It all started when I realized my Dexcom CGM wasn’t holding a charge. It went from needing a charge twice a week to practically every day. I knew this wasn’t right, so during the first week of July, I found myself reaching out to Dexcom support to see how I could go about getting it replaced.

Three months later, I finally have my new Dexcom G5 CGM.

Of course, it shouldn’t have taken most of July, all of August, and part of September for me to get my new CGM. But it did, and resulted in my mother spending hours on the phone with Dexcom and our insurance provider on my behalf as well as countless communications exchanged between me and my endocrinologist’s office.

What was with the holdup? There were a few factors at play here, which is why I thought it was important to share this ordeal with you all. That way, if you or a loved one encounter an issue like this in the future, maybe you can learn from my mistakes and get your CGM sooner rather than later.

Factor #1: The CGM was out of warranty. Normally, I would’ve had it replaced much faster if my Dexcom drama happened within one year of initially receiving the device. But I’d been using the same receiver (the handheld component of the CGM that displays blood sugars in real time) for like…four years. That was issue number one because Dexcom can’t do anything about products that have an expired warranty. Now, I know to get in touch with them every year to get a new receiver and to ensure that I’ll always have one that can be replaced.

Factor #2: My medical supply providers have changed recently. This one’s a bit out of my control, but a couple years ago, Neighborhood Diabetes was divested and sold to Liberty Medical. This meant I wouldn’t receive my sensors or any other CGM supplies from Neighborhood, like I had for a few years. So from then until now, I was getting my sensors from Express Scripts, which also ships my insulin to my home. But for other reasons, my mom and I discovered back in August that we would need to use Better Living Now to supply my Dexcom sensors. Getting confused yet? Yeah, this all went over my head, too. I’m extremely lucky that my mom helped me out and solved this confusing insurance situation.

Factor #3: Communication was poor. And I have to take some blame here, because I should’ve been checking the inbox that my endocrinologist’s office uses to communicate with me. I missed a couple of messages sent by a nurse at the office, and when I did finally see them, I was in a rush to reply and didn’t read his messages as thoroughly as I should have. This resulted in, I’m sure, frustration on both ends as we tried to explain what was going on to one another. There’s a reason why people say that communication is key, and I bet we would’ve had answers a little sooner if we had been on top of things.

That’s the story, in a nutshell and without getting too much into the insurance side of things. I’m just relieved that I finally have my new CGM, and it works great. It’s pretty cool to see my blood sugars displayed on my iPhone, too, using the Dexcom app. And I’m pretty grateful that I have an awesome mother who really came through for me, as well as an endocrinology team that was willing to bear with me through all this Dexcom drama.