(Candy-Coated) Finger Things

Republished with permission of Amy Tenderich of DiabetesMine.com

I neglected to mention that smack in the middle of our girls' big birthday bash last weekend, I tested my glucose and got a whopping 424 (!) - the highest BG result I've had since hospitalization at diagnosis. Yikes!! Wait just a minute... this can't be right. So I scrubbed my fingers with soap and hot water and tried again: 142. Can you believe it?

Well sure, there I was serving snickerdoodle birthday cakie (that's cookie-cake) with about 3 inches of rippled icing, and handling all those goopy roasted marshmellows as we squished them into chocolate-filled graham crackers to make s'mores. Oh, huge apologies for the details on these deadly goodies. But the point is, my fingers must've been coated with the stuff.

Now I don't regularly scrub my hands that well (if at all) before testing, so this was a great reminder of the Mistakes We All Can Make.

It brought me back to my interview a while back with glucose testing expert Dr. Barry Ginsberg, who had this to say:

"Washing hands is very important, because Type 1's are making insulin dosing decisions based on that number. I had an associate yelling at me once because our clinic's meter was showing her at 300, and she isn't even diabetic. Turns out she had just eaten a banana, and still had the residue on her fingers.

I like to say that blood glucose monitoring is like baking. If the oven's at the wrong temperature, the cake won't come out good."

Right. Thank you. (Why am I now thinking Hell's Kitchen?)

btw, my new Straight Up column over at dLife this month is all about "Diabetes Fingers" - how fingersticks are still a way of life despite new CGM systems, and why I'm grateful for advances in lancing technology, even though some may find this a "manufactured need." Go give it a read and let me know what you think.

And thanks again for all of your tips on more effective lancing. I must admit that improved technique has surely helped me at least as much as using a new gadget.

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