Pain Relief
My shoulder has been killing me for the last few days. So far stretching exercises haven't helped all that much.No problem you say, take a pain killer. That would work except...I'm allergic to everything except acetaminophen. And that causes my Dexcom readings to go haywire.
Within 20 minutes of a dose of acetaminophen (generic form of Tylenol), the Dexcom receiver reports super high readings. Quickly up to 400 and then into HIGH. That continues for about 6 hours in my case. And there's a long list of drugs that contain acetaminophen.
This is because acetaminophen changes the reaction that is used by the sensor to measure glucose values in interstitial fluid.
So I take my tablets and put the receiver far away from me for 6 hours or so.
How can I tell when it's safe to use it again? I carry it around for a few minutes and see if it's still reporting off the wall values. If so, I put it away again.
It's frustrating. If I keep it with me for the duration the high values throw off the statistics reported in the Dexcom software.
I've asked them to change the software so I can mark a set of readings as invalid. I think this is a relatively small software change. That way I can continue to use the receiver and my statistics won't be affected by 6+ hours of values over 400 mg/dL.
If you're having the same problem, do please call Dexcom customer support at 1-877-Dexcom4 (1-877-339-2664) and let them know. Maybe we can influence them to make this fix.
Note: I currently own shares in Dexcom, I work not to let this influence what I say about the company or its products.
Labels: acetaminophen, Dexcom, frustration, tylenol
posted by Bernard @ 8:27 AM
8 Comments:
Try emailing Terry Gregg the DexCom CEO I found him to be very accessible and very nice.
Sorry to hear you own shares. Mine are doing a Jacques Cousteau special right now. LOL
Bernard, this may sound a little weird, but have you ever tried Yoga? I've been doing it for several months now. My husband didn't want to try it because he thought it was girly.. but I kept telling him to give it a go because he's had back and neck problems for years. He used to go to the chiropractor about twice a week for relief. He has had significant results by doing yoga a couple times a week before bed to get all relaxed.
Bennet, my shares are in depths with yours.
Windy I've yet to try yoga. I know there are different types of yoga. Which type did your husband start doing? Did he go to classes or just read a book or follow a tape?
How annoying to have to deal with the shoulder pain, but then the sensor issues with the pain med too? Ugh :(
Do you know if you did something to cause the pain? I don't want to be an alarmist, but is frozen shoulder a possibility? I've had it in both shoulders and both hips, and it's relentless without treatment.
Lee Ann your post has helped me more than ANYTHING. I was told by my doctor several months ago that the pain I was feeling in my shoulder was probably bursitis and that nsaids were probably my only hope. But after reading your post I went and googled frozen shoulder and looked it up on Web Md. I know the two may be very similar but I think frozen shoulder fit even better. I have pain when I am doing nothing like ...sleeping. That is such a lovely sensation to wake up. :-( But it did seem to fit and I will be doing more research on it. Anyway thank you again for posting that idea.
Hey Lee Ann
Thanks for thinking of this, but I've had frozen shoulder(s) in the past and that's definitely not what this is.
I was able to get past the frozen shoulders with physical therapy, but it takes a long time. I still do exercises occasionally to make sure it doesn't come back.
Bernard, I just stumbled across your blog. Good stuff. Do you know if DexCom or anyone else has come up with a way to link DexCom and the DexCom data stream to an iPhone. It would be nice to leverage the user interface of the iPhone and to automatically push the data to my home computer (and my Endocrinologist) via the iPhone's network connection. Wouldn't you think such a feature would be useful?
Thanks.
Clark
The Dexcom software only runs on Windows. The hardware interface is proprietary on one end and USB on the other. I know of no way to connect to an iPhone and get the data to a remote location.
The software does support data export in a CSV format, so you can do some things with that. Let me know if you need more information.
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