[strawhatdev]

Before Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs), diabetics would need to draw blood from a finger prick and use that with a glucometer to measure blood glucose levels or pee on a test strip.

These ways are still widely used but they still require a secondary device (a glucometer, or test strips) and also lead to much less frequent readings. This means that high and low blood sugars were more difficult to detect and correct.

Because you get far fewer readings (unless you're pricking your fingers every 5 minutes) there are very real health consequences. Having a high blood sugar for too long (oops, that apple had more carbohydrates in it than expected) can lead to nerve damage and blindness in the long term and potentially fatal diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) in the immediate term. There are similar negative outcomes for low blood glucose levels.

Before CGMs people managed T1D but the short and long term health outcomes were/are much worse and the risk of death due to undiagnosed hyper/hypoglycemia was also much higher. Of course, we still carry glucometers and urine test strips (very inaccurate + coarse measurement) everywhere we go and the school has these as well.