Hi Stephanie, welcome to the forum.
I was prescribed Libre 2 in Feb 2, 12 months after my surgery, when Covid isolation was preventing any face to face contact. Abbott have about 9 video seminars, freely available to anyone and one NHS condition was that I watched these. I did; no-one could prove I had watched but I truthfully declared I'd watched them. My Libre 2 came in the post and I've been wearing one ever since.
I was diagnosed with Type 1 almost a month ago now. It's been a busy month! I was really excited to receive my Libre 2 at the start of this week, however when I visited my GP practise for my pneumonia vaccine, I was told by the nurse there that I'd have to make an appointment with a nurse at my local diabetes centre to set it up. I have been trying to get hold of them to make an appointment all week, but to no avail.
I think your GP surgery nurse is misinformed. The reality is that, despite a great improvement in availability of sensors for T1s since the change in the NICE Guidelines earlier this year, most GP surgeries don't look after T1s. They routinely care for T2s, some 90% of the D population, but T1s are looked after by their specialist hospital team (Endocrinologists and Diabetes Specialist Nurses [DSNs]). At our small surgery, during a face to face, our Practice Nurse had never seen a sensor before and thought there were 3 other patients on their books with Libre. She was happy to spend a few minutes hearing about its benefits. So politely but robustly challenge this. Rules do change, but fitting Libre 2 is easy and doesn't need face to face training for most people.
The quandary is that you need your GP to write the repeat prescriptions. So, you don't need anyone's permission to wear the medical equipment you've been sent, but you do need your GP Surgery to add Libre 2 to your prescriptions for needles, insulin, test strips etc. The training is easily available on line.
The benefit of you having being newly diagnosed (as opposed to someone who was diagnosed some time ago and used to using finger pricks etc) is you won't have to adjust your managment in any way.
I think this advice could be slightly misleading. Libre 2 is an excellent aid and improver of your D management, but it does have its limitations, which (not surprisingly) Abbott don't make much emphasis about!
When Libre isn't working, and it happens, you need the traditional D management technique of finger prick testing to keep you safe. At this early stage you need a bit more testing to help you see results in relation to your normal daily living: not just what you are eating and how your body manages that food, but what any exercise and activity does for you and your BG; stress has major effects on BG - be that stress from difficulties, medical or hormonal issues or even just watching a frightening or sad TV programme!
Libre provides a significant improvement in your visibility of your BG without the faff of finger pricking, but Libre is looking at your interstitial BG not your actual BG and lags actual BG by up to 15 minutes. Abbott claim this was reduced from 15 mins to c. 2.5 mins, but the claim is not quite fair; they use an algorithm to adjust the sensor reading and that bit of technical maths (science) does not (can not) take account of how your body is behaving.
Just one example: you get so low you go hypo. Your body might tell you this, but your Libre might not have caught up and be showing you as a little above the hypo threshold. You treat the hypo, say 15gms of a fast glucose such as Dextrose or Jelly Babies and recovery is underway - but Libre is now telling you that you are actually hypo. Tendency is to then over react and take more glucose, with a rebound that can become a hyper. This scenario is real enough and manageable, but needs an element of self-control along with understanding of what the technology is doing.
With the older style of management, you only had to check your glucose reading before meals if you wanted to, you rarely got to see what was happening to blood sugars between meals. In times gone by, it was perfectly acceptable (by the medical profession) to have huge spikes between meals. Now, with the libre, after a few weeks of using it, you will soon be able to manage your doses, your timing of doses (how far upfront you need to take your insulin to avoid spikes) and see what foods have what effects.
I certainly agree with all of that.
It really is a great piece of technology which sees an end to relentless finger pricking and allows you to do things (activities) many of us didn't dare to do. There hasn't been a better time to be diagnosed (not that there is ever a good time 🙂lol).
But just be aware that not everyone has a perfect, albeit delayed, correlation between Libre and actual BG. Even without manufacturing tolerances of some 15% for both Libre and any test meters, I regularly have Libre reading 2-3 units above actual, sometimes 2-3 below actual and sometimes starting high, then dropping low during the 14 day life of a sensor. My overall Libre failure rate is 50% and I accept that my body doesn't get on well with Libre. So I'm constantly mentally juggling to picture what my Libre is telling me against what is actually happening. It is brilliant that the tech allows this, but it is one more thing to keep in sight. If I didn't do this mental adjustment, my D management would become even more confusing as I might think I'm making the appropriate response, yet not getting the appropriate result.
Have other people had the same experience? Or have you set up your libres by yourself? I'm keen to be on a CGM asap, especially as I don't have much hypo awareness and I have various work trips in the next few weeks where I will be travelling alone.
Any advice much appreciated - thank you
Got to dash, I'll post the thread about Libre limitations later today. Good luck, Libre is great despite my personal difficulties with it.
