certain he isn't low.  So we shrugged and giggled a bit about how it was just anticipating what we were going to do anyway and we calibrated.  No big deal.  

Ten minutes later my son is back out with another calibration alert.  Hmmm. Okay, we calibrate again and the dex and finger stick are reading within 10 of each other so I put it out of my mind.  For about an hour and he's back out.  That first day I got so frustrated with it which is silly.  The G5 required calibration but we'd come into CGM with the G6 and have never known anything else.  It doesn't require a calibration unless symptoms aren't matching the reading but suddenly we're doing finger pokes all day which is what I wanted to avoid by getting a CGM.  I even looked for a way to turn off the calibration alert but nope, can't find it, have to ignore it or do the calibration.  I do NOT want to teach my son to ignore alerts so we calibrated over and over again.  The numbers were always pretty close; nothing of concern. 

The next day it asked for a couple of calibrations and I reached out to an online community regarding this.  Many other people said sometimes they get a faulty sensor or their dexcom doesn't read well when the child isn't drinking enough.  We haven't been on the sensor long enough to have any extra supplies.  As a matter of fact, they will be sending us our next 3 month supply when we are on our LAST DAY of my existing supply (and due to insurance I can't get this any faster?). So I didn't want to change the sensor early.  Finally by day four it had fallen into a pattern of wanting calibration once a day at around bedtime.  By day 7, as I was putting my son to bed only to make him get up and wash his hands and poke his finger, I said "sorry about this dexcom." 

My bright, intelligent, and funny 11-year-old responded "I think it is just insecure mom."  

I giggled and said "What do you mean?"

"You know.  Oh no, what if I'm not the right number? Maybe I better check? Fingers crossed.  Hopefully I'm good?  Am I, am I?  Okay, I'm good.  or am I?"

Funny kid.  Thankfully this sensor session ended and we put on a new one.  It has been three days and hasn't once asked for a calibration.