Re: compare blood sticks with needle alone or in pen

August 9, 2005

Dear Kay,

All of my finger tips thank you so much, Kay. I never expected such an easy

solution. I've never heard that idea before but I'm off to try it.

Always With Love,

Lissi

compare blood sticks with needle alone or in

> pen

>

> Dear Readers,

>

> While I was in the hospital with a high fever and 7 lines of med being

> routed through two I Vs, and pills and frequent shots besides, a diabetic

> nurse demonstrated how to load the pen and adjust it to the middle

> position

> for moderate poking. I tried to learn, but it was difficult to raise my

> hands and hold them up to load aim shot and do the clean up. At that time

> it seemed that I was hearing every voice on the floor and was confused as

> to

> who I was supposed to be listening to.

>

> When My acu Check arrived at home, I still had a fever, but below 104. I

> was

> ready to learn. and a nurse came to show me how to use it, I remembered

> much

> I'd learned about the sequence of events, and loading the test strip.

> When

> it came to the stickers, she said she didn't know how to use the little

> shotter and I was just as well off pinching the little plastic tab and

> just

> poking it in.

>

> To avoid blood clots I was getting blood thinning shots in the hospital so

> getting blood was easier than stopping it from seeping minutes later.

>

> I'm the one in this group who was afraid to even check my sugar. It was

> 197

> about 2 weeks ago and I'm still scared to check it. I've cancelled my

> Doctor

> appointments and blood tests.

>

> I know I need to stay true to a carb counting and timely testing regimen.

> One little inconvenience has developed now that I'm not on injectable

> blood

> thinners any more. Sometimes I prick my finger 3 even rarely but

> frustratinglyy 5 times without getting any blood, or I can't push out

> enough blood for the machine to say beep...enough. I've thought perhaps I

> should run my hands under hot water and exercise them before testing to

> get

> the blood moving.

>

> Keep in mind I'm a type 2 diabetic. Do you think I'd have better luck

> learning to use the pen? Can anyone explain it. I can follow directions if

> they are practical. Oh, and when I'm just poking the needle in without the

> pen I don't shrink from sticking it in fast and deep. I'd rather do that

> and

> get blood on the first time. It's those repeated sticks that make my

> nerves

> raw. Besides, to play harp, I can only stick one side of each finger and I

> don't want my fingers to be too sore to keyboard at the computer or use my

> perkins brailler.My fingertips also look blue, purple or red from all of

> those pokes.

>

> Any advice?

>

> Many Thanks

>

> Also congratulations to all of you with on target or improving lab tests.

>

> Always With Love,

>

> Lissi

>

August 9, 2005

Dear Kay, Mike and ,

With the rubber band, one stick was enough. What a relief! My reading was

174, an improvement from the one nineties, but I realize still too high.

It's hard to understand how something you can't feel is causing harm. Isn't

the most basic explanation that if your blood is loaded with sugar it can't

carry or is that deliver oxygen as well? So a person like me who feels

satisfied from eating what I like am actually starving my body of oxygen.

Conversely, when I'm hungry and eating boring food, feeling unfed and

deprived, my blood is actually able to nourish my body more?

In a silly way it reminds me of feed a cold, starve a fever, or whatever the

saying is. With type two diabetes it's feel full, and starve the body or

feel starved and nourish the body.

This is hard for me, but I'm trying to plug back in to what for me is a grim

necessity. I'm absolutely alone in this. All of you are the total of my

support. Thanks for helping me not to abandon the effort. thanks for being

kind.

Always With Love,

Estelnalissi -

compare blood sticks with needle alone or in

>> pen

>>

>> Dear Readers,

>>

>> While I was in the hospital with a high fever and 7 lines of med being

>> routed through two I Vs, and pills and frequent shots besides, a diabetic

>> nurse demonstrated how to load the pen and adjust it to the middle

>> position

>> for moderate poking. I tried to learn, but it was difficult to raise my

>> hands and hold them up to load aim shot and do the clean up. At that

>> time

>> it seemed that I was hearing every voice on the floor and was confused as

>> to

>> who I was supposed to be listening to.

>>

>> When My acu Check arrived at home, I still had a fever, but below 104. I

>> was

>> ready to learn. and a nurse came to show me how to use it, I remembered

>> much

>> I'd learned about the sequence of events, and loading the test strip.

>> When

>> it came to the stickers, she said she didn't know how to use the little

>> shotter and I was just as well off pinching the little plastic tab and

>> just

>> poking it in.

>>

>> To avoid blood clots I was getting blood thinning shots in the hospital

>> so

>> getting blood was easier than stopping it from seeping minutes later.

