Finding the chase and cutting to it

After self funding for a year, I went to my GP and got my Freestyle Libre on prescription.

For me, it costed in like this.

Costs of running my insulin replacement therapy on blood tests

Item	Cost per item	Number of items	Total cost per month
Freestyle Optium strips	£19.89	4 (I know, that’s 200 blood tests a month)	£79.56
Type a lancets	£8.99	1	£8.99
Grand total			£88.55

(It should be born in mind, type 1 diabetics do not pay VAT for equipment essential to looking after their diabetes and post and pack is from the Pharmacy – we’re not taking into account what the tax payer pays per prescription).

Results

Typically, my Hb1Ac is between 7% and 7.9%.

Costs of running my insulin replacement therapy with Freestyle Libre

Item	Cost per item	Number of items	Total cost per month
Freestyle Libre	£35	2	£70

Price update: This is from a high street drug store, Superdrug who are selling this at cost to them (and the price charged to the NHS – you cannot order on line and it needs to be a Superdrug with a pharmacy.  Please remember to fill in your VAT form.

Results

Between 6.2% and 6.5%.

It’s actually cheaper?

Yep, that’s right.  There is a shortage in the UK, but as opposed to doing 200 odd tests a month, or an average of 8 during the working day and 4-6 on the weekend, I am doing 14 odd scans a day.  I test when I wouldn’t normally.

If things had been going well recently, it probably wouldn’t be as many as that if I am honest, much closer to 5 or 6.  It has allowed me to tune my basal rate really accurately especially over night where normally that is a best guess.

I can see that losing 5lbs in weight has reduced not only my basal requirements but also my meal ratios and tuning my ratios against my food has become trivial.

It does not mean I am not diabetic, but filling in the gaps between tests is priceless.

You’re a fan then?

I’ve tried three different CGMS systems (from Medtronic, Dexcomm and the Freestyle) and I love it.  When I meet new diabetics, I am often surprised they are not given this at least initially to help them tune their doses.

In hospitals, it reduces the need to wake diabetics up to test them which allows them to recover better.

It does not beep and it tells you what has happened not what is happening though.  All current CGMS use interstitial fluid not blood so it’s about 10-15 minutes behind.

But, yes, I’ve been using it for a year and it has helped me enormously.  I wish I’d known my phone could have been used instead of requiring the reader.

If I didn’t have funding, using a sensor while restabilising was the approach I took.  If you mixed a matched, say 6-8 sensors a year, that would bring the costs down and give you the information you need to make qualified decisions.