One of the problems with buying the stabby meter yourself is that you don't get someone showing you how it works.
And it turns out that I've burned through over 100 strips, many of them wasted, because I wasn't testing myself properly lol.
For anyone reading this might seem obvious/idiot-mode error, but you have to put the blood on the edge/tip of the strip, and NOT on the top surface of the stupid thing where you see the "pads"! I have been struggling trying to get the meter to register anything, by dumping half a metric tonne of blood (*not much of an exaggeration) on this part of the strip only to find it does nothing, and blaming the system for being rubbish. Not my finest hour - to go through that many strips and not even think to RTFM again is unforgivable really.
In hindsight, I really should have worked this out. It's a non-porous, fibre-glass circuit board -- where is the blood going to go on the top? Moron.
Still, that is fixed now and it's giving me reliable (in the sense that it responds quickly) and consistent results now.
Numbers have crept up slightly though (from 9 to 10 to 11 since Saturday) which is puzzling but I'm going to stick at what I'm doing as they are not going higher than this. If they continue to rise though I will be speaking to doctor as I don't know what else I can be doing that doesn't involve further medication.
Thanks for recent posts HSSS, I am slowly getting my head around all this...