As always I will start with a disclaimer that I am not a medical professional and my knowledge and opinions are strictly limited to my personal experiences over the last 21 years living with Type 1 Diabetes.
My experience so far with the Libre has been quite positive and very informative, at times it has been an overload of information.
I certainly struggled to process all the information in the first week and found myself testing too frequently (49 times in 24 hours) and over correcting for slight rises in my blood sugar that weren’t actually necessary. However after the first week and a bit I had a better understanding of what my levels were doing, how food affected me, how my long acting insulin was working overnight.
Before I purchased the Libre I was having overnight hypos and fairly drastic fluctuations during the day. My main reason for getting the Libre was because my fingers fucking hurt and I was struggling to test overnight when I knew I was going low. I was doing approximately 25 finger pricks a day, and because I am the way I am I was only using 4 fingers to do this and refused to use the others because, well, they hurt more. Every time I did a finger prick my fingers would bleed for almost ten minutes because there were so many un healed prick sites (clearly this is not a correct term but ehhh).
This was probably the kick up the ass I needed to finally get a CGM or somewhat similar.
I decided against the Dexcom because I honestly didn’t think I could force myself to do 2 finger pricks a day to keep it calibrated.
So here I am, on my second Libre sensor, testing my blood sugar 15 times every 24 hours. My Libre tests are accurate with my finger pricks. There is not a 15 minute lag for me, they are exactly the same.
I haven’t had an overnight hypo in the 3 weeks I have been wearing the Libre, I have finally settled my long acting insulin to a consistent dose that is actually last the 12 hours it is supposed to. I have discovered that bagels and sushi are full of carbs and require much larger short acting insulin doses, (bagels, who knew?). I’ve finally given in to the fact that I don’t know better and that I have to count carbs. Which to be quite honest isn’t that hard to do and really isn’t as big of a deal as what I thought.
For the last 2 weeks I have had an average BGL of 7.2 and I personally am very happy with this for now. I don’t need people to message me and tell me it’s not good enough and it should be lower, I’m sure it can be and I’m sure it will be once I have tweaked my insulin further. I’ve decided I need to change my fast acting insulin and eventually my long acting.
I haven’t had any issues with the sensors, I mean apart from the price. Changing them over is quite simple and painless. Mine so far haven’t come off or appeared to lose any stickiness. They are a pain in the ass to tan around however, but whatever, that’s probably not an issue everyone is going to have.
All in all I am very happy with the Freestyle Libre, it has become my new best friend. After a bit of a rocky start, getting used to it and making the necessary adjustments, I definitely recommend it. I’m happy to answer any questions anyone has about it, feel free to message the FB page or contact me here or via Instagram.
Now we just need to get this little machine onto the PBS.
Click here to sign the petition to get it listed...
My experience so far with the Libre has been quite positive and very informative, at times it has been an overload of information.
I certainly struggled to process all the information in the first week and found myself testing too frequently (49 times in 24 hours) and over correcting for slight rises in my blood sugar that weren’t actually necessary. However after the first week and a bit I had a better understanding of what my levels were doing, how food affected me, how my long acting insulin was working overnight.
Before I purchased the Libre I was having overnight hypos and fairly drastic fluctuations during the day. My main reason for getting the Libre was because my fingers fucking hurt and I was struggling to test overnight when I knew I was going low. I was doing approximately 25 finger pricks a day, and because I am the way I am I was only using 4 fingers to do this and refused to use the others because, well, they hurt more. Every time I did a finger prick my fingers would bleed for almost ten minutes because there were so many un healed prick sites (clearly this is not a correct term but ehhh).
This was probably the kick up the ass I needed to finally get a CGM or somewhat similar.
I decided against the Dexcom because I honestly didn’t think I could force myself to do 2 finger pricks a day to keep it calibrated.
So here I am, on my second Libre sensor, testing my blood sugar 15 times every 24 hours. My Libre tests are accurate with my finger pricks. There is not a 15 minute lag for me, they are exactly the same.
I haven’t had an overnight hypo in the 3 weeks I have been wearing the Libre, I have finally settled my long acting insulin to a consistent dose that is actually last the 12 hours it is supposed to. I have discovered that bagels and sushi are full of carbs and require much larger short acting insulin doses, (bagels, who knew?). I’ve finally given in to the fact that I don’t know better and that I have to count carbs. Which to be quite honest isn’t that hard to do and really isn’t as big of a deal as what I thought.
For the last 2 weeks I have had an average BGL of 7.2 and I personally am very happy with this for now. I don’t need people to message me and tell me it’s not good enough and it should be lower, I’m sure it can be and I’m sure it will be once I have tweaked my insulin further. I’ve decided I need to change my fast acting insulin and eventually my long acting.
I haven’t had any issues with the sensors, I mean apart from the price. Changing them over is quite simple and painless. Mine so far haven’t come off or appeared to lose any stickiness. They are a pain in the ass to tan around however, but whatever, that’s probably not an issue everyone is going to have.
All in all I am very happy with the Freestyle Libre, it has become my new best friend. After a bit of a rocky start, getting used to it and making the necessary adjustments, I definitely recommend it. I’m happy to answer any questions anyone has about it, feel free to message the FB page or contact me here or via Instagram.
Now we just need to get this little machine onto the PBS.
Click here to sign the petition to get it listed...
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