I’ve been using Dexcom G6 sensors for about 3 1/2 months and everything has been going really well. The last sensor I even restarted twice and it worked fine for 30 days. Today for the first time I got a sensor error after a bad low, down to 44 and had a hard time getting it to come back up. Do the sensor errors fix themselves? And on average how long does it take before they come back? If they come back, do they behave? Do they have to be calibrated? Looking for your experience with sensor errors. Thanks.
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How many days had this physical sensor been in use to this point ?
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Hey @Jan!
In my experience, a sensor error absolutely can fix itself. The only catch is that the older the sensor gets, the less likely it will be able to do it reliably or with any kind of speed. I also extend my sensors and am willing to tolerate with a certain amount of breaks in the graph, but once it starts becoming so sensitive that I’m losing signal every time I offend it with a movement in blood sugar, I pull it. That part never seems to improve. Once I’m there, I’m there. Honestly, I don’t even bother with calibrating because it’s just a matter of time. If I want something sharp, responsive, and on top of things, I need to put in a new sensor. If I’m just milking it, then I don’t really trust it anyway and am making up in finger sticks what I’m lacking in faith. If that makes sense… ??
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Is this the first session or extended? I was wondering how many days this particular physical sensor has been used already.
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Agreed and same.
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@Thomas
Sorry, I wasn’t very clear. Today is the 8th day of this sensor. It hasn’t been restarted (yet).
And it did come back on, and has tracked well with finger sticks, so all seems good! Thank you!
We just got the G6! It is…was great???
First sensor lasted 20 days. Second sensor kept saying lost signal and no data and then it said change sensor on day 5. I called dexcom and they think it might be the sensor and the transmitter. Is this common for them to be so intermittent? Are we missing something? How is the first one last so long… we actually thought it was suppose to just die at day 10 so we kinda forgot about it
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Hi Kels_eh,
Sometimes a bad transmitter will appear to be a bad sensor, but it is just the transmitter causing the problems.
If one sensor fails, maybe replace it and try again with the same transmitter. But if you have a few consecutive sensor failures, it then becomes time to look at getting a replacement transmitter.
Dexcom will replace them all for you. If they are offering to send a new transmitter and sensor, get them both and go from there. See if that corrects the problem.
I’ve seen it enough to be comfortable saying that there is a good chance the problem you are seeing might be transmitter related instead of sensor related. And the easiest way to find out is just by replacing it.
Apparently; the transmitter seems to react to a sudden jump in readings by readjusting, in my experience with the G6 that normally works fine until the first restart then (my experience) after about 14 days total the corrections degrade and I give up and replace the sensor.
The Dexcom receiver does not show these adjustments; the interface is almost unusable and the jumps seem to be hidden somehow, however the jumps are clearly visible on xDrip+. I had one at 14:27 today, when the transmitter reported a BG of 110.0mg/dl followed by a reading at 14:32 of 128.0 mg/dl. From the xDrip+ graph it looks like the sensor was drifting out to the negative, the transmitter realized, and resynced readings back up:
The Dexcom receiver display is badly aliased; it has image artefacts which, curiously, always seem to end up hiding the jumps.
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I have had the G5 since May of this year. I have noticed that my sensors start failing within 8 days. At that time, I start receiving “sensor error” responses. I have especially noticed that this usually happens when readings rapidly drop below 70 or increase above 200. It will usually return to reading within 1 hour in my case. I have only had 3 that never recovered. They were replaced within 3 days by Dexcom.
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