Ladybirdy75
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Ladybirdy75
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So glad you did Ladybirdy, I enjoy your posts immensely40 years then for you, wow that's fantastic
I enjoy yours too RRB, very like minded hee hee. Yes 40 years and somehow still alive and kicking
Robinredbreast
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Still brings back bad memories, who on earth though of making that device
Must of been a male, a former darts player, no dismiss that one
a former Javelin thrower perhaps lol, The trepidation just waiting for that to stab the finger, I think made it so much worse, it was painful wasn't it 
dancer
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Funnily enough, I was grateful for it as there was no way I could have just pricked myself with the lancet!Must of been a male, a former darts player, no dismiss that one
Flowerpot
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I resorted to stabbing my finger with the yellow lancets, I couldn't bear the anticipation of pressing the guillotine button on the Autolet and the twang as it headed towards my finger, it used to hit the finger with such force it rebounded.
The picture of it does make me shudder !
The picture of it does make me shudder !
Ladybirdy75
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It didn't so much stab the finger as actually slashed it 
. Or maybe it was because i used to not pull my finger away in time lol. It was so brutal wasn't it.
. Or maybe it was because i used to not pull my finger away in time lol. It was so brutal wasn't it.
Still brings back bad memories, who on earth though of making that device
YES! The scary guillotine! I was given one of those when I was first diagnosed and it was the worst bit of having diabetes for me. At least I could get used to the injections, but each experience with the Autolet was uniquely terrifying! It used to take me literally 10 minutes to test my blood. Often the stupid thing went crooked and mangled the side of my finger, or - the anticlimax - didn't work at all and so had to be reloaded. I used to close my eyes and tremble, using that. Every blood test was a bloodbath.
Oh, the joy of discovering I could buy a gentle finger pricker in Boots! It made blood tests so different.
Evil guillotine! I didn't keep mine. It'd have given me nightmares knowing it was still lurking in my kitchen drawer!
....... who on earth though of making that device
Must have been the Marquis de Sade, I think!
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It was worse than reusing the needles on the glass syringes @azure , much like yourself my fingers were a mess with using it and bg testing was a miserable time.
That's what I did after a while @Flowerpot, just used the individual lancets to stab my fingers as it was far less painful than using the Autolet.
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Remember these natty little numbers? The Reflolux S with test strips and old school insulin too!
My very first bg meter, remember it took 2 mins to take a bg reading, you had to apply the blood to the test strip and wait 60 seconds and wipe the blood off with some cotton wool, then you place the strip into the meter and it would take a further 60 seconds to come up with a bg reading.
At the time it was life changing from having to use the Clinitest Kit, did you get the disposable syringes on prescription @Dillinger, I was told I had to pay for mine but others have said they got them on prescription, sure in the early 80's they were around £3 for a packet of 10
Remember these natty little numbers? The Reflolux S with test strips and old school insulin too!
The ones where you could check your BS by eye too by comparing the strip to the colour chart on the tube?
I loved those, even though the result time was about two and a half weeks! Er....almost!
I used to do my test and guess what my BS might be before I looked at the result on the meter. Well, I had to make diabetes fun somehow!
( actually, as an aside, I think those meters had a better build quality than modern ones, which are plasticky and sometimes look like they'd fall apart if you breathed on them too hard)
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Following advice from my DSN I use to cut the strips up and just use the colour chart on the side of the container if I wanted a rough guide on bg levels, obviously with the design of the strips nowadays this isn't possible and the colour charts are sadly long-gone.
I found the colour charts gave extra reassurance too. When I got my next meter, which didn't have the colour charts, I was very nervous about trusting it and not being able to check against the chart.
I miss those strips!
I miss those strips!
Robinredbreast
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It didn't so much stab the finger as actually slashed it
Could that of been the start of those teen slash horror films
I remember the hospital having a Refloflux S, but we didn't get given them as they weren't available from the clinic and cost a bomb. I spent the first 3 or 4 years doing it all by colour matching.
The way those things worked was also nuts compared with what happens now. The meter effectively did spectrometry on the strip checking the colour it changed to via a flashing red LED. The old days (for me at least)...
While looking for pictures of old kit, I found this rather interesting little publication: http://www.mendosa.com/The Pursuit of Noninvasive Glucose 3rd Edition.pdf
The way those things worked was also nuts compared with what happens now. The meter effectively did spectrometry on the strip checking the colour it changed to via a flashing red LED. The old days (for me at least)...
While looking for pictures of old kit, I found this rather interesting little publication: http://www.mendosa.com/The Pursuit of Noninvasive Glucose 3rd Edition.pdf
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Ladybirdy75
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Could that of been the start of those teen slash horror films
Are you telling me we could've made a fortune here??!!!
Ladybirdy75
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Wow that does bring back memories! I only threw mine away a few years ago. I remember when the plastipak syringes first came out and i vaguely remember my mom having to buy them until they got put on repeat prescriptions.
When my mom first presented me with the plastipak syringe i was very adverse to it, i didn't want to change, i was about 8 or 9 i think, so i went upstairs and injected myself with it then dipped my cotton wool in the red paint cake of my little paint tin and pretended it had made me bleed so that she might let me carry on using the metal/glass syringe i had been used to. Ha ha ha AS IF!!! I knew how blissfully painless it was but I'd had enough of the diabetic palava by then. Needless to say mom won. lol
Dillinger
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Yes, I used to cut all my strips up with nail scissors; funny that there was a time when we used to get one over the drug companies...
The disposable syringes were on prescription where I was; made by BD I think and came in a pack of 10.
The glass syringe is so long ago I don't remember anything about it really.
Yup, and they were definitely reused... I still have BD syringes as spares. Last time I got some the pharmacist made a mistake and I ended up with a box of 100. I have about 88 left.
