freestyle libre sensor

All diabetics know that they have to keep an eye on their blood glucose levels. They can do this with a blood glucose meter which requires a finger stick to draw a drop of blood. You can imagine how much of a hassle and pain it is to use this method several times a day. Another way to keep track of your glucose levels with a glucose monitoring system that uses a sensor that you stick on your body. Today I’m going to tell you about the FreeStyle Libre 14 day flash glucose monitoring system from Abbott.

What is it?
The Abbott FreeStyle Libre 14 day is a flash glucose monitoring system that uses a wireless sensor that is inserted into your arm and wirelessly transmits your blood glucose level on demand to your phone or a dedicated FreeStyle reader device.

A little history about me
After a routine physical in 2004 showed that I had a fasting blood sugar reading of 102, I was given an A1C test that came back with a 6.9% result which meant that I was a Type-2 diabetic. The American Diabetes Association and the CDC say that an A1C 6.5% and higher means that you’re diabetic. A reading of 5.7 – 6.4% means that you’re pre-diabetic and anything below 5.7% means that your blood glucose level is in the normal range.

A1C is a reading that is a person’s average blood glucose level during the past 3 months. It’s a better way to track overall trends instead of just doing finger sticks because a finger stick only tells you the blood glucose reading at that exact time and can make a diabetic feel like they are on the right track when in reality their readings can be spiking really high the rest of the time.

The word diabetes wasn’t unknown to me or my family. My grandma on my mother’s side died of complications from the disease, my mother died of complications from it at age 58, my niece became a Type-1 diabetic at a very young age, and my dad developed Type-2 diabetes in his 70’s.

The moment I found out that I was diabetic, I immediately quit eating sugary foods and drinks. Let’s put it this way, my diet back then was crap. My idea of breakfast was a cinnamon sugar pop tart and a regular Coke. Lunch wasn’t much better. I often ate a candy bar, a bag of chips, with another regular Coke.

Since I had grown up watching my mom struggle with the disease which ultimately took her life after multiple amputations and strokes. I did not want that for my own life so I kept a good handle on my diet and didn’t require any drugs to manage my diabetes. In fact, my A1Cs after the first one, have never been back into the full-blown diabetes range again, but I’ve remained in the prediabetes range all these years.

Then COVID hit and with my working from home restrictions, I found myself adopting some bad habits of having sandwiches, chips, and some type of sweet treat with every lunch. During this time I also was not checking my blood regularly. I still had a yearly (I should have been doing a quarterly) A1C test which remained below full diabetes. But with my bad habits, I decided to start testing my blood again and I was worried when I was seeing some higher than normal (for me) fasting glucose ranges. So I called my doc and asked for an A1C and found that it had gone from 5.7% from the year before to 5.9%. .2% might not sound like a huge jump, but I’m motivated by data and that was enough for me to get strict with my diet once more. AND, then my health care provider said that I could have a free FreeStyle Libre system and I was super excited about it for 2 reasons. The first reason was that my day job covered all the charges, and the second reason is that I wouldn’t have to stick my fingers again!