Poking Time

It is poking time for me now. Doctor's visit and lab test show an alarming rise in blood sugar. It means my disease, Diabetes, Type II has moved on to another step. So is is a new drug to force the system to accept insulin and a blood tester to check levels of blood sugar to see if the new drug is working.

So I get to poke my self three times a day, when I get up, after lunch and after dinner. I have started a spreadsheet to record the readings. Strange the readings are all over the place, does not make sense to me. The down trend is the objective and that will take some time I am told my physician.

As you may or may not know a Type II Diabetic does not have a pancreatic problem of producing Insulin (that would be Type I or Juvenile Diabetes); the Type II patient has a problem with the body rejecting Insulin. So the stuff I am taking is to make the liver accept Insulin and let the liver do its job. I will probably never have to take Insulin but will forever have a problem with accepting Insulin. And it will progress no matter what I do, the key is to slow the progression, right?

So for now, it is poke, measure, record and watch to see if the new drug to me, Metformin, does what it is supposed to do. And we will see if it gets the blood sugar under control (increases the acceptance of Insulin in my system). It took a few tries to get the process down and now it is sort of a routine.

The meter, a Bayer Contour, is kind of neat, insert test tape (which turns on the meter), poke finger or similar place, feed drop of blood on to the spot on the test tape, and the meter does its thing. In about five seconds, the reading is available.

The meter as you would expect, has a clock (day and date along with AM PM included) and one can get a feed out cable and software to move the data a week at a time in the computer. I presume, the Bayer software contains a spreadsheet of sorts for the data. Right now I do not feel like setting up a complicated system, I just use a simple spread sheet I have made (gotta keep up my Microsoft skills, right). It tells you when the battery is about to quit (was gonna say dying, but thought that may not be a good choice of words). I would expect a really niffty meter would also have a radio to listen to while doing the test routine. I don't think they have got that far yet.