Hi Sophia
Poor thing, getting bloods taken is very difficult for someone with small veins especially a young child :? , its very good that you put your foot down and made me think to do the same when we are called back in.
The new testing device we have is from a company called Roche. It is fairly new as Ive been told by our DNS .. the name for it is Accu Chek - Aviva Expert.
The brilliant thing about this device is that firstly it comes with a very very good lanceting device called multiclix, it has the smallest needle and comes in a penform, it doesnt hurt at all when pricking, and you dont have to change the needle and risk scratching yourself as Ive done a few times, you just twist a cap off and slide in a new batch of needles which arent exposed btw, almost like changing batteries in a remote control
The testing device - when you apply a bloodsample it gives you the reading, it also shows you a coloured bar (blue - high, green-within range, yellow - slightly low, and red - hypo).
Then you have the option to insert how much carbs you are goin to give your child, it then works out how much bolus you will have to inject, once it has worked it out, it will give you the option to confirm this and you do and as you press ok, you will inject the child.
Now when you do your next test for your child, the machine will tell you to go through the same thing as mentioned above but when it comes to working out the bolus it will tell you how much insulin there is still left in the child's system, and it will work out how much you should give having taken that into consideration. Also it works out any correction etc everything in one go... this is all based on your child's sensitivity levels to the insulin which your DNS works out when setting up the machine on the first day of using it, she will also set Bg ranges that she wishes the child to be in throughout the day so a example being with my son ideally we want him to be between 4 - 7 in the morning,up to 8 from 12 - 7pm, and no more or less than 8 at bedtime this is however just a rough estimate as this is all worked out in detail and put into the machine by the DNS.
Also in the machine you are able to access graphs of your child's BG levels throughout the day, week, month etc.. it also shows a pie chart with the colours I mentioned above and percentages of how much child was within range so 40% green which is good, 5% hypo, 30 %high etc.. and then you meet with your DNS every so often to do a review and see where we can make changes.
In all honesty it has improved our life sooooo much, its like I know where we are going wrong, and right, and what we can do to change some high's we might get, and how much carbs to give at bedtime to boost him up slightly as the DNS was able to work out how sensitive my son is to insulin .. so 1 unit at the moment will bring him down by 7mmols, and 1 g of sugar will boost his bg by 2mmols etc..
Its a great thing which I would recommend to everyone, albeit hardwork in the beginning to work the tester out..
Sorry for the essay, but if you have any more questions feel free to ask !
