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Permalink Reply by Rickst29 on May 17, 2008 at 5:54pm

I meant a long "trip". And the "fuel surcharge" airplane costs are pretty bad, but once you get here, USA vacations are really cheap for anyone paying with Pounds or Euros or Canadian Dollars.


After 6 years of paying for our criminal war with $Trillions of newly printed "dollars" backed by nothing except IOUs to future retirees, you all aren't thrilled to exchanging them for your REAL money anymore. :))


If you will be paying your own real money, then it might make sense to visit USA friends and get the prescription from and Endocrinologist in USA. Although the Sensors are labeled to "expire" only about 4 months after they're made, they seem to almost always last longer than that if you keep them in a wine refrigerator at 45-50F (about 5C).

The 7-day Sensors are more expensive than the "3-day" I still use: 60$USD each. Minimed is still selling there Sensors for $35 each, but their monitor and "transmitter" attachment are MUCH more expensive than Dexcom's. Dexcom's startup kit (monitor and transmitter) can be had for about $400.

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Permalink Reply by Rickst29 on May 17, 2008 at 5:43pm

The "5-day" Abbott Sensors can be restarted, just like the Dexcom "7-day" Sensors. (Although the warm-up time is again 10 hours, not just 2 hours.) You were complaining that Dexcom gives you at least two low readings per day--

I hope that my response to the older (post is confusing-- but I wanted to respond to "Abbott is only good for five days" right where it was said.

Kurt, you've now had at least two more weeks with Dexcom, and I hope that any "flase" lows have been resolved by changing to another site? Because if they're false alarms, and you've tried alternate sites, then I'd say that Dexcom is just not working for you, and you should definitely switch.

But do be absolutely sure about this: If you BUY Abbott and and find that it's no better, or find that you don't like the warm-ups, it then Abbott (unlike Dexcom) keeps your money. Like Minimed, they say, "tough, you bought it, it's yours, we're keeping your money."
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Obviously the "problem" of using an Ultra, instead of the meter you like, has gone away with the new Dexcom... although some people don't like the very rapid speed with which the buttons change the number up and down, it's hard to stop at the number you want. Do take note that you CAN'T just go and but an Ultra-2 from the store-- the older calibrated-by-wire Dexcom models, including the Seven, *require* the original Ultra "model 1" (same strips, but it's getting hard to find that meter).

If you are now having great accuracy with Dexcom and only "whining" that you must use a slightly more painful/more expensive meter, then you are very spoiled-- but that's GOOD, I would love if that was my only problem. I cannot last for 10 hours at night, poking and poking and poking every 1/2 hour. I used to do that, it always made me very ill tempered the next day. So I would have to very carefully "kill" the Abbott early to make sure the 10 hour wait NEVER happened at night, and the warm up time would be disruptive if I was driving around and working at customer sites-- which I do a lot.

Dex works for me, but if it's not working for you, I'd seriously look at one Abbott. I know a woman who switched, she is NOT going back to Dexcom. Not ever. She's thrilled!

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Permalink Reply by Khürt Williams on May 18, 2008 at 5:54pm

Actually I decided that CGMS might be useless for me. I am disappointed because I thought the CGMS would free me from numerous finger pricks ( not painful, just annoying ) and provide alerts on dangerous lows. But the Dexcom kept beeping low or high when 3 separate glucometers would say otherwise. For me it was unreliable.

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Permalink Reply by Jacki on May 19, 2008 at 2:47am

Okay, so you don't need to use the One Touch Ultra 2 for the DexCom anymore. That is old news that you have read. This winter they came out with a new version that uses any meter you just imput it manually, not a big deal.

I have a DexCom and I think it is great. the Sensors are very easy to put in. I don't like that you have to plug it in to recharge it but such is like.

The Navigator could be cool. I wore the sensor for a few days and I am not getting one becuase the sensor and transmitter are way too big for me. It is about twice the size of the DexCom. but I have to say when they come out with a smaller transmitter I am going to look into it.

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Permalink Reply by Peter on June 20, 2008 at 11:49pm

Maybe some FreeStyle Navigator User here can help me. I am on my fourth sensor and I have had nothing but false BG readings. The Navigator tells me that I am high when in fact I am low, tells me I'm low when I am high. I have had 4 hypoglycemic episodes, one 49 - Navigator said I was 98, one 57 - Navigator said I was 132, one I don't know because I was too low to even check my blood but the Navigator said I was 102. I bought this meter to warn me of lows which it is not doing. I worked with the Abbott Customer Service for hours but no answer on what might be causing the discrepancies between what the CM says and what the manual BG says.

I do not mind a discrepancy of 10 or even 20 but 50 or more is not acceptable!

I would appreciate anyone that might be able to give me some advice or their experiences with the FreeStyle Navigator.

Thanks,

Peter

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Permalink Reply by Manny Hernandez on July 9, 2008 at 4:16am

Amy Tenderich just posted her review of the Navigator:
http://www.diabetesmine.com/2008/07/abbott-navigator-a-first-look.html

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Permalink Reply by jm on July 10, 2008 at 12:27pm

I have the Dexcom for about 1.5 years now and the sensors have been lasting approx 14days...it is a useful tool for checking the trends and for sometimes checking my sugar level..i find that the meter has been off about 100-150 points 3-4 times per week...and i am thinking this is because of a couple of reasons,..i am triathlete and the sensor moving will cause problems,...but the strange thing is the sensor when i am on the bike, i am not using the stomach muscles and i think the sensor is not moving and i will see my readings on the Dexcom flatline for about 2 hours, and i check my sugar every 30minutes, and they are exactly what my Dexcom is saying...but then when i sleep, i must be moving my sensor, because i will see the readings go from 200 down to 100 and miss readings...and then i wake up and the Dexcom is not accurate with my finger stick....but then on some nights, i will see a good "trend value"...my personal opinion is that the guy that wrote the Algorithm for this Dexcom was not a diabetic...the good news is that in the near future you will be able to use your own BSmeter and insert the data by hand..this is supposedly coming soon for all Dexcom owners...another thing, i don't care what BSmeter you have, the allowable tolerance for BSmeters is +/-10%...so once your dexcom has been warmed up for 2 hours, i would take 3 finger sticks and average them myself and then plug that value in to calibrate the meter...i tried an experiment with AccuChek, OneTouch, and Keynote(supposedly a very accurate meter)...and all of these showed variance of greater than 10%...to me the Dexcom device is only good for trending or when i am in very stable and my meter is flat-lining(for example when i am driving or flying for business or in a long boring meeting...) then i will look at the meter and know my sugar level is probably +/- 20points of what the Dexcom is saying...

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