Meter Mania!

Now that Chloe's on a pump, she's using a new blood glucose meter.  I went to put her old meter in a cupboard that has come to be known as "the graveyard of old meters", I saw an ever-increasing pile of retired relics that have been so much apart of our diabetes journey.  It was interesting to look back at all the old meters we've used on the kids over the last 16 years...things have come a long way!

 

This is the first meter we ever used. It is rather nostalgic to look at. This one brings back a flood of memories, mostly of a life changed forever. This meter takes me back 16 years ago as if I was there at the hospital and the world was swirling about me. Testing, poking, strips, tiny band-aids for a 22-month old finger, and confusing food exchanges. If I remember right, it took 45 seconds to get the results. This was amazing since not to long before, folks had no meters at all. They only had keytone strips, which meant any information you had on your child's blood sugars was already antiquated by the time you got it. Can you imagine??  We felt pretty lucky to have such amazing technology right at our finger tips!

Oh, when this baby came out, boy we thought they were sleek and cool!  Check out that big screen!  We carried it around in a huge zippered bag that Cheyenne, who was two, called her "owie-kit" because the thing gave her so many "owies" on her fingers. Results still took 45 seconds. The test strips for these meters look huge to me now, compared to what we're using today. And let me tell you, little kids leave a trail of test strips everywhere they go, and they're a lot easier to suck up with a vacuum now than when we were using this One Touch Profile "dream machine"!  (Whenever I had a vacuum problem, it was always a test strip or band-aid; our house was a land-mine of these items.)

This was called the DEX and it was an exciting new-tech wiz-bang meter that we just had to have. It's big claim to fame was that you didn't have to load the test strips in because you popped in a round foil cartridge that came pre-loaded with 10 test strips! 10! It was like the machine gun of testing meters. By this time Chey was probably around 5-years old and this was such an easy way for her to manage the strips. I don't think we used it for long, probably because the ease of use came with a steep price tag to re-fill the darn thing.  Pretty cool concept though.

If I remember right, these babies took the wait out of waiting. As if 45 seconds took too long! 4 Seconds and you've got yourself a blood sugar reading! I had such a hard time wrapping my head around that one. Frankly, I was suspicious of these little tiny meters that worked so fast. I came from the days of using the big bricks! This little guy was so light and small, it took me a while before I trusted it!  Turns out, this thing was a beauty! And totally reduced the size of the case you had to carry around.

Whoa! This here was the revolution! A meter with a log book in it! Oh yeah!. By the time these came out I had two teenagers using this meter. Ha! Makes it super simple for "surprise inspections"! A step up in size but it sure packed a punch of information inside of it.  And the lit up screen was super sweet.

These little guys are my all-time favorite for non-pumpers. By the time these came out we already had two kids using the BD meter that worked with their pumps, but as for Chloe, the non-pumper, these were fantastic. Small, easy, fun colors, and a port to upload all the information to the doc! Not to mention, so incredibly cheap to buy. Our original meter was around $200 dollars! These little darlings are $20! This made it so easy to keep one at home, one at school, and even one in my purse!

The latest is this guy. So smart it "talks" to the kids pumps.  Wish it could talk to the kids and say "GET A TEST!", but for now, the soft mellow alarm will have to do.  Seriously though, I'd like to have it come with a remote for parents of teenagers that they can push and the thing will shock them to remind them to test!  Oh how great that would be.  Abusive, but nice.

The only downside for our family is that now everyone's cases look EXACTLY alike. We've got a pile of black zipper cases in a basket when they're all home. Tip: We finally devised a quick way to tell them apart...Keychains! Each kid has some sort of do-dad keychain so they can identify their "little black box"

Here's our collection of "pokers":

 

And that's a stroll down Meter Memory Lane!