FUDiabetes

High school son won't wake up to alarms: help!

Parenting a D-Child Teen
#34

If you don’t want to use Nightscout (mine is actually bridged from the Dexcom server), then you could use Nightwatch. With that app, you can link your Dexcom to it and create custom alarms at custom ranges. You could then pair it with an external speaker for added volume if needed. Nightwatch is specifically useful if you have an Android device and/or Android watch.

http://stephenblackwasalreadytaken.github.io/NightWatch/

I know there are other apps out there, but I don’t have first-hand knowledge of them. I highly recommend getting a Nightscout site–as it is FREE and you have the ability to use those alarms to create IFTTT recipes. You can also set different alarm thresholds as a sort of backup to your primary alarms with the receiver.

In my opinion, no system is 100% without fault–so the more layers you have as backup alarms–the better.

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#35

I get Nightscout just thru dexcom share. I use it so I can get bg on my garmin when I run (if I have battery, phone signal, etc). It took an hour or so to set it up and there are decent instructions out there on the nightscout website.

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#36

Hi Michel! Thanks for the great insight. Yes I am familiar with pressure lows. Unfortunately we could not get the Dexcom to work on his belly. He was wearing it on left arm and now it is on his butt. Pressure lows don’t seem to be too much of an issue though.
Getting him to calibrate before bed is something I have really been working on, but he still forgets all the time.

I have not heard of IFTTT or NightScout. I am not very tech saavy. Can this be used with iphone?

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#37

@mlg, my wife runs the G5 app as a follower, and has an alarm on her phone that scares me half to death when it goes off. I can easily sleep through an alarm on the G5 receiver, but not the fire siren she has set up as a low ringtone.

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#38

FWIW, I had a hard time waking up to the Dexcom receiver or the phone alerts. These days, I wear cargo sweatpants to bed and keep my phone in one of the cargo pockets. I wake up every time now. Not sure why that works for me and other things don’t, but I’m glad I kept trying until I found something. (The cargo sweatpants are from LL Bean and are awesome. They might be a little warm if you live somewhere that has summer, but I live in San Francisco so it’s always cool at night.)

As far as college goes, I had a friend who lived at home during college so her parents could keep an ear out for lows. That only works if you live near a college of course.

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#39

Thanks for the tip on the cargo sweatpants…looking now @ned. BTW is way way warmer in the South Bay, lol

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#40

I have considered that as an option for my son. But I am afraid this would need to originate from him :slight_smile:

I do feel that he should be able to experience college in a dorm like everyone. But I am worried about night lows of course.

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#41

I do have the Share app on my phone so I also get his notifications. I used to get both high and low but had to change it to low only, because it alarmed so much. He does not have great control. The alarm, to me is loud and obnoxious, but it only beeps and it not continuous. I wonder if there is a way to change the alarm on his phone. I will look into this.@elver

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#42

@ned The cargo sweatpants are a great idea! He probably would not wear long pants, but might wear shorts. I will look for comfortable cargo shorts that he could wear to bed. Thanks for the tip!

We are considering having him live at home for college. We do live 9 miles from Boston, so there are lots of colleges locally. I feel bad that he has to be limited in this way. He is also planning to play baseball in college, which adds a whole new wrinkle because he experiences delayed lows after exercise.:disappointed_relieved:

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#43

Yes! There is a way to change the alarm. Some of the alarms are much more effective than others.

If you open the Dexcom app, click on the icon on the upper left, click on the first option “Alerts,” pick which Alert you want to change, click the “Sounds” option on the bottom of that menu, and then you’ll see a list of all the different types of Alert sounds. The 5-0 siren is the most annoying, but effective alarm for me.

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#44

You can “try” all the alarms. But, on the follower app, I find that, for me, that the longer lasting alarms pay off.

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#45

This is a problem at first, but eventually it becomes not loud enough, believe it or not…at least that’s been my experience. We’ve been using a CGM since Aug 2016 and back when Liam was first diagnosed I would jump up easily, but after 2 years of hearing the alarms, they somehow make their ways into my dreams and I am not hearing them as well…even though they are their same old annoying (but helpful) sounds.

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#46

@Katers87 Thank you! I will take look at that. If I can find one that is continuous rather than just beeping once every few minutes, I think that would work best. I’m sure his 14 year old brother who sleeps in the next room probably won’t think so though :wink:

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#47

He is also planning to play baseball in college, which adds a whole new wrinkle because he experiences delayed lows after exercise.:disappointed_relieved:

@mlg, i can imagine how this would be stressful for you as a mom! But it’s also really impressive! You must be proud.

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#48

Thank you @TiaG! I am proud of him. He is a great kid and a very hard worker. He’s worth all the grey hairs he gives me and all the crazy sleepless nights.

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#49

I use the cgm all the time for dosing without fingersticks, and have for several years. Here’s why I don’t find it scary. Although I use the cgm to help choose my insulin dose, I don’t depend on the accuracy of the cgm. What I mean is this: If I end up taking too much insulin, either because I misjudged the carbs or because the cgm was wrong, the cgm will show my BG dropping. No matter the cause, I’ll just take more carbs to correct that. Similarly, if my insulin dose is too low I’ll see the cgm graph rising so I’ll take more insulin. The cgm inaccuracy that I experience is almost self-correcting in the sense that when I use the cgm to guide me toward 100 mg/dL I’m taking the right action, even if the cgm was inaccurate by 20 mg/dL. And if it was off by 40 mg/dL I’m still not going to hurt myself that way. I don’t see cgm errors of 60 or more without also seeing something on the graph that warns me not to believe it. (I respect that there are some people on this forum for whom the Dex isn’t reliable like it is for me, either because of physiology or technique.)

Did the graph show a sudden drop to the 64? To me that would suggest a pressure low, and I’d expect it to come right back up with a position change. If there was no sudden drop to the 64, then I’d just eat the glucose and if the cgm was wrong, I’d get a high alert (at 130) a half hour later. Nuisance, but for me not a big deal.

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#50

My wife asks me something like “what’s the square root of 1000,” or “what’s 23 minus 18” and it reliably tells whether I’m below 70.

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#51

This example reminds me a frightening event that happened to my glucose normal son in high school. He was very good at math, and also in sports. He had what turned out to be a bad concussion in soccer (a header where he collided with another player head to head, and lost consciousness for a few seconds—in fact, they both did). The next day, he got evaluated by a doctor, who asked him, “what is 18 + 7?” His answer was 23.

That’s how we knew things were not good. He had to wear sunglasses to school for 8 weeks afterwards (he had become light sensitive). In fact, 5 years later, he is still somewhat light sensitive :frowning:

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#52

Yes they can be used with nearly any device. Here is some info on Nightscout. They have simplified creating a new site. Now it is as simple as creating a GitHub account, clicking a button, then putting in your preferences.


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IFTTT is a service that links two accounts in a cause/effect relationship.

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For example, I can make a recipe that says:
IF: the Nightscout records a LOW alarm
THEN: send me a text message

You can customize the recipe to turn on a light, turn on a siren, send a tweet, or countless other configurations.

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#53

@Bradford I will take a look at this. Thank you!!

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