Freestyle Libre 2 - changing sensor - need help

Minion#2

Member
Messages
8
I am sorry, this is a long one.
age 17, type 1, diagnosed November 2020. using novarapid and levimir. last HbA1c 41 (Oct 2021, no appointment since althought I do keep calling)

Just started using freestyle libre 2. Need to change sensor.
We have asked advice from the diabeties team (no response) and contacted Abbot customer care (they didnt understand what we were asking).

We completed the online training with a lady from Abott in Jan 2021 but decided not to use the libre at that point.
March 2022 we decided the time was right and completed online video training.

We are very confused with several points that we think we were told during the origional training but cant quite remember what was said. I did make notes but they wernt very detailed. These points were not repeated or clarified fully in the online training and we cant get an answer from our diabeties team or Abbott -

1) During the origional training we were told that a new sensor will be inaccurate for the first 24 hours so insert the new sensor on day 13, then use the origional sensor until the new one has 'settled'. once settled in 24 hours, scan the new sensor and remove the old sensor - is this correct?? If this is correct, do we scan on day 13 or day 14?

2) When inserting a new sensor, we were told it will not send readings for the first hour, so do we scan as soon as it is inserted then continue to use the old one after the hour? when do we scan the new sensor? when do we remove the old sensor?

3) During the origional training we were told to set the minimam glucose alarm at 4.4mmols. This is really distressing my son and waking him several times during the night to treat a hypo that isnt a hypo. When can we change it to 3.9mmols? Also, some nights and maybe twice during the day his reading has gone below 4.4, even as low as 3.2 and yet the sensor did not send a low glucose alarm?! is this normal?

4) With the 2 sensors we have tried already, the arrows on the readings do not move when using the reader or a phone, it is always steady to the side apart from a few times when it has changed higher or lower. However, looking at the graph, his readings have sometimes dropped rapidly or raised rapidly more than 1.5mmols in 15 mins and the arrow did not reflect this, it stayed steady to the side. this happened with two seperate sensors.

5) During the origional training we were told to continue fingerpricks alongside readings until the diabeties team told us to stop the fingerpricks. They havent contacted us to stop but surely we have to as that is the whole purpose of having the libre in the first place?

6) My son uses the My Life app with his blood glucose meter/fingerpricks which tells him how much to inject at mealtimes. Does he have to manually enter the readings into My Life at meal times? Will this be accurate? Or does he still fingerprick before meals?

7) We paired the sensor to the reader the first time. The second sensor we paired to my son's phone. He did not receive high/low glucose alarms. We have since realised his phone is not in the list of compatible devices so does this mean we can only use the reader all the time instead?

Thank you if you have read that far.
 
Last edited:

sgm14

Well-Known Member
Messages
189
Re 1 and 2
I scan the old sensor right up until it says 'Sensor as ended' which is on the 14th day at which point it can be removed.
Then I scan the new sensor but it will take one hour before it will return the first result.

You can't have two sensors active at the same time, so if you scan the new one before the old one has finished, it will ask you if you want to end the old sensor and start a new one which is obviously wasting some time on the old sensor.


3
The recommendation to set the alarm to 4.4 is usually to give you time to treat and avoid a real hypo, rather than waiting until you have gone hypo. The problem with the false hypos at night is caused by sleeping on the sensor and is called a 'compression low'. Setting the alarm to 3.9 will probably not avoid this, but just delay it a little longer.

It would probably be better to try to avoid sleeping on the arm that contains the sensor if that is possible.

4
How often are you scanning?

The arrow is not showing you how your blood glucose has changed since the last scan, but the direction it thinks your blood glucose is moving in at the time of the scan. So it is quite possible for you to scan 15 minutes apart and your figures to have changed significantly, but for the sensor to conclude that the rise or fall has finished and things have steadied off.


5
I wasn't told to continue the finger pricks, except to confirm results before treating either a high or low, but your diabetic team may want to know this information to compare with the libre to see how accurate the libre is for you. If your libre is giving reasonably accurate results, then I would suggest contacting your diabetic team to see if they are happy for you to stop.

