I’m on day 23 here now of this Dexcom G5 sensor and it’s still working great (although the first 2 days were somewhat sketchy). Wondering what the longest anyone else had gotten out of a sensor?
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I’ve gotten 9 days out of one! I’m usually lucky to get a week.
16 days…14 days usually
We have had a sensor last 26 days, but the data was pretty jumpy the last couple of days.
36 days is my record although my average is typically in the 20-25 day range.
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The KING !!! 
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Back in the STS3 days (3 day sensor, the initial release of Dexcom) I had a sensor last 21 days. At that time no one wore the sensors for only three days. Seven or eight seemed to be the average.
I pay out of pocket, so I stretch out sensors as long as I can. Most last 3 weeks, occasionally one will last 5 or 6 weeks. I put a layer of opsite under and over the sensor adhesive.
Sometimes towards the end of their life they act up for 1-2 hours and then go back to normal for a while.
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Do you punch the needle right through the opsite? Or cut out a little hole?
^look a case study that when people are the ones paying for their own predictable medical expenses, they seek and find better value with their own money than they do with others’. If we could apply that simple truth and logic across 350 million people, it would solve a lot of the USAs problems
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Punch it through. I feel a bit nervous doing it (opsite is non-sterile) but it’s far too hard to line up the hole correctly.
Cool, you’re not the first person I’ve heard of punching right through the film barrier, it makes a great deal of sense that the adhesive would hold up better if you’re not sweating directly into it… I think I’ll give this a try soon
I actually do it because the Dexcom adhesive seems to make me terribly itchy after a few days, I’m probably allergic to it. When I don’t put a layer of opsite underneath, all the scratching loosens the sensor pretty quickly. Sometimes I stick things under it to scratch!
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Well this one made it to day 28… and after the third restart just got too noisy to be worth it anymore… not bad since it’s really only my 3rd sensor, and I pulled the second one off after just like 3 days because it was very uncomfortable… thr first one I kept on for about 20 days…
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Amazing! We hardly ever do more than 14.
My longest time is 16 days. But I swim a lot, so it’s hard to keep it very long.
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Lately, I’ve been able to get from 20-25 days per sensor.
Adhesives don’t typically like my skin. So when doing some research/ reconnaissance work before getting a CGM, I read several posts from users who placed their sensors directly on a bandaid tough pad (punch through it when inserting the sensor) then cover the whole thing with another thin adhesive/ Tegaderm-with a hole for the transmitter). Have used this process from the beginning and it’s worked well so far!!
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Lisa, this is really awesome, in particular given your adhesive sensitivity! When do you typically start seeing service drops? And what part of the body do you use?
I think you should start a specific thread in the CGGM subcat about adhesive allergies and what you do – it is really a great success.
I typically see some noise in the data after day 18 or so (see data from today; day 21). I always have my sensor on either back of the arm or back ok the calf (I also created new thread on this). `
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I am afraid we have a new champion. Stephen Ponder (the man himself) tweeted he got to 42 days:
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Well, I guess we better invite him to our forum to celebrate…