My son with severe learning difficulties keeps pulling his dexcom g6 out

Parenting Support
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Hi my son who has severe learning difficulties has recently been diagnosed, we have been given the Dexcom g6 to monitor his blood glucose levels we think it’s wonderful and it has given us piece of mind, the problem is my son keeps ripping it out we are at our whits end any advice would be greatly apprecated.

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Hi @Claireabeth1 . I’m so sorry to hear this. How old is your son?

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Hi @wadawabbit he is 25 he is autistic with profound learning difficulties, he had kept it on for five days when it was first inserted but now he just wants to rip it out all the time he has very limited understanding we sre just finding it so hard.

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hello @Claireabeth1 and welcome to Type One Nation,

as you know, this is a self-help site of amateurs, so we can’t offer medical advice. I urge you to work with a behavioral specialist in your area to try to find a way to make the sensor less irritating. The tape can become extremely itchy for many people and I can tell you from personal experience, after 4-5 days if I am irritated I want to pull my site out too. If it is just a sensation thing, a specialist with experience may be able to help normalize the experience so it is not a physical or sensory irritation.

there are tricks with skin irritation, the one that works for me is to never put a sensor in the same spot more than 1x a month, the other is to use a nasal corticosteroid, I spray it on the area, let it dry then apply the sensor. Other tricks include barrier tape under the sensor.

While I find the Dexcom a useful tool, I survived 41 years of Type 1 diabetes without any sensor, so I can say first-hand that a sensor is not absolutely necessary for control the way insulin is. If he won’t tolerate the sensor, then he won’t tolerate the sensor. good luck!

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@joe yes i do think it’s a sensory issue he can’t even cope with a plaster on his finger, my worry is he won’t even tolerate the finger prick so we are struggling to get any readings. Thanks for the advice much appreciated.

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Have you gotten any help with your situation? I’m no expert and I don’t use Dexcom right now, but I wonder if the doctors and company could figure out a sensor placement site on his body that would be acceptable and he could not reach it. How old is it?

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Not to get your hopes up as none of these are on the market yet, but here’s a link to some non-invasive meters that may be available down the line. The article is from early 2022 - I don’t know about current status.

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