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I have my 89 year old T2 father visiting over Christmas until March. Since low carbing last Christmas he's had his gliclazide reduced from 3 to one 80mg tablet per day.
He doesn't test much (at all?) home but carefully brought his testing kit to see what was happening while he's here (I am hoping to get him off that last gliclazide).
We had a houseful over Christmas so finally got his kit out today
1) testing strips are accu-chek performa, last prescribed in November 2019 (ie those are his current strips). Plus an instruction booklet for the performa nano so I'm hoping he has the actual meter at home somewhere.
2) One accu-chek aviva meter with some strips dated September 2010. I'd need to replace the battery to make it work, and given that the strips (one packet of 50) are 10 years old I assume there's not much point??? Given the date I think they probably belonged to my T1 mother who died in 2012.
3) I have a accu-chek compact plus meter together with a softclix plus lancing device and some lancets. No instructions but when I googled they appear to need a fancy dispensing drum of test strips, which I don't appear to have. I doubt this one has ever been used, it certainly wasn't the meter he came out with last year, which had individual strips. Why give him this meter and continue to give him strips for another meter????
4) I have an accu-chek fastclix finger pricker plus several boxes of lancets. Yay, this works!!!!
I am officially tearing my hair out!
Luckily I have spare/old meters here (caresens), so I can just buy strips for that (I have the caresens dual and don't want to confuse my results with his), but am confused as to what to do with all these meters. (Can't get strips for any of them in NZ as far as I know, though I could probably order some from amazon US.) It seems a shame to throw them away. Is there a charity that accepts them?
So tempted just to shove everything back in his bag to take home, but I don't want to leave him with multiple unusable meters there either.
Suggestions, or just some sympathy, welcomed. (OK, I know this is a bit of a first world issue, but I'm just fuming at the fact that I have all these meters and test strips and none of them are compatible with each other.)
Edited to add: and no one has ever shown him how to use any of this equipment (though to be fair he probably told them that I would show him). What is the point of giving someone testing equipment and not showing them how to use it?
He doesn't test much (at all?) home but carefully brought his testing kit to see what was happening while he's here (I am hoping to get him off that last gliclazide).
We had a houseful over Christmas so finally got his kit out today
1) testing strips are accu-chek performa, last prescribed in November 2019 (ie those are his current strips). Plus an instruction booklet for the performa nano so I'm hoping he has the actual meter at home somewhere.
2) One accu-chek aviva meter with some strips dated September 2010. I'd need to replace the battery to make it work, and given that the strips (one packet of 50) are 10 years old I assume there's not much point??? Given the date I think they probably belonged to my T1 mother who died in 2012.
3) I have a accu-chek compact plus meter together with a softclix plus lancing device and some lancets. No instructions but when I googled they appear to need a fancy dispensing drum of test strips, which I don't appear to have. I doubt this one has ever been used, it certainly wasn't the meter he came out with last year, which had individual strips. Why give him this meter and continue to give him strips for another meter????
4) I have an accu-chek fastclix finger pricker plus several boxes of lancets. Yay, this works!!!!
I am officially tearing my hair out!
Luckily I have spare/old meters here (caresens), so I can just buy strips for that (I have the caresens dual and don't want to confuse my results with his), but am confused as to what to do with all these meters. (Can't get strips for any of them in NZ as far as I know, though I could probably order some from amazon US.) It seems a shame to throw them away. Is there a charity that accepts them?
So tempted just to shove everything back in his bag to take home, but I don't want to leave him with multiple unusable meters there either.
Suggestions, or just some sympathy, welcomed. (OK, I know this is a bit of a first world issue, but I'm just fuming at the fact that I have all these meters and test strips and none of them are compatible with each other.)
Edited to add: and no one has ever shown him how to use any of this equipment (though to be fair he probably told them that I would show him). What is the point of giving someone testing equipment and not showing them how to use it?