Numbers

Did I already post this? The best part is the little dance he does at :40.

So! Once again it's time for an update on My Wondrous Diabetic Journey. The latest news is that I've had two different A1C tests done in the last few weeks, from two different labs, just to see how close the results would be, and they were actually very close. I took both tests on the same day. The one from the walk-in clinic at the pharmacy cost $36 and gave a result of 5.5, and the mail-in one from Walmart cost $9 and gave a result of 5.6. Both numbers are within normal, non-diabetic range, which makes me happy even though A1C is not the only measure of how well I'm doing blood-sugar-wise. Still, it's good to know that at least by that measure I'm doing great.

It's also good to know that both tests come back so close, because that indicates they're both reasonably accurate, which means I don't have to worry anymore about whether I'm risking my health by trying to save a few bucks on a cheaper and possibly less accurate test. Now that my insurance sucks I'm starting to realize I may have been too hard on Walmart all these years ... Not that it makes up for all of their other questionable business practices, but I am sincerely grateful for their $4 prescription program and now this $9 A1C test (compared with $70 for the prescription at my regular pharmacy, and $125 or so for the A1C at the hospital lab). They also have a $8 glucometer with strips that cost about 40 cents each, as compared with my OneTouch Ultra 2 meter, which costs $65, with strips anywhere between $1 and $1.20 each.

OneTouch is actually one of the most expensive testing systems there is, but the Ultra 2 was the first meter I ever had and I've become strangely attached to it, even almost superstitiously, fetishistically attached. It's the magical device that helped me calm down and get my numbers in check when I was so scared I thought I might die ... So for now I'm sticking with it and looking for reliable discount suppliers online that offer strips (usually in institutional, educational and non-U.S. English packaging) for 30-45% off retail. The last supplier I bought from sent strips that were only a month away from their expiration date. Not good. Today I ordered from a different company that guarantees an expiration date of September 2010; hopefully they'll deliver on that because the price was really good – 50 strips for $30, including shipping – about 60 cents per strip.

I use anywhere between 1 and 5 or more strips a day, depending on what's going on. Normally I only test once a day, first thing in the morning. Lately I've been having some inexplicably high numbers, so I've been testing more, trying to figure out what's going on ... although it seems sort of pointless to keep accumulating results from almost-expired strips, because I don't really trust the numbers I'm getting from them. As soon as this new box arrives I'll toss the rest of this old batch.

So anyway. It's been awhile since I talked about the Beetis, but it's still here. And I'm still OK.

P.S. Has anyone noticed that Blogger has started getting all buggy with the code lately? Like making one paragraph a different color than all the others, for no apparent reason – or inserting random inconsistent spacing between paragraphs ... I'm seriously thinking about moving to Wordpress one of these days. I just set up a blog there for a client and am kind of enamored of all the cool features .....