I just decided to get a cell phone for my 10 yr son who is a T1Din the 5th grade, in preparation for Middle School. We are using the Dexcom G6 series. I was excited abt getting the IPhone for him because I wanted to be able to help manage his BS/carbs while at work, but we are continuing to get signal loss messages in the Follow Me app.
We have an excellent team at his school that has been helping in his diabetes management and because we know when he leaves elementary school and phase in to middle school he will not have as much support, we have been tried to manage him as though we are in the middle school scenario. That is, me monitoring his BS’s by viewing the app and unfortunately unsuccessful. Even doing so when he with my husband on outings or with the grandparents. Do you have any suggestions?
I have had problems with Dexcom Follow when my phone is not connected to wifi. Like when my phone is using cell service instead of wifi, the Follow app seems to flake out.
So the first question I have is this - do you have wifi at home, and if so, does Follow work when you are connected to wifi at home?
We have drop out pretty frequently but it normally catches up later and fills in. Right now my son hasn’t transmitted in a couple of hours, but it will fill in by dinner.
Things you can do: Make sure your son’s phone has access to the wifi at school and make sure they aren’t blocking your connection using their monitoring/blocking software. Make sure your 529 allows him full access to his phone at all times if you are in a public school. We had problems with this at our middle school.
Finally, if you are still having dropout on the follow app, your son can send you a quick phone snap of his current trend while you are discussing a treatment plan. My son and I found that a quick text conversation in the passing period for the class just before lunch was enough time to come up with a plan and implement a pre-bolus (if necessary) and for him to be relaxed and “cool” with his friends as he went to lunch. His friends were always so impressed he was able to use his phone (phones are banned in our middle school) that he got extra cool kid points.
Just a thought about interference from other Bluetooth devices. I’ve noticed materially more Dexcom connection issues when I’m in proximity of certain Bluetooth devices being used, namely newer Wireless/Bluetooth speakers in our family room and the Bluetooth connection in my car. For some reason these two interfere more than others. So I keep my phone out of the line of site of the Wireless speakers and avoid using my car Bluetooth for extended periods.