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Problem with blood testing

A

anna_fran

Member
Messages
21
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Hi I'm new to all this and I received my Accu-Chek Performa Nano this morning from the SN. I tried it out at lunch time, pricked my finger ok and held strip to blob of blood but couldn't get a reading. I kept pushing at the prick area to get more blood out but nothing happened. I tried again on a different finger, still nothing. Has anyone else had this problem? What am I doing wrong? Need help,please.
 
It seems obvious but is the 'needle' going in enough?
 
anna_fran said:
Hi I'm new to all this and I received my Accu-Chek Performa Nano this morning from the SN. I tried it out at lunch time, pricked my finger ok and held strip to blob of blood but couldn't get a reading. I kept pushing at the prick area to get more blood out but nothing happened. I tried again on a different finger, still nothing. Has anyone else had this problem? What am I doing wrong? Need help,please.
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It sounds like you didn't get enough blood from the pricked finger - different meters and test strips require different amounts of blood. I go with a Contour Next because it doesn;t require as much blood as others and as I'm a guitarist with calluses on my finger tips it makes it even trickier at times. If your situation is not enough blood, run you hands over warm water to get the circulation going or test after doing some level of activity like walking even. If your sedentary - ie you just watched Coronation Street and haven't moved in 30 minutes LOL - it might be more difficult extracting enough blood for your meter to work.
 
I gather from comments on here, that most meters are fairly straightforward to operate, with little that can go wrong & that any problem is usually something simple. In which case, sorry if these seem to be really silly suggestions - but, have you checked that the strip was inserted far enough into the meter so that it was primed and ready, before you applied the other end of the strip to the blood drop. (one time I didn't push a strip in far enough & I got an error message; took me a couple of minutes to figure out what I'd done wrong). Did you check the strip to see that it showed it had accepted a sufficient amount of blood for its needs, or was it just not drawing up enough blood?
 
Hi @anna_fran. Are you actually getting blood to come out of your finger?
I knew a person once who hadn't inserted a lance into a new lancing device.
 
Salvia said:
I gather from comments on here, that most meters are fairly straightforward to operate, with little that can go wrong & that any problem is usually something simple. In which case, sorry if these seem to be really silly suggestions - but, have you checked that the strip was inserted far enough into the meter so that it was primed and ready, before you applied the other end of the strip to the blood drop. (one time I didn't push a strip in far enough & I got an error message; took me a couple of minutes to figure out what I'd done wrong). Did you check the strip to see that it showed it had accepted a sufficient amount of blood for its needs, or was it just not drawing up enough blood?
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The strip was definitely in the machine, something comes up on the screen to ndicate it' ready for the blood. It just wasn't drawing up enough blood.
 
fletchweb said:
It sounds like you didn't get enough blood from the pricked finger - different meters and test strips require different amounts of blood. I go with a Contour Next because it doesn;t require as much blood as others and as I'm a guitarist with calluses on my finger tips it makes it even trickier at times. If your situation is not enough blood, run you hands over warm water to get the circulation going or test after doing some level of activity like walking even. If your sedentary - ie you just watched Coronation Street and haven't moved in 30 minutes LOL - it might be more difficult extracting enough blood for your meter to work.
Click to expand...
Thank you, I will try your suggestions.
 
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