Welcome To Your New Life: Part 1

Now you're diabetic. Welcome to the wonderful world of shots and pricks. To be honest, it's not as bad as it seems. The shots will hurt for a little bit and if you prick your finger in the wrong spot, it'll hurt too, but you'll get used to it and it'll become a no brainer. To start off, we'll go over the basics. The doctors in the hospital should have gone over them with you, but here comes a nice refresher.

Pricking your finger:
First get all your stuff. This includes your needles, test strips, glucometer, alcohol pads, and poker.

Second put your needle in your poker and put the top on the poker.

Third get your test strips ready and put one in the glucometer.

 

Clean off your finger with your alcohol pad. If your hands are cold, this is usual for diabetics, rub them together and move them by scrunching and bending your fingers to get them warmer. (the picture isn't very accurate, but use the alcohol pad and wipe your finger off. DON'T THROW IT AWAY YET)

Prick your finger. If you are afraid of needles, it's best if you don't hesitate because you don't realize what you're doing until there's actual blood. Don't worry, your fear of needles will go away after a few times of doing this. Also if you don't get blood the first time, don't worry, just reset your needle and push again.

Push the blood up. Use your fingers on your other hand and push the blood up, this isn't hard, especially if you are a new diabetic because your fingers aren't covered in scabs and scars like us veterans.

Put the blood on the strip that is in your glucometer. MAKE SURE THAT THE SCREEN IS ON! If it isn't, you'll end up wasting a strip and having to do it again because your blood will have gone up the strip, which you can't use again (as much as we all hope that this could happen, it doesn't) (The E-3 is a better picture so you can see what I'm doing but the bottom picture is what your screen should look like. Also glucometers will count down the seconds until you see your blood sugar).

Then you have your number! The number on the screen is your blood sugar number (mine is currently 84, which is a good number, but I should watch myself for signs because 84 is still sort of low)

Wipe your finger down after you use up the blood. We don't want anyone getting sick, especially with our weakened immune system!

 

And now you know how to check your sugar!