New Supplies

I ordered new supplies last week. I received 3 boxes of 90 syringes, 2 boxes each with 1 vial of Novolin R, 1 box with 5 Lantus Solostar pens, and 8 boxes containing one vial of fifty Accu Chek Aviva Plus Test Strips.

The Accu Chek Aviva Plus test strips are new to me, although I heard about them a few weeks ago- the person I heard about them from is in the UK where apparently they've been out for a while. They use a different blood sugar measuring technique, one that doesn't cause falsely elevated readings in people who have high blood levels of non-glucose sugars. I'm a bit concerned about whether this means that the strips will have a different level of accuracy overall as compared to the old strips. I may do a comparison run between strips at some point but not now. Here's a picture of the boxes:



It's always interesting to me to see what insurance asks me to pay, and what they pay, given that it's a new year and they're always changing these things. This year I seem to be paying a flat fifty dollars per prescription. So for the syringes, I paid $50 and insurance paid $10.41; for the Novolin R I paid $50 and insurance paid $75.41; for the Lantus I paid $50 and insurance paid $146.39; for the test strips I paid $50 and insurance paid $342.02.
I'll probably be getting four shipments of syringes this year (maybe five, actually- my prescription isn't for enough syringes), four shipments of Novolin R, three shipments of Lantus (I am supposedly getting three month supplies, but they send me a box of five pens and each pen lasts a month), four of test strips. I have a stockpile of pen needles that will last me a year at the current rate of one per day, and I have enough lancets to last at least another year at my current rate of about one per day. I will probably be getting another glucagon this year. I pay for my testosterone without insurance. So that means that if I use the same meds this year as last year, my total cost, not including Dexcom or testosterone, should come to $800. That's affordable.

Without insurance, the costs for these things would be somewhat different anyhow, but at these rates:
the syringes cost $20.17/box and I'd use at least a box per month ~ $245 for the year
the Novolin R cost $62.70/vial and I'd use roughly eight per year ~ $501 for the year
the Lantus Solostars cost $39.27/pen, and I'd use one per month ~ $472 for the year
the test strips cost $49 per vial, and I'd use at least 24 per year ~ $1176 for the year
one glucagon kit is about 90
So without insurance, this lot would cost me ~ $2484, still doable, but not easily. Although of course if I really had no prescription insurance, I would be able to get everything except the test strips for free, so my costs would actually be just the $1176.

By the way, I've finally written up the November facts for this year and put them with last year's on a page you can view above the posts.