Stained Shirt

This may be a little too much gore for the average blog reader so you may want to skip this post.

Okay, so the last 2 out of 3 Dexcom sensors have caused me to bleed, a lot.

Here’s what happened. Before work one day I put on a new Dexcom sensor. I noticed it was barely hanging on before I hopped in the shower so I figured I would pull it and replace it afterwards.

It went on with no issues and I got dressed and headed off to work. All was normal or so I thought.

At around 9AM a co-worker walks into my office and notices these red marks on my arm. It looked like I scraped my arm up pretty bad. It didn’t hurt to touch it so I thought maybe it was ink. I looked at my desk to see if something had spilled and I put my arm in it but nothing was there. I started to rub my arm and the color started to come off.

That was when it hit me. My side was wet.

Now I use Skin Tac wipes every time I put on a sensor or a pump site. It makes my skin super sticky but it also feels kind of gross. My shirt sticks to my skin and it makes my side feel wet for pretty much that entire first day.

So I didn’t think anything of the feeling on my side.

I lifted my shirt up and saw a giant bloody spot on my undershirt. Immediately I had my co-worker take a photo and sent it to my doctor. Yuck!

For the next 3 hours I tried putting band-aids on it, taping gauze over it, using masking tape to wrap around my belly and hold paper towels on it, and even had packing tape holding a maxi pad on it.

Nothing would stop this teeny tiny hole from bleeding.

My doctor told me to come into his office which I did that afternoon. I was there at 1:30PM and was still bleeding. STILL!!!

He used some stuff called Bleed Cease and wrapped my body up in an elastic band to hold it in place. He told me to check it at 6PM to see if it is still bleeding but to not take off the Bleed Cease bandage until after 8PM.

At 6PM I lifted up the elastic band and saw a lot of blood seeping through. I covered it up and didn’t think about it until 8PM.

Sure enough at 8PM when I took off all the bandages it had finally stopped.

The next day I put on another sensor and had no issue whatsoever.

After a week or so that sensor was ready to fall off. I pulled it and replaced it. That was last Saturday. By 10AM I noticed red marks on my arm.

This time it took all night but it finally stopped after losing a lot of blood. Now I am scared to put another one on.

Have any of you had an issue like this?