>>

>> I'm the one in this group who was afraid to even check my sugar. It was

>> 197

>> about 2 weeks ago and I'm still scared to check it. I've cancelled my

>> Doctor

>> appointments and blood tests.

>>

>> I know I need to stay true to a carb counting and timely testing regimen.

>> One little inconvenience has developed now that I'm not on injectable

>> blood

>> thinners any more. Sometimes I prick my finger 3 even rarely but

>> frustratinglyy 5 times without getting any blood, or I can't push out

>> enough blood for the machine to say beep...enough. I've thought perhaps I

>> should run my hands under hot water and exercise them before testing to

>> get

>> the blood moving.

>>

>> Keep in mind I'm a type 2 diabetic. Do you think I'd have better luck

>> learning to use the pen? Can anyone explain it. I can follow directions

>> if

>> they are practical. Oh, and when I'm just poking the needle in without

>> the

>> pen I don't shrink from sticking it in fast and deep. I'd rather do that

>> and

>> get blood on the first time. It's those repeated sticks that make my

>> nerves

>> raw. Besides, to play harp, I can only stick one side of each finger and

>> I

>> don't want my fingers to be too sore to keyboard at the computer or use

>> my

>> perkins brailler.My fingertips also look blue, purple or red from all of

>> those pokes.

>>

>> Any advice?

>>

>> Many Thanks

>>

>> Also congratulations to all of you with on target or improving lab tests.

>>

>> Always With Love,

>>

>> Lissi

>>

August 9, 2005

Lissi:

If you're using a VoiceMate (and the tape would indicate so), it came

with a Softclix pen. It came with some lancets (that's what the needles

to prick your finger are called). To put them in the pen (most people

don't call it a pen to avoid confusion with insulin pens), take the end

cap off the pen. The end cap is on the end opposite the button that

looks like the one on a ballpoint pen to expose the point. Once you've

done this, if there's a lancet alread in the pen, be *very* careful not

to stick yourself. Grasp the lancet by the ridge just below the point

using two fingers -- using the fingernail works best -- and pull. You'll

feel a small amount of resistance and then the lancet will come out

Throw it away in a " sharps container " -- that is, a container that's

enclosed so people won't stick themselves when handling it -- or in

other ways your nurse has told you. Different states have different laws

governing medical waste. But putting the used lancets in an enclosed

container such as a coffee cup with a lid with hole cut out will do

temporarily.

Now grab a lancet -- it will look kind of like a loop with a bump on the

end. Stick the lancet into the pen, loop end first. It will only go in

one way and you'll feel a click when it goes into place. HOlding the pen

in one hand, unscrew the protruding end. The little cover will come off.

Now you have an exposed lancet so be careful; it's quite sharp. Now put

the end cap back on, taking care not to stick yourself. Again, it only

goes on one way and you just turn it until it clicks into place. With

the cap turned on, you can adjust the depth of penetration of the lancet

by turning the end cap; it clicks. Fully counterclockwise is no

penetration; then the numbers go 1, 1 and a half, 2, 2 and a half, 3, 3

and a half and so on. Experimentation should tell you which setting

works best.

When you go to use the device, punch the button on the top of the lancet

dispenser (the pen) to cock it. Now place the hole in the end cap just

touching the spot you want to lance. Now punch the button on the side of

the pen and BAM! the needle springs out, pokes your finger and springs

back inside again.

It takes far longer to explain than to do.

I am loath to comment on medical personnel but I am moved to wonder what

your diabetes nurse was smoking when she couldn't figure out how the pen

worked. Damn near every nurse I know uses a Softclix lancing device;

Roche Diagnostics had a good idear there. (grin)

As for not needing tests once you are in control, I'm afraid you're

batting zero! You will need to take those lab tests the rest of your

life. And what's to fear if you really *are* in control? Your home

glucose monitoring will tell you about your immediate reactions to food

and medicine but they won't tell if you get into bad measuring habits or

won't tell you how you're doing overall unless you really are taking

accurate measurements and plot them all out and take averages etc. etc.

Put another way, the lab tests are a good check to see that you are

doing what you say you'll do and succeeding.

Besides, your Voicemate won't tell you what your cholesterol or blood

pressure is. And you need to know them also. And you'll want your

arteries checked and you'll want your feet checked for neuropathy and

you'll want a kidney function test every six months or year or so and,

and, and ...

So realize that the person who's giving you the roughest time is

yourself. And if you take control, the doctors won't have anything to

bitch at you about. We wouldn't be so insistent except that you have the

power to change.

