New gadget: blood glucose meter

So, here I am trying to type with a 'defective' middle finger, while fighting off that tired, sleepy feeling brought about by a hypoglycemic attack.

I'm exaggerating with the finger, of course. Just did my very first self-blood test -- well, with some help from Martin. Being the chicken that I am, I couldn't bring myself to press the lancing device. It didn't matter that the needle was so thin and my mind reasoned that such a thing couldn't hurt, but my head was still filled with the memory of the last time my uncle administered a blood test on me using a jurassic lancing device, so the pain was still fresh in mind. Seven minutes had already passed and one strip wasted, but I still couldn't bear the thought of that needle puncturing my skin. This is from the girl who had a gigantic needle stuck several times in her gums when her wisdom teeth had to be removed. What can I say, I'm scared of injections and airplane ride ;-p . As a young girl, I was totally fearless, though...come to think of it, I was so fearless, it was scary. I never cried, not even winced, when I had injections. Then growing-up happened and half of my mind started extrapolating situations arising from injections, while the other half tried to convince me that my deductive reasoning was defective.

But I digress. Today I decided to procure this Accu-Check Compact Plus device for measuring my blood glucose level. I've been wanting to get one for some time so I can monitor my progress: see how my diet is affecting my blood glucose levels and just learn more about how my body functions and reacts based on my food choices and eating behaviour. All the drama about the needle was for nothing, because it didn't hurt at all. I really like that needle! It did the work without the hurt ;-)

I must say, though, the product design is not that good, aside from the fact that it looked like a jurassic mobile phone. The interface is also not that easy to understand at the start, but I guess, it's not so much that, but the way the instruction manual was written / designed. It was a lot of blah and didn't realy give clear overviews. But I did like that the strips were made into a 'rolled tape'' so that I just put the whole thing in the gadget and it's dispensed automatically when I do a blood test. And of course, those teeny-weeny needles.

Anyway, the result was 3.4 mmol/l, which means I was experiencing hypoglycemia. I just had a light lunch (no breakfast coz I slept in late) -- a small bowl of soup and some cheese -- because I was planning to eat again after doing groceries. When I came back, I wanted to take a blood test before I ate anything so proceeded to fiddle around with the gadget. After a while, we realised that the needles weren't included in the package so Martin had to go back to the pharmacy. It took him a while to get back home, and I struggled a bit going through the manual so by the time I finally completed the test, I felt that I was about to get the 'shakes' (my term for when I experience hypoglycemic symptoms). I was hungry, felt the headache starting, and started to feel irritated.

It's quite useful for me to have felt these symptoms and see it translated in numbers. It gave me a better understanding of what exactly was happening to me. Later tonight, after dinner, I will do another blood test. Tomorrow morning, before I have breakfast (12 hours after I eat my last meal tonight), I'll also take another blood test. This way I have my baseline for hypoglycemic situations, after meals and fasting. I'm also thinking of getting the Accu-check software so that I can easily monitor all related statistics on my computer.

Ok, stopping now. Still feeling tired and I need to nibble again on something. ;-/