6
I'm afraid I don't know anything about My Life, so I can't answer this.

7
This is a little complicated.
If you activate or start a sensor on the reader, you get alarms on the reader, but you can also scan using your phone (assuming it has NFC) but you can not get alarms on the phone,
If you activate or start a sensor on your phone, you can only scan using the phone and the reader can not be used at all.

If you were able to scan/pair using the phone, then it obviously supports NFC, but perhaps not bluetooth which is what the alarms use.
 

JohnEGreen

Master
Messages
13,188
Type of diabetes
Other
Treatment type
Diet only
Dislikes
Tripe and Onions
1) scan new sensor on day 14

2) To activate the new scanner you have to scan it, it then takes an hour before you can scan for readings

3) I set my low level alarm at 3.9 from get go this however is a personal choice I think they advise 4.4 so you get a warning before the level becomes dangerously low and can make correction or treat potential Hypo before things become critical

The arrow just tells you what way it calculates blood sugars are trending

The list of compatible devices are just devices that have been tested with a sensor, app and found to work, other phones untested by the company may work with the app or not.
You only get alarms on the device you initiate the sensor with you would have to open the settings on the phone libre app and set alarms from there. but once initiated you can use either reader or phone to scan.

I do not have any experience with My Life app
 

Minion#2

Member
Messages
8
Thank you for your replies, that has helped a great deal.

I dont think I have explained the issue with the low/high alarms very well. The phone has NFL and bluetooth but When paired with the phone he is only getting low glucose alarms 50% of the time so sometimes he will do a routine scan and it will show that maybe an hour before it had dropped anywhere between 4.3 to 3.2 but no alarm sounded. Also, I am connected via librelinkup and I only get half the low glucose alarms too, but frequently get them when he doesnt. This is causing a great deal of issues if I get the alarm when at work but he doesnt as I am sat there expecting him to then treat a potential hypo but he doesnt even know about it! Due to his age, I have to trust that he can manage his own condition and I need to give him the time to do this so I prevent myself from ringing/texting him to make sure he is ok as I know he will be busy treating it. But on days when it tells me and not him, I am sat there wondering and waiting to see what will happen. On one day in particular I was receiving low glucose alarms for half an hour before I caved in and contacted him. It was another 10 minutes before he realised, scanned and treated the hypo - he had his phone alerts on silent but his libre notifications on. Obviously if it had of sent him the notification he could have treated it but it didnt go off.
 

Minion#2

Member
Messages
8
I think its also worth saying, its very rare he feels hypo's. Prior to using the libre, he only felt around 10% of his hypo's and the others he only noticed when doing a fingerprick for a meal/snack.
 

Daibell

Master
Messages
12,642
Type of diabetes
LADA
Treatment type
Insulin
Hi. It sounds like the Bluetooth isn't working reliably with the phone as the alarms are sent via Bluetooth. Check that both high and low glucose alarms are set to 'On' on the phone. I have always found that my readings after the startup 1 hour are as accurate as any time during the 14 days. Sensors vary and my current one is not giving very reliable readings but most of them have been OK. I don't fit a new sensor until the old one has finished. I scan it immediately after it is fitted. The small 1 hour gap is of no consequence. I generally ignore the arrows and have found them pretty useless; the algorithm they use doesn't work for me. I have left the alarms settings at the default values and have found no reason to change them.
 

sgm14

Well-Known Member
Messages
189
Re the alarms.
This is strange and does not appear consistent, so there may be more than one issue.

If you are seeing some alarms on librelinkup , then the only way librelinkup can know about the alarm is if the information came from the sensor via the librelink app on your son's phone, which means, as least at those times, that both app and the bluetooth connection were working correctly. So then the question is why does your son not hear the alarm?

You mention that the phone was 'on silent' . I have seen people do this in two different ways, either by enabling the DND feature or by switching the volume down to zero. I would assume that with the former, I would hear an low alarm, but not with the later. Is it possible that your son is using the latter method. and perhaps the phone is kept somewhere where the vibration is not felt.

(The default action for the low alarm is to both sound an alarm and vibrate and also to override the "Do not the Disturb" feature and you can check these settings under Alarms, Low Glucose Alarm, Alarm Tone and Advanced).

