Sunday, December 02, 2007

treasure

My mother is an M.D. but hasn't been in practice since 1992. The most recent place she worked at a doctor was a hospital in Chicago's worst neighborhood, Englewood, where all the medical equiptment is out of date. So when I was diagnosed with diabetes, she was wowwed by how small the lancets were and how little blood was needed for the test strips.
Last night she was looking for an eye chart and I was looking with her and I saw a Soft Touch lancing device. I was like, cool, a lancing device. Lemme try it. So she let me have it and the glucose monitor she had, a whole buncha lancets. My mother pointed out that it would probably get a lot of blood compared to the lancing devices I usually use. But I was like, that's okay, I still want to try it.
I did try it, and it got a little more blood that usual. It only has one setting! All of my lancing devices have multiple settings.
The blood glucose meter she had is the TRACER II. She doesn't have any strips to go with it, and the batteries are dead. I do have the manual. It says it was made by the Boehringer Mannheim Corporation. They are now Boehringer Ingelheim and they make pharmaceuticals but no blood glucose monitors.
Isn't that cool?

I'm seeing my endo on Wednesday and will get new prescriptions; I still haven't decided if I want to switch to just syringes for the Novolog or stay with the NovoPen Jrs. Argh!

2 comments:

~Suzanne~ said...

Thanks for commenting on my blog and your advice with feeling my high blood sugars. I wish you luck in your own success with this disease!!

Bad Decision Maker said...

Ah, the Soft Touch. :-) My penlet for many years. Actually, I think I still had one around that I was using until a year or two ago.

When I had a meter that needed more blood, I had the soft touch and another lancing device made by one touch (the meter company). The one touch one didn't have different settings to click right on the lancet , but it had 2 different caps with different depths. I usually would just press the thing harder or softer into my finger though (depending on how cold my hands were, which finger).