My PCP wanted me to stop the constant checking of my blood sugars before every meal. For the time being, he was only concerned with my fasting levels. While it’s great that I don’t have to keep pricking my finger, the nagging curiosity of what my blood sugar levels are has been driving me nuts. I want to check my sugar values more, just so I can better understand how my sugar correlates to how I’m feeling at a given moment.

The problem with checking my values at random intervals is that I have to use more of the test strips for my meter. Since the hospital gave me a meter that uses relatively expensive strips, I don’t want to go around wasting them on a whim. So today I bought a second, cheap meter that I can carry with me to work and check my sugars whenever I felt the need. The strips are cheaper so I won’t worry as much about waste and I can then satisfy my curiosity whenever I darn well please.

Naturally, after purchasing the new meter, I wanted to make sure that it actually worked correctly. I took both meters side by side and prepped them with their respective test strips. Pricking my finger, I drew a drop of blood and placed it into one meter, squeezed out another drop and put it into the second meter. Let me know if you see any issues:

Yeah, they’re different, by 18 whole points. I wasn’t really sure how I could have basically the same droplet of blood go into two different machines and get two different results. Then I remembered that I needed to test the strips first. Oops.

So I got out my testing solution, put a new strip into the new glucometer, and sure enough… It was an invalid result, outside the normal range for a testing solution. The only thing I can think of is that the test strips I bought were invalid, or the solution I used doesn’t work with the other kind of strips. Either way… crap!! Thankfully the machine didn’t cost me that much, just in case the whole thing is garbage.

In other news, tomorrow is my all day Diabetes Self Management class. I’m not sure what we will be talking about for the entire day, but I’m pretty sure that I will be falling asleep at one point. Here’s hoping they actually offer coffee, otherwise we could have a problem.

Actually, if anything, I’m hoping that they have something I can snack on tomorrow. I found myself to be exceptionally hungry today at work and ended up blowing my daily snack about three hours after lunch. That’s the first time it’s happened and hopefully I don’t make a habit out of it.