Hi all. Have a 4yo daughter with Type 1. We use the Dexcom G6 and Omnipod 5. The Dexcom is connected to an iPhone 12.
I have purchased a wired speaker (also has BT capability, but prefer wired configuration if possible). I also have a 15ft headphone cable with a lightning adaptor.
I am hoping to plug this speaker into her iPhone while she is sleeping, run the speaker wire under the door of her bedroom and into mine, and get loud alerts from her Dexcom. The reason for this is I have found the Dexcom follow app only gets 95% of the alerts. The 5% of the time it does not alert leaves me sleepless at nights.
The problem is as follows: connecting my wired speaker to the IPhone does not seem to produce alerts from Dexcom. Though it does play music etc.
Is there a way to ensure that Dexcom alerts from an iPhone are reliably sent to a connected speaker?
Note: the speaker does have Bluetooth capability as well, but I am hoping to use it as wired to remove an additional point of failure.
Any other parents not trust the Dexcom Follow app completely and have devised ways to get alerts when their child is in another room?
Any advice is greatly appreciated. My wife will be gone for several weeks and the fear of missing an urgent low alert makes a good night sleep nearly impossible.
hi @Sonomaj , at the end of the day you are still relying on a piece of consumer electronics to be a medical alert device, so in my opinion (and 30 years of reliability engineering experience) there is nothing available to get you to 100%. Im not entirely sure how you calculated the 95% of the alarms through share, but i get it you are concerned. Im a dad too, and so I get the concern.
the phone isnt designed to send all audio data through a lightning connected speaker, so I cannot imagine that being more robust than setting the phone to maximum volume at night.
blood sugar in a very general sense, wont crash or rise suddenly while sleeping. Setting an alarm and waking up at a specific time or intervals might be the easiest way to increase reliability. I know this next thing will be hard to hear, but in the 1970’s when I was diagnosed, there was no such thing as CGM and we didn’t die. we were encouraged to have a mixed carb snack before bed. whatever you decide good luck.
To add to things you may not want to hear, while CGMs are a Godsend, it’s important to learn to recognize your signs rather than relying on CGMs completely. Of course that may be challenging at night, but I also came up before BG meters and CGMs (Type1 for 60 years this year!) and there are times - typically when I’m normal but dropping - when my body alerts me before my Dexcom does, including when I’m sleeping (I wake up because I just don’t feel right).
I understand you’ll never stop worrying about nighttime lows, but you could get recommendations about bedtime snacks that have some “staying power” (a nutritionist recommended yogurt to me); or you could look into setting her overnight basal rate a tiny bit lower to give her a bit of cushion if she does drop.
My dexcom has never alerted to my blue tooth speakers or to my wired earbuds & headphones. On the rare occasion that it does, the sound cuts out after the first half beep. Usually what happens is that the noise stops in the connected device while the cell phone beeps and then it reconnects to play music/sound through the connected device.
I’m a teen who doesn’t wake up to her low alerts, no matter how loud they may be. My mom’s phone is connected to my dexcom via the share app and it always wakes her up. It’s never missed an alert.
Also my grandparents who live on the other side of the world get my blood sugar alerts on dexcom share, and my grandpa will wake up from the alerts and text me at 4 am his time to make sure I’m ok.
I know that sometimes hearing about other people’s experiences isn’t very soothing or convincing when you’re afraid, but I can vouch for the reliability of the system. I’ve had T1D for 3.5 years with several serious lows in the middle of the night and each time my mom has woken me up.
You could also consider sleeping in your daughters room or moving her to yours when your wife is away?
Some forum members have found creative ways to hear their own alerts even white sleeping heavily - here’s one that might help your daughter and possibly you as well using cell phone on vibrate mode.
PS - I was diagnosed at age 3, and even as a toddler I recognized that I didn’t feel right when I was sleeping even though I didn’t know exactly what was going on; and I would call out for my mom or dad and tell them I felt funny. Hopefully your daughter will do the same, giving you an added measure of assurance.
Another idea-
There’s this app called Sugarmate that connects to dexcom. Not only does it allow you to view your daughters blood sugars on another device but you can also program it to call or text certain numbers if her blood sugars go above/below a certain number.
You could potentially set this up on your daughter phone and program it to call your cell phone and your wife’s cell phone if she goes low in the middle of the night.
@6yGodsGr That’s a great suggestion [Sugarmate app]! It’s what I depend on vice the standard G6 or Dash notifications and it works great…admittedly sometimes too great and I’d like to throw it against the wall…probably just want the non-doctor ordered!!
Hi @Sonomaj . Since you referred to urgent lows in your post (although I’m sure you want to be aware of all) I thought you might find a comment on alarm laddering, submitted by @987jaj helpful. His comment is about the 6th one from the top and alarm laddering is about halfway through - it’s lengthy and I imagine you might want to customize the numbers, but this could help prevent things from getting urgent.
@Sonomaj Josh, were you able to find a solution that worked for you? I jus updated to iOS 17.1 this weekend and found the phone was trying to read some notifications, including the Dexcom notifications, to me when I had headphones connected. If you really need your original wired plan to work you might be able to do it now. The settings for are in Settings | Notifications | Announce Notifications
Hi Chris. That is an interesting development. I am always slow to get new iOS updates as weird things tend to happen. But may have to check this out.
I have actually been using your earlier solution of a baby monitor ($20 from Amazon). This seems to work, but I think if I could get notifications on a bluetooth speaker via iOS17 that would be even better. I will report back when I’ve had a chance to try this.
Interesting. I will look into Sugarmate. I am currently able to view her BG via Dexcom Follow app. Usually works great. The issue is for some reason I occassionally do not get notifications from it.
Sugarmate could be a great solution - particularly if I can program the inbound number into my phone as a favorite so it will ring even when my phone is in night mode.
Lise. Thanks so much for your input! Yes, moving her to my room had actually been my solution. We’d like her to get in the habit of sleeping in her room since her mom is gone several weeks a year. But her safety comes first so I had been doing that until somoene suggested the baby monitor idea - which is that I keep her iPhone next to her bed in her room. Put a baby monitor next to her phone and then put the receiver next to my bed in my room. That way, even if my phone doesn’t alert, I can still hear her phone alerting via the monitor. So many great ideas in this forum! I appreciate all of them!