But, if you are not getting all the alarms on librelinkup, that would suggest that at those times either the app or bluetooth is not working properly. If it is a case of unreliable bluetooth , then I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions (sorry), but the other possibility is that the app is not actually running. Unfortunately this can also be tricky to resolve (if it can be resolved at all) and can depend on the actual phone and manufacturer. I use an Android phone, but I am not blind to issues with them and one of the biggest problems is that every phone manufacturer has the ability to do things in different ways. One of these ways is relating to how they handle background apps. In particular some are aggressive in disabling background apps in order to save battery life and obviously the librelink app needs to be running all the time.

On my phone, I can control the apps that run in the background by going to Settings/Apps & notifications/Advanced/Special app access/Battery optimisation. This brings up a list of apps and I can check that LibreLink is "not optimized".

As far as I know this is the standard Google method and the LibreLink app is automatically installed this way, but unfortunately some manufacturers ignore this and have their own method. I would hope they would still have some way to control these settings, but they would probably be different per manufacturer.

Not sure if this is any help or not.
 

Daibell

Master
Messages
12,642
Type of diabetes
LADA
Treatment type
Insulin
Re the alarms.
This is strange and does not appear consistent, so there may be more than one issue.

If you are seeing some alarms on librelinkup , then the only way librelinkup can know about the alarm is if the information came from the sensor via the librelink app on your son's phone, which means, as least at those times, that both app and the bluetooth connection were working correctly. So then the question is why does your son not hear the alarm?

You mention that the phone was 'on silent' . I have seen people do this in two different ways, either by enabling the DND feature or by switching the volume down to zero. I would assume that with the former, I would hear an low alarm, but not with the later. Is it possible that your son is using the latter method. and perhaps the phone is kept somewhere where the vibration is not felt.

(The default action for the low alarm is to both sound an alarm and vibrate and also to override the "Do not the Disturb" feature and you can check these settings under Alarms, Low Glucose Alarm, Alarm Tone and Advanced).

But, if you are not getting all the alarms on librelinkup, that would suggest that at those times either the app or bluetooth is not working properly. If it is a case of unreliable bluetooth , then I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions (sorry), but the other possibility is that the app is not actually running. Unfortunately this can also be tricky to resolve (if it can be resolved at all) and can depend on the actual phone and manufacturer. I use an Android phone, but I am not blind to issues with them and one of the biggest problems is that every phone manufacturer has the ability to do things in different ways. One of these ways is relating to how they handle background apps. In particular some are aggressive in disabling background apps in order to save battery life and obviously the librelink app needs to be running all the time.

On my phone, I can control the apps that run in the background by going to Settings/Apps & notifications/Advanced/Special app access/Battery optimisation. This brings up a list of apps and I can check that LibreLink is "not optimized".

As far as I know this is the standard Google method and the LibreLink app is automatically installed this way, but unfortunately some manufacturers ignore this and have their own method. I would hope they would still have some way to control these settings, but they would probably be different per manufacturer.

Not sure if this is any help or not.
On my Samsung S8 phone, setting 'Do Not Disturb' disables the Libre Alarms and Vibration by default. I think you can override that by playing with the settings.
 

Minion#2

Member
Messages
8
Re the alarms.
This is strange and does not appear consistent, so there may be more than one issue.

If you are seeing some alarms on librelinkup , then the only way librelinkup can know about the alarm is if the information came from the sensor via the librelink app on your son's phone, which means, as least at those times, that both app and the bluetooth connection were working correctly. So then the question is why does your son not hear the alarm?

You mention that the phone was 'on silent' . I have seen people do this in two different ways, either by enabling the DND feature or by switching the volume down to zero. I would assume that with the former, I would hear an low alarm, but not with the later. Is it possible that your son is using the latter method. and perhaps the phone is kept somewhere where the vibration is not felt.

(The default action for the low alarm is to both sound an alarm and vibrate and also to override the "Do not the Disturb" feature and you can check these settings under Alarms, Low Glucose Alarm, Alarm Tone and Advanced).

