I have been a T1 diabetic since 1975, for 48 years and have been well controlled by being very vigilant on monitoring and eating as well as I can. Oh and I turned 50 in June this year so have a lot of experience with T1 diabetes.

In the last few years it has become more difficult for me to maintain good control as I guess my body is aging and I also am now not as able to recognise low blood sugars (or as readily as I used to be able to).

With that happening I looked into getting a CGM, and there were three options that are readily available in New Zealand Dexcom G7, AiDex and Freestyle Fibre 2. I spent some time going through online research to find out the cost, length of operation, size and how they worked operationally.

I came to the conclusion that the Freestyle Libre 2 was the best option for cost, length of operation and size. The things that worried me regards the system were the lag in recognition of blood level compared to regular blood monitoring (approx 10 mins delay due not monitoring actual blood).

I jumped and bought my first Libra in May 2023, and took time to compare the results from it to my normal finger pricking, and there was a very high correlation in results, with the delay in results mentioned above taken into account. A big part of this transfer to a new system is trust in the product and as I am quite a cautious person I wanted to make sure the product would give me confidence in providing results.

After my testing above I decided I could trust the system and moved to using it completely, which in hindsight has been a blessing. My mmol/mol was consistently between high 60’s to low 70’s before shifting method, and now using the Libra my mmol/mol is averaging 57. And that is not the only benefit of my changing.

I play a lot of golf, and now during rounds if my blood goes low, the alarm goes off and I can eat immediately without having to produce testing equipment and slow the round down. I also play better as my blood sugars are better monitored obviously my body works better. Also eating out at restaurants is now easier due to just scanning my arm, in a few seconds, compared to pulling our the finger pricker and doing the necessary.

Also during the night, the alarm is a blessing as I wakes me up when my sugar either goes low or too high depending on the levels I choose for the device to notify me, this is great (aside from the having to jump our of bed and deal with the situation) and gives me reassurance during the time we all don’t monitor well. And of course my fingers are partying now without the minimum of five pricks a day I used to perform.

The biggest problem is the delay in sugar getting to the system, for example during the night if the low blood alarm goes off, I get up and eat a certain amount of carbs to remedy my sugar level, and then return to bed to sleep, but sometimes the alarm will go off again before the sugar has reached my arm where the sensor is located, this can be frustrating but I have learnt to turn the alarm off now before returning to bed.

I guess the sensor is a little uncomfortable sometimes, depending where it is located on my arm, but this is not a big issue, but I imagine some people may have issues with skin allergies etc. with ti?

But I would recommend this device to anyone with type one, and therefore it should be funded as I have found it a godsend in making life easier and it has improved my control markedly as described above.

- Nathan