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Newly diagnosed testing

A

Ashleigh

Well-Known Member
Messages
152
Hi All :)

I expect to be told on friday that i am diabetic or pre-diabetic, but i was just wondering what everyone did re testing when they were first diagnosed?

I expect that I will have to test after each meal or single my foods out to test individually, to see how each food affects me, for a few weeks - is this how it goes?

If so, do you only test on your fingers or can you do it on other places (i'd expect that would be more painful) as i'd expect fingers get quite sore after a while.

Are there creams you can get that numb your fingers or help stop them getting sore? When the nurse did the finger prick at my glucose tolerance test it did hurt a little bit. my finger was also sore later on that day when I was driving/using the gear stick.

Apoligies if thats a bit of a silly question, and i've ordered the SD Codefree.
 
Testing at first needs to be ideally before and after each meal and your fasting (waking) level.

That gets quite expensiveon strips so most people do maybe two fasting tests a month and then test 2 hours after a meal.

If the food at that meal does not push your BGs up beyond, say 7mmol, then you know you can eat it in the quantity consumed, so you don't need to test after eating that food again.

Soon you won't need to test much at all, you will get to know what you can and can't eat.

The SD codefree finger pricker is painless and can be set to release the smallest amount of blood, the meter only needs a very small amount. You won't get sore fingers, you have eight of them and if you use the sides that's sixteen tests, by the time you go back to start it will be fully healed.

Don't use anywhere else other than your fingers, BGs vary depending where the blood is taken from, and you need consistency in the results.

Keep a record of what you eat, the 2 hour test result, and any fasting tests. You will soon see a pattern both day to day and over the coming months, hopefully downwards.

Do not be alarmed by any highish test results, a few spikes will not matter in the grand plan, as long as BGs are coming down you will be on the right track.

Set yourself a target for your HbA1c, see if you are getting there by doing some simple maths, it's an approximation but will give a good ball park figure, (do a search on here for the calculation).

Good luck with testing.

H
 
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