How Times Change!!

Yeah I remember cutting my BM strips. Well my dad did, I was too young to do it properly. I remember my parents buying my syringes at my hospital visits as well. Talk about memory lane.


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I was born in 1953 when TB was still quite common. My granny and aunt both died of it very suddenly and within 6 months of each other, a few years before I was born. Another aunt and uncle caught it and had to go into 'sanatorium' for a couple of years. They were kept in isolation in these places which were way out in the countryside, Delamere Forest was one of them. Fresh air and sunshine and doses of antibiotics was the treatment so the nurses used to push the beds outside into little huts where the patients lay in bed with the windows and doors of the huts wide open to the weather.

When I was a tot I developed 'a funny cough' so I was whisked off to the local 'Chest Clinic' which I attended 3 monthly for about 7 years in total. I remember the smell of discinfectant as I walked in, the nurses in crisp white aprons, it was all very, very clinical. I was stripped to my knickers and x-rayed. I had lots of x-rays as a child, far more than they'd allow these days. I also had what my Mum and the nurse called 'the jelly tests', which when I look back must have been an ECG, because they smeared the 'jelly' on various parts of my body and attached the electrodes to them.

I can still remember the day when they told me I was discharged. My Mum bought me a huge ice cream on the way home. But I haven't a clue what was ever wrong with me or why I had to have the x-rays or ECG's. :think:

sueycl said:

The original meters look very high tech compared to the awful enormous glass syringes, which were kept in a blue (I think) plastic 'tube' full of some type of spirit. The needles were as thick as knitting needles (well, maybe not!) and I'm sure they weren't changed often as they were stored in the tube, which had a spring in the bottom to stop the needle getting blunt. And what about the clinitest urine testing kit...a plastic 'box' with test tubes, and a tablet was dropped in to a tube of wee, then it fizzed until the colour stabilised. Then it was compared to a chart. I seem to remember that orange was the highest colour! I wonder if we'd still be here unless technology had improved the equipment!! We still say 'bm sticks'!!!

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Hated the Clinitest Kit with a vengeance and was so pleased when I got my first blood glucose meter.

Lyndesay said:

Had to cut the test strips aswell, its great looking back on these things but I would never want to have to go through some of the stuff again! Technology has definitely moved on - thank God!! :grin:

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Yes the test strips for the Reflolux S you could cut up and make 3 out of one, they didn't work in the meter but the test strip container had a colour chart on the side where you could compare your results with........although it wasn't a reliable method of bg control management it did save on the strips

if i am right thoes stainless needles were 17 mm in lenth and were very thick.
got blunt very quick.
and was a pain trying to get new ones from the doctors.
the sperit it was kept in was ims(industrial mettical sperit) or serigal sperit wich was ims but had 10% caster oil added.
there was 2 difrent colouc charts for the clinitest tablets
one for the 3 drops and one for the 5 drops (unine).
dint those tests get hot.
found the clinitest testing kit around my mums a few mounths ago a long time no see and no use
wernt it in 1983 ish that they changed all the insulin from the 20u/ml 40u/ml and the 80u/ml to the 100u/ml as it is today?
put on to the pen in 1998 and then they sed reuse the single use needles for a week it was only when they got put on persiption was that stoped .

david and guide dog lassie

Seeing the BM tester took me back to the one i had before that, a much larger, and quite heavy, dark blue machine, may have been like the one one of the posters mentions. You had a glass jar of Dextrostix strips, and you put a large bit of blood on, then waited a set time, then washed the strip under running water, or with water from a small bottle you squirted water from. Then you put the strip in a machine made by Dextrostix, and it came up with a result. Accurate, but too big to to carry places very easily and test in a cafe etc!

emillie said:

Seeing the BM tester took me back to the one i had before that, a much larger, and quite heavy, dark blue machine, may have been like the one one of the posters mentions. You had a glass jar of Dextrostix strips, and you put a large bit of blood on, then waited a set time, then washed the strip under running water, or with water from a small bottle you squirted water from. Then you put the strip in a machine made by Dextrostix, and it came up with a result. Accurate, but too big to to carry places very easily and test in a cafe etc!

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Crikey that sounds primitive

I remember with the Reflolux S you had to wait a total of 2 minutes for a bg reading, the first minute you left the blood on the test strip then you'd wipe it off with cotten wool and place the strip in the meter and wait a further minute for the result, even that now seems primitive when we expect results in 5 seconds or less

I remember being discharged with a pot of BM strips a handful of scalpel blades a glass syringe 2 needles and some insulin (porcine) but no meter. Was instructed to cut strips in half then half again. Glad times have changed

Yes Julie!
It was Bohringer Mannheim who made the strips. We used to read them by eye and that meant we could split them vertically to double the number. My vet brother put us on to them. NOT the dear old NHS!
Also note Bohringer Mannheim and think what nurses call doing a BG test. they call it a BM! I asked some young doctors a couple of years ago what they thought BM means, they all thought it meant something like "Blood Measure".
As far as I know Bohringer Mannheim discontinued those strips in 2002
Hana

Makes me feel old BM's and the urine test tubes were housed in grey container and you need tissue or strong handheld paper towels to test ur ketone.