michaeldavid
Well-Known Member
I was diagnosed with type 1 in 1983. Shortly after, blood-sugar tests became universally available: the BM strips were introduced.
I have never used the spring-loaded finger prickers, and I find it difficult to understand why anyone should. Instead, I simply (and gently) jab myself with the bare lancet. And I use that same lancet over and over, until it starts to lose its exquisite sharpness.
Moreover, in order to effectively and economically maintain the control that I manage to achieve over my condition, I could not without Betachek Visual blood-sugar testing strips: these correspond to the 'BM 1-44' strips - a 1 minute test. (The latter came in not long after the original BM strips, which required 2-3 minutes per test.) And - just as I was shown to do by the specialist at Whipps Cross Hospital not long after I was diagnosed - I cut each of those Betachek Visual strips, using a good pair of scissors, into 5 striplets.
The bad days are here, now. For not only is it the case that people cannot do without their gadgetry, and children do not get an option to use simpler methods (in addition to the more sophisticated yet many times more expensive meter-read sticks, which are fine when necessary), but diabetics' control is - generally speaking - quite awful. And yet that need not be so.
I have never used the spring-loaded finger prickers, and I find it difficult to understand why anyone should. Instead, I simply (and gently) jab myself with the bare lancet. And I use that same lancet over and over, until it starts to lose its exquisite sharpness.
Moreover, in order to effectively and economically maintain the control that I manage to achieve over my condition, I could not without Betachek Visual blood-sugar testing strips: these correspond to the 'BM 1-44' strips - a 1 minute test. (The latter came in not long after the original BM strips, which required 2-3 minutes per test.) And - just as I was shown to do by the specialist at Whipps Cross Hospital not long after I was diagnosed - I cut each of those Betachek Visual strips, using a good pair of scissors, into 5 striplets.
The bad days are here, now. For not only is it the case that people cannot do without their gadgetry, and children do not get an option to use simpler methods (in addition to the more sophisticated yet many times more expensive meter-read sticks, which are fine when necessary), but diabetics' control is - generally speaking - quite awful. And yet that need not be so.
