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.
 Finger Things)
Oh yes, the dreaded candy fingers. Most of us parents are well aware of this because it seems like kids always have something on their fingers. I just never realized that it really would be much of a problem for adults too. But wash wash…
The same also applies to treatment of lows, as glucose tabs, Smarties, or even juice may stick to your fingers making a re-test less accurate unless you wipe the finger with an alcohol swap or, my preference is hand sanitizers which travels well and also is small enough to take with me or keep at my desk.
Diabetes is such an anal retentive disease. I test 15 times a day, the practicality of washing my hands 15 times is day is obsessive and perspective is needed here. Besides which your body couldn’t tell the differance between 424 qnd 142? This smells of the diabetes police being given a differant assignment.
Mark
One of the worst offenders for me is balsamic vinegar. Mind you, most foreign-substance offenders don’t cotton well to alcohol, and really need a good soap-and-hot-water-scrub-fifteen-times-until-the-skin-falls-off washing before I can get an accurate fingertip read (presuming I can get an accurate read from my fingertip — I’ve become convinced I cannot), but balsamic vinegar stays there and stays there and stays there…
I find that if my fingers are cold, or overused from typing, or anything else, I will NOT get an accurate read from them. Now most of the time I use forearm readings which tend to be more reasonable.
What exactly is Snickerdoodle cake? I love Snickerdoodles and one a prize at the country fair for mine when I was in 4-H.
I really want to know!
That cookie cake sounds like something I’d make for my worst enemy. Lethal.
Blood sugar meters are very specific to glucose, which you don’t find much in baked food. Maybe if there’s fruit or honey you’ll find some, but not much I should think. Table sugar (sucrose), which we may still think of as “sugar,” won’t show up on our glucose meters.
However, human saliva has enzymes like sucrase and amylase, which start the digestion process of sucrose and starch in your mouth, and also on your fingers if you lick them. If you don’t lick that gooey delicious stuff off your fingers, most foods shouldn’t be a problem, I’d imagine. And if you do lick (who can resist?), wash your hands, every time!
(Actually, I wash my hands thoroughly before every test to prevent errors, but I’m more paranoid than I need to be.)
Steven…
Just wanted to drop a note to let you know what a great site you have. It is a great resource and a great place to drop by….
Diabetes Type 2 New Medicine…
I enjoyed reading your blog. What a great thing it is to be able to share information like this on the Internet….