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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AloeSvea" data-source="post: 1937842" data-attributes="member: 150927">Now I need to discuss the issue of BG testing, and the issues I have, and have had recently, with BG meters. During the VLCD, I tested my morning FBGs in a loo with a concrete floor. (This becomes relevant shortly!). I had pre-bought a whole bunch of Accu Chek BG test strips, all gone now, and was very happy to be using my much trusted Accu Chek meter (as part of the Swedish socialised medicine scenario). I love my Accu Chek Aviva meter - it matched up with what I expected, and with my HBA1cs. (note the sad past tense! I weep!)CareSens is the meter funded and part of the Kiwi socialised medicine scenario. I do not love my CareSensN meter, although I use it, a lot, it is the one that is funded here in Kiwiland, and I use my Accu Chek Aviva to determine what kind of overreading differential it has. When it doesn't I call out to Herr Svea in shock - "Oh my! The CareSens is reading the same as my AccuChek!". That is an extremely rare event. As in maybe twice a year. CareSens is pretty well 1.0 over, the whole time I have been checking them against each other (4 years). If I need to use the CareSensN I adjust the readings, especially the FBGs, otherwise I will be very freaked out and believe I am well on my way to being in the type two BG zone. (this did actually happen, due to an experiment going the wrong way. My CareSensN readings were in the double digits. AccuChekAviva matched up with the HBA1c. As usual.) I am exceedingly sad, along with many Kiwi T1s, as well as T2s who BG measure like me, that my country stopped providing and funding the much more reliable Roche products, and changed over to a much more unreliable CareSens (i-SENS company). You know why right? the CareSens meters are much cheaper. Trade relations with S. Korea and all that, I believe. There was a lot of protest when this decision was made. There was nothing anyone could do. Money, and all that.I followed a discussion in the forum, with some info about hematocrit factors in giving more accurate BG readings with great interest. I clicked out of it to be in here - sorry I can't name the thread. This was the ncbi article referenced in it:<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3692232/" target="_blank">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3692232/</a>Anyway. I kept dropping my meter on the concrete floor, accidentally of course. Also - the pricker mechanism. One fine morning, right at the end of my VLCD, as in RIGHT at the end, it started giving me very odd readings, not consistent with what I was eating and not eating, and my readings immediately prior. Now it reads higher than my CareSens. I have come to the conclusion it is pakaru, as we say here - or kaput as they say in Germany? So now I have two malfunctioning BG meters. Either that or I am going to get a very strange HBA1c next week (as in higher than when I started 'my mission'. I don't think that is going to happen.) So my FBGs have been reliably measured, I feel, until now, post the VLCD. So I am not recording them, until I get a new one, more is the big pity, as therein lies my proof of improved health with my particular kind of diabetes. (As measured by my FBG, as a SIRD with significant impaired fasting BG.)I got my FBG measured at my HBA1c and lipids test blood taking yesterday, so hopefully, it, as in the one reading, makes sense...So I need to get a new meter, so am reading about them in here, and in my country's website info<a href="https://www.pharmacodiabetes.co.nz/company/about-us/" target="_blank">https://www.pharmacodiabetes.co.nz/company/about-us/</a>And I came across the info that NZ has been funding dual meters that also test ketones. I couldn't believe it.  Since August.I sat in my (newish) doctor's office over two months ago, told him about my VLCD experiment, using a ketogenic diet, where ketones were going to be measured, as being in ketosis from nourishing food was a significant part of my being healthy over the two months semi-starving.  (That not getting malnourished part in traditional NDs is covered by the Optifast shakes. Ahem.) Anyway - it is all about getting the blood lipids and the insulin via C-peptides done on the state, as it were. (I do not expect to be properly medically supervised in NZ for doing any kind of experiment, let alone a VLCD.) (They allow me, and support me, which is all good, but knowledgeably supervise? No. When I discussed with newish doc he told me he had lots of diabetes patients with HBA1cs in the 100s. 'Lots' - his word. ie I am small fry because I have an HBA1c in the 40s, prediabetes level. Even though it is moderate then low carbing that got me there. NZ is a diabetes hot spot country.)I am soooooo disappointed my new doc didn't alert me to the CareSensDual! Instead I spent way too much on the much inferior ketostix - 100 of them. Grrrrrrr! (nearly all gone.) Ketostix were relatively cheap here, now they are not. I am quite sure the doc just didn't know. After all - I just stumbled upon the info by accident trying to find out about the hematocrit interference info on CareSensN meters...  But, hopefully with merely the cost of a new prescription, rather than going back into his expensive for me office, I can get him to prescribe the CareSensDual for me. And an end to pee-stix! And enter more correct ketones measurements. Especially as I am imagining a spaceship Patna experiment one day in the future. (A four month voyage. Some years hence!)And I will have to bury my poor old beloved AccuChek Aviva, tears fall, and come up with a good replacement for more accurate FBG readings. (I will be waiting till the payday after Xmas!) As we all know - it is not the initial cost of the meter which is the biggie - it's the cost of the test strips. Ah, sigh. I include this info, just in case a Kiwi is in here wondering about BG meters, state funded. I found the clause for "selected individual"s to get state funding BG meters and test strips. I had an awful pharmacist who made me explain this every time I went it with my prescription for the test strips. (Usually, you have to be on medications. Interesting, huh.) I even had to copy out the clause in the primary care manual, and show it to her. Repeatedly. (She was from Eastern Europe, so I had some compassion.) I have a new wonderful pharmacist in the new location. They send me text reminders for new test strips. I believe the relationship you have with a trusty pharmacist is an important part of monitoring your own health with prescriptions, and of course medications. (Suzy Cohen - I love you!)(Swedes don't need this info. BG testing is assumed to be all part of good diabetes management. Sigh. Ibland, saknar jag Sverige.) (And now I am going to go sit in the sun to have my lunch, in a warm season which began in November and ends in March or April in this a subtropical part of NZ. There are good things and bad things about every country!)</blockquote>

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