Yes? So how much experience does your PCP or his/her staff have with helping people to start with a Medtronic pump? It sound like you may have a lot of questions and would do better if you had a knowledgeable support team backing you up. Does that describe your relationship with your PCP?
Seriously, find out about what your options are for returning the pump. No, I’m not encouraging you to return it, I just think having a better grasp of what your options are will help you make better decisions. The timeline can might be important. I vaguely remember people talking about having 30 days to potentially return the pump. That may or not apply in your case, but I’d encourage you to find out.
Hasn’t anyone talked to you about getting trained by a Medtronic customer rep yet?
You should definitely expect to be trained on how to switch to using a pump and CGM. If you PCP hasn’t already arranged this then call your PCP’s office ASAP this coming week and find out about this. You can also call Medtronic’s help number and ask someone there about it.
Not a surprise at all. Dexcom is the considered the gold standard for CGM. I just recently switched to a Tandem pump using the Dexcom G6 CGM and, frankly, I expected to more impressed. My reaction is more along the lines of a “meh”.
True, the insertion is easier and sensors (typically) last 10 days vs 7 for Medtronic. But in my particular case the actual CGM accuracy isn’t noticeably better over what I was experiencing with Medtronic Guardian 3.
But perhaps making the application of the sensor easier is what makes all the difference. I’ve always suspected that the main reason people were having horrible experiences with Medtronic CGM was because it was too finicky to insert and tape. In my experience, if you get the CGM sensor attached to your body successfully then the rest usually just falls into place.
The one aspect of CGM where Dexcom clearly is better than Medtronic at this time is calibration. With Dexcom you can enter a 4 digit sensor code when you start the sensor and it won’t require you to enter periodic BG meter results for calibration.
The Medtronic Guardian is extremely tedious by comparison. During the first 24 hours after you start a Guardian 3 sensor you need to enter a calibration BG reading every 6 hours. After that calibration needs to be done every 12 hours. It can be annoyingly tedious and really irritates a lot of people. (Apparently)
The upcoming new Medtronic CGM sensor is not supposed to required calibration. I see it as Medtronic’s attempt to respond to Dexcom “no calibration” CGM. I’m not sure how many days it is supposed to work. Or whether it will be less finicky to apply. Hopefully it will, but I just don’t know anything about that yet.