Technical difficulties ... maybe?

Last Friday I went to the "low-cost health screening clinic" at my pharmacy to have a new A1C done. Now that I'm basically uninsured (unless something catastrophic happens and I spend more than my deductible), clinics like this are a godsend. I had called the hospital lab where I've had all of my blood work done until now, and found out that for the two tests I wanted done it would cost me about $235 – out of pocket, non-reimbursable, though it would count toward my deductible IF I was very careful to demand that only lab techs from the official list were allowed to touch my sample.

At the pharmacy's low-cost clinic I paid $65 for the same tests. I was happy with all of my results – A1C safely in the middle of the non-diabetic range, and all my lipids are awesome. I'm assuming my insurance will not count the receipt toward my deductible, since the lab that did the testing is not on the list. But since I don't expect to meet the deductible anyway I'm figuring anything I can do to save a few bucks is probably good.

Except. Tonight I'm wondering ... How do you know the test is good? I wonder what results I would've gotten if I'd had the same tests done at my usual lab. The company is approved by various agencies and organizations, and the tests they run are not bogus – I trust them, I think – but really, how can I be sure? When my life depends on keeping these numbers within a certain range, I hate to think I might be settling for less than accurate information just to save a little money.

I hadn't actually thought about it until tonight, when I got home from a dinner of wor wonton soup (preceded by way too much leftover Christmas toffee from a tin someone brought in to my office today) and tested, expecting the number to be high, and was surprised to see 85 on the little screen. I always love seeing that great number, but I knew it couldn't be accurate, so I tested again and got 87. Suspicious, I pulled out one of my other meters, from a different manufacturer, and tested 165. That was more what I would have expected to see. A second test on that meter showed 156. Close enough.

Then I started wondering – was it the meter, or the strips? I tested a strip from the same bottle using a different meter from the same manufacturer (yeah, I have a bunch of different meters – lots of companies give them to people for free so you have to keep buying their brand of strips) and got 95. So maybe it was the strips? I did a test with the control solution and got 127, which doesn't really tell you much except that the strip is within range for that lot number – which doesn't mean a lot because the range is so wide. Finally, I did another test with my original meter, using strips from a new box – and got about the same result, 87.

So now I'm feeling paranoid about my meter. I've had it almost two years – is it starting to crap out? Probably I will try to figure out what's going on by testing a few more times later tonight, but I hesitate to do all the testing I'd like to, because the strips cost about a buck apiece.

Times like this make me realize why chronic conditions are considered so stressful, even if they're not causing any immediate problems. I feel like I always have to be thinking about my blood – seriously, always! I think about it at least once every hour, every hour I'm awake. If it goes high, like it was this morning (because I have a cold and PMS right now), I worry about nerve damage and heart attacks and obsess about exercising and testing every 20 minutes until it comes down again. If it's low, I feel safe and happy and proud of myself and entitled to relax a bit, at least until the next test.

Lately I find myself thinking a lot about what my life might be like if I live to be old. It's a strange feeling to realize that being diabetic is going to be part of my life for as long as I'm here – it's never going to go away, and I'm never really going to be able to relax and forget about it, and even with the best and most scrupulous self-care it's still likely to get worse as I get older, because that's just how it seems to work with most people.

In a way, I figure – who cares? Everybody dies of something, and the fact that I have this condition doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to die from it. There are a million different ways I could die that have nothing to do with being diabetic. A cheerful thought!

So I'm trying not to get too heavy and morbid about it, but at the same time, I do want to take care of myself as well as I can on the off chance that I do end up living to be old, after all. Which is why the meter is important, because it's the only tool I really have to help me keep track of how my efforts are working, or not working.

In other news: I spent a really great few days with some old friends last weekend, reconnecting over snacks and the Superbowl. It was the first football game I've ever watched from start to finish, and it turned out to be a good one, even though my team (chosen at random because their pants had better stripes than the other team) did not win. The whole weekend was a blessing I'm still basking in. It made me happy to remember again some of the reasons I love these friends so much and how grateful I am to know them – some of them for more than half my life.