[trampypizza]

Fellow T1D in the UK Here. I'm coming towards the end of my 'trial period' with my FreeStyle Libra and I am shocked at how much I have been able to take control of my glucose levels. I have never had particularly bad control - but finger pricking 4 times a day is like using your phone light in a pitch-black forest. There are so few data points that it is nearly impossible to identify patterns. The sheer amount of data that you have access to with the sensor is amazing. You've gone from 4 data points a day to a minimum of 96 (if you are scanning once every 8 hours). Within a few weeks I had adjusted my basal insulin dose resulting in much more stable blood sugar during sleep which has gone a long way to improve my general health and wellbeing.

One other aspect of the FreeStyle Libre that I was not expecting was a feeling of accountability. When I was just finger-pricking I could essentially hide high blood sugars. Say I had eaten some sweets or something, and forgotten to take my insulin, I could sort of hide from the responsibility of that high reading by just taking my insulin when I remembered and testing in a few hours - my Consultant would never know. However, now I am aware that my sensor is going to read that high sugar, and that makes me feel accountable for it - so I have seen my insulin taking get more consistent, and this has resulted in less hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia (as a result of mistiming the insulin and whatever I have eaten).

On your point about accuracy - I have found it to be a little out in the extreme highs or lows - for example there have been a number of times when my sensor has given me a reading of, say, 2.4. However when finger-pricking I might be 3.9 or 4. Now this could be because the reading is about 15 minutes behind, and since that moment my liver has pumped out some glycogen. But I have had similar accuracy issues when high - say above 18. Having said that, to me this is not a problem, and the accuracy between 4 and 18 is pretty spot on (apart from one sensor that went bananas and was reading at least 15 above what I was for about a week).