new to cgms

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Permalink Reply by Melitta on June 17, 2009 at 8:54pm

Hi Antonia: I have started on the Guardian recently. It took me awhile to get my insurance to pay for it. There are pluses and minuses to it. It is "first generation" technology, and that is really obvious when you start using it. It just isn't as accurate or as easy to use as I would like. That being said, there are ways that it has been really good for me. I have been able to adjust my nighttime basal rates to remain steadier in the night. If I get a good insertion site and good calibration, it is really accurate.

Bad stuff: readings lag behind blood glucose, so not very helpful when you are doing vigorous exercise (it just doesn't track). If the insertion/calibration are not just right, readings aren't good and you can get alarms all the time, very annoying. I sat through "Angels and Demons" with the low alarm going off every half hour, and I wasn't low. Insertion sites can go bad very easily.

I sure am glad I waited for my insurance to pay rather than out of pocket. It just doesn't measure up to the excellence of present-day insulin pumps. All that said, I am glad I have it.

Read people's comments in the forums and you will learn a lot about how to get good results from your Guardian!

Best of luck, Melitta

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Permalink Reply by Joseph Boyd on June 21, 2009 at 2:23pm

My thought mirror Melitta's. We have been using the Guardian for 3 days now, and sometimes the numbers are 4 or 5 points away from an OmnPod/Freestyle reading, and sometimes it is off by 50 points.

However, that being said, it alerted us to a hypo last night at 2:30am. The Guardian said Austin (3) was at 80 (beeps when under 100) and after checking his finger, he was 50ish. He did not wake up, and the Guardian was the only reason we knew he was too low. We will continue using it!!!

Congrats on the ins approval!

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Permalink Reply by Beowulf on June 26, 2009 at 5:31pm

I don't use the Guardian, but I use it's sister version with MM's Paradigm pump. Basically it's the pump and the Guardian in one case. One thing to always remember is to know that it is a somewhat rare occurance to have the sensor and a finger stick BG to be the same. It does happen but not that often. Mine is usually within about 10 points of a fingerstick. Also, the sensor (all of the brands) don't read whole blood. Rather, they read interstitial fluid. This causes a lag time of generally about 15 minutes.

As for calibrating...make sure you pick good times to do it. Generally the best times are when you get up in the morning, right before lunch, and just before going to bed. This is because these times are when you haven't usually eaten or taken a bolus for a couple hours. And your BG should be relatively stable. Don't calibrate too often because that will just mess the whole works up.

Basically, like Melitta said, if you don't have a good insertion and good calibrations it won't work well for you. But once you get a good technique down it works wonderfully for recognizing trends so that you can correct oncoming issues.

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