And food doesn't have to be boring. There are some things it's not wise

to have, it's true. But it's surprising how much you *can* eat with a

little ingenuity. I'm not going to be one of those dieticians who say

that everything tastes *just* as good without fat. that's silly; our

evolutionary heritage makes us want sweets and fat. But you *can* have

stuff that tastes good enough.

And you might want to cultivate some other interests besides food so

that it isn't as important a part of your life as it apparently now is.

On the reason blood glucose is harmful: inability to transport oxygen

may be part of the problem although I've only seen this explanation

once. The simplest explanation as to why high blood glucose is harmful

is that it is a symptom of the fact that your cells aren't getting

enough nurishment; if the cells aren't taking up your glucose from the

things you eat, it has nowhere to go but to concentrate in the blood and

then to be excreted in copious quantities in the urine.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough.

Mike

> Dear and Mike,

>

> Mike, I appreciated your explanation of the systematic way you prick your

> least used fingertips. Now I won't need so many sticks for a single sample,

> mapping out a sequence for testing will be easy, especially compared with

> the food control challenge.

>

> The infection I mentioned was my ruptured appendix last February when my

> high blood sugar was discovered. My point was that I was so sick and drugged

> when I was shown how to use the pen, that I couldn't focus and subsequently

> couldn't remember how it was loaded. When my home unit arrived, the nurse

> who demonstrated it really hard no idea of how it worked. I learned from the

> tape, but have been shy of trying the pen. Going along with her suggestion

> to forget the pen was fine until the blood thinners wore off and I was

> sticking more and bleeding less.

>

> The rubber band works so well, I'm not concerned about not knowing how to

> use the pen any more.

>

> And, yep, there's lots of guilt and shame involved in avoiding appointments.

> If I begin getting consistent readings under 120, maybe I won't need them.

> They don't care and if I know my glucose is in the normal range, it seems

> I'll be doing fine on my own.

>

> Always With love,

> compare blood sticks with needle alone or in

>>> pen

>>>

>>> Dear Readers,

>>>

>>> While I was in the hospital with a high fever and 7 lines of med being

>>> routed through two I Vs, and pills and frequent shots besides, a diabetic

>>> nurse demonstrated how to load the pen and adjust it to the middle

>>> position

>>> for moderate poking. I tried to learn, but it was difficult to raise my

>>> hands and hold them up to load aim shot and do the clean up. At that

>>> time

>>> it seemed that I was hearing every voice on the floor and was confused as

>>> to

>>> who I was supposed to be listening to.

>>>

>>> When My acu Check arrived at home, I still had a fever, but below 104. I

>>> was

>>> ready to learn. and a nurse came to show me how to use it, I remembered

>>> much

>>> I'd learned about the sequence of events, and loading the test strip.

>>> When

>>> it came to the stickers, she said she didn't know how to use the little

>>> shotter and I was just as well off pinching the little plastic tab and

>>> just

>>> poking it in.

>>>

>>> To avoid blood clots I was getting blood thinning shots in the hospital

>>> so

>>> getting blood was easier than stopping it from seeping minutes later.

>>>

>>> I'm the one in this group who was afraid to even check my sugar. It was

>>> 197

>>> about 2 weeks ago and I'm still scared to check it. I've cancelled my

>>> Doctor

>>> appointments and blood tests.

>>>

>>> I know I need to stay true to a carb counting and timely testing regimen.

>>> One little inconvenience has developed now that I'm not on injectable

>>> blood

>>> thinners any more. Sometimes I prick my finger 3 even rarely but

>>> frustratinglyy 5 times without getting any blood, or I can't push out

>>> enough blood for the machine to say beep...enough. I've thought perhaps I

>>> should run my hands under hot water and exercise them before testing to

>>> get

>>> the blood moving.

>>>

>>> Keep in mind I'm a type 2 diabetic. Do you think I'd have better luck

>>> learning to use the pen? Can anyone explain it. I can follow directions

>>> if

>>> they are practical. Oh, and when I'm just poking the needle in without

>>> the

>>> pen I don't shrink from sticking it in fast and deep. I'd rather do that

>>> and

>>> get blood on the first time. It's those repeated sticks that make my

>>> nerves

>>> raw. Besides, to play harp, I can only stick one side of each finger and

>>> I

>>> don't want my fingers to be too sore to keyboard at the computer or use

>>> my

>>> perkins brailler.My fingertips also look blue, purple or red from all of

>>> those pokes.

>>>

>>> Any advice?

>>>

>>> Many Thanks

>>>

>>> Also congratulations to all of you with on target or improving lab tests.

>>>

>>> Always With Love,

>>>

>>> Lissi

>>>

August 9, 2005