I have been a type one diabetic for 20 years now. The injection I can handle but the finger pricks were awful! I would do anything to avoid doing them, and obviously my control suffered as a consequence. I heard about the Libre and thought it sounded too good to be true! I bought it in desperation that it would help me and my goodness it did!! My hba1c has improved by 3% since! I loved it so much I chose to keep it on, on my wedding day! My mum had the reader so she could sneakily scan me while I chatted to guests, I didn't have to worry about it at all and it was such a relief! I was so glad to not do finger pricks-and risk getting blood on my dress! The Libre is so useful as my husband can scan me while i'm asleep and wake me if its low/high. It is more important now than ever to keep a close eye on my sugars, and I honestly feel that the Libre has given me back so much confidence and the ability to achieve things I didn't think possible. I would be lost without it now!

I started the FreeStyle Libre about 6 months ago after only having been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes for 10 months. I had been using lancets up until that point and always hated pricking my finger, but most of all I had no idea what my levels were doing during the night and between meals. Having only been recently diagnosed, I was struggling to control night time hypos and I didn't always wake up. It was a battle often to know if I had had a hypo in the night until I got the freestyle libre. Not only could I immediately see from the glucose graph whether I had had a hypo or not, I could tell when the lows occurred and helped me to understand what insulin needed changing. Not only could I see the results, it was super easy to send it through to my nurse to show her what had been happening and she was able to effectively help me to change my insulin doses. In addition to the huge help it has been for night time hypos, it has helped me massively during the day. As a teacher I need to have very good control over my levels as it can be a challenge to check my levels with finger pricking if I have a low. The Libre now means I can check my levels instantly without disrupting my teaching and treat it with the appropriate action. It has made such a difference to my life and makes me feel like I have much better control and understanding of my levels. Some days it's so easy I almost forget i'm even diabetic!

"This is my boy, 13 today, using his Freestyle Libre. It may not look like much, just a boy scanning himself, until I tell you that alongside his Type 1 Diabetes Johnny also has severe autism and a severe learning disability. He has very little speech and cannot tell me if he is feeling woozy or close to a dangerous hypo. It is a particularly cruel combination of disabilities and means we have been living on a knife-edge. The Freestyle system has literally changed our lives: yesterday we took him on a 6 mile seaside walk without worrying or stopping to take out a finger prick test and test him on the cold, windy beach. Today I took him swimming for his birthday treat, scanner in my pocket. It has freed up our lives and his. I feel for the first time that I can stop living in fear. Thank you from both of us."

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