But, if you are not getting all the alarms on librelinkup, that would suggest that at those times either the app or bluetooth is not working properly. If it is a case of unreliable bluetooth , then I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions (sorry), but the other possibility is that the app is not actually running. Unfortunately this can also be tricky to resolve (if it can be resolved at all) and can depend on the actual phone and manufacturer. I use an Android phone, but I am not blind to issues with them and one of the biggest problems is that every phone manufacturer has the ability to do things in different ways. One of these ways is relating to how they handle background apps. In particular some are aggressive in disabling background apps in order to save battery life and obviously the librelink app needs to be running all the time.

On my phone, I can control the apps that run in the background by going to Settings/Apps & notifications/Advanced/Special app access/Battery optimisation. This brings up a list of apps and I can check that LibreLink is "not optimized".

As far as I know this is the standard Google method and the LibreLink app is automatically installed this way, but unfortunately some manufacturers ignore this and have their own method. I would hope they would still have some way to control these settings, but they would probably be different per manufacturer.

Not sure if this is any help or not.
This is very interesting, thank you.
I do know he never puts his phone on DND. When he turns it on silent he simply turns the ringer off . I am going to talk to him about the rest as I do recall him saying something about if he doesn't close the app andeaves his phone screen on he is guaranteed to get the high/low notification.
 

Albie1

Member
Messages
5
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
I am sorry, this is a long one.
age 17, type 1, diagnosed November 2020. using novarapid and levimir. last HbA1c 41 (Oct 2021, no appointment since althought I do keep calling)

Just started using freestyle libre 2. Need to change sensor.
We have asked advice from the diabeties team (no response) and contacted Abbot customer care (they didnt understand what we were asking).

We completed the online training with a lady from Abott in Jan 2021 but decided not to use the libre at that point.
March 2022 we decided the time was right and completed online video training.

We are very confused with several points that we think we were told during the origional training but cant quite remember what was said. I did make notes but they wernt very detailed. These points were not repeated or clarified fully in the online training and we cant get an answer from our diabeties team or Abbott -

1) During the origional training we were told that a new sensor will be inaccurate for the first 24 hours so insert the new sensor on day 13, then use the origional sensor until the new one has 'settled'. once settled in 24 hours, scan the new sensor and remove the old sensor - is this correct?? If this is correct, do we scan on day 13 or day 14?

2) When inserting a new sensor, we were told it will not send readings for the first hour, so do we scan as soon as it is inserted then continue to use the old one after the hour? when do we scan the new sensor? when do we remove the old sensor?

3) During the origional training we were told to set the minimam glucose alarm at 4.4mmols. This is really distressing my son and waking him several times during the night to treat a hypo that isnt a hypo. When can we change it to 3.9mmols? Also, some nights and maybe twice during the day his reading has gone below 4.4, even as low as 3.2 and yet the sensor did not send a low glucose alarm?! is this normal?

4) With the 2 sensors we have tried already, the arrows on the readings do not move when using the reader or a phone, it is always steady to the side apart from a few times when it has changed higher or lower. However, looking at the graph, his readings have sometimes dropped rapidly or raised rapidly more than 1.5mmols in 15 mins and the arrow did not reflect this, it stayed steady to the side. this happened with two seperate sensors.

5) During the origional training we were told to continue fingerpricks alongside readings until the diabeties team told us to stop the fingerpricks. They havent contacted us to stop but surely we have to as that is the whole purpose of having the libre in the first place?

6) My son uses the My Life app with his blood glucose meter/fingerpricks which tells him how much to inject at mealtimes. Does he have to manually enter the readings into My Life at meal times? Will this be accurate? Or does he still fingerprick before meals?

7) We paired the sensor to the reader the first time. The second sensor we paired to my son's phone. He did not receive high/low glucose alarms. We have since realised his phone is not in the list of compatible devices so does this mean we can only use the reader all the time instead?

Thank you if you have read that far.
Two things,I'm in France, my diabetic doctor told me to bypass Freestyle libra 2 due to the alarm system that never seems to stop day or night, and secondly due to Abbott's shortage of Freestyle Libre 2 stock our authorities have authorised a deactivated mobile phone, NUU, as a legal replacement fully paid for as a replacement, which will also work on Freestyle Libre 3 monitors, which are much smaller than 1&2 , but I'm sticking to Freestyle Libre 1