Bloodletting for Beginners (a.k.a. The Daily Diabetic Ritual)

Do you remember I told you previously about Vampirella, the blood-letting nurse and how difficult it is to get blood from this stone… Namely Me!

This time I’ll tell you about one of the diabetic’s self help jobs. Keeping a regular check on one’s own blood sugar levels and recording the data.

Who’s a good little puppy?

A Quick History Lesson......

Back in the ‘bad humors era???

The middle ages onwards….. People thought draining blood cured everything. They were of course wrong. But the idea that blood holds answers wasn’t too far off.

Fast forward a few centuries, and we diabetics are still bleeding for answers - but now it’s just a pinprick instead of a knife-stab and a pint of the old red life juice extracted.

I reckon Vampirella, my ill-humoured blood letting nurse would have thrived in that environment.

Anyway! Once upon a time, if you weren’t feeling very good, you would probably visit the local quack, or the barber. A man, usually sporting a hugely impressive moustache over his top lip.

They would oh-so happily drain a jug of blood from you. If you’ve a headache? Bloodletting! If you’re tired? Bloodletting. Stubbed your toe? You’ve guessed it…. Bloodletting! Anything more serious, it was a course of leeches.

Oh please don’t start me on the leeches? Ha Ha!

Thankfully, those days are behind us… mostly. If you’re diabetic however, we still practice a very modern version of it. Instead of a pint of red into a bucket, it’s a droplet onto a test strip. And instead of moustachioed barbers, we’ve got our trusty little meters.

For the uninitiated, what we basically do is prick ourselves and squeeze our blood onto a strip, shove it into a testing meter and look at the results. It is however a bit more intricate than just stabbing ourselves and leaking life essence onto a small bit of cardboard.

We Stab Ourselves! For the uninitiated, here’s the daily ritual:

• 1. Grab the lancing device (which sounds dramatic, but is basically a fancy spring-loaded toothpick).

• 2. Give your poor fingertip a quick jab.

• 3. Squeeze out that precious red life juice like it’s liquid gold.

• 4. Feed it to the machine and await the verdict.

And just like that, you know whether you’re being sensible, spiking higher than a moon rocket or on your way to a diabetic hangover low, that makes you feel like you’ve just run a marathon in a sauna. All this sounds so straight forward…..

Stab – Squeeze – Read.

I’ve Just had a Funny Thought!

There’s something a bit odd about how normal this all becomes…. You can jab yourself six times a day without even blinking…. Yet the second a nurse comes near you with a damn hypodermic needle (Re. Vampirella) and suddenly you’re a babbling toddler again. Anyway.... I digress.

And let’s be honest…. Sometimes the bloody results feel personal. Did my blood sugar really shoot up to 14 just because I looked at a slice of pizza? Or did hoovering the living room really drop me into a hypo?

My meter doesn’t just give numbers, it gives me bad attitude. Lol!

The Silver Lining

All jokes aside, these little finger pricks are lifesavers. They give us the info we need to keep going, make better choices, and avoid letting diabetes run the show. It’s not glamorous, and yes, sometimes our fingertips look like tiny pincushions — but hey, it beats the barber-surgeon option. Or Vamp…..

So next time you jab your finger, just remember: you’re not just checking your sugar. You’re carrying on a centuries-old tradition of bloodletting… only with more Wi-Fi and fewer leeches.

“Maybe one day, checking our blood sugar will just mean blinking at a gadget and getting a hologram readout. Until then, I’ll we’ll keep stabbing and trying not to get blood on the carpet.

So What Could Go Wrong With All This?

It’s me we’re talking about. Plus probably most of the male population of the diabetic world too.

For a start. The male of the human species does not like reading instruction manuals. We know everything instinctively! Come on…. Everybody knows that?

So after after attempting to stuff the batteries into the wrong end of the meter machine, I get them in, the correct way up, of course and Boom! The machine read out lights up like a demented pocket calculator, then settles on zeros. Woo Hoo! Cracked it.

Now I change instruments and attempt to load the spring loaded pen stabber thingy.

Mmmmm. Where does this blue thingy with a point on the end go then? Well 20 minutes later, after unscrewing the top and inserting the stabber, the thing is primed and ready to go.

Now it’s the strip that I bleed on’s turn. Awwwww! Damn this. I need to read the instructions now.

The manual informs me that I need to insert the strip into the meter and then prick my finger…. Index finger is best. Squeeze this finger until a drop of blood falls onto the strip. The meter will then bleep when it has tested the blood. Next it will give you a readout of the results. Marvellous.

I put the testing strip into the meter, I put it down. Pick up the stabber thingy, put it on the end of my index finger (cause’ it’s the best one. The manual told me so) and I eventually found the release trigger and pressed… Cudunk! The stabber did it’s thing and nothing. Mmmm. That was completely painless, I thought. I squeezed my finger…. Nothing. No red life juice. I stared at it quizzically? Then I noticed the numbers around the top of the stabby pen thingy. Mmmm. I wonder? I turned the head round to number 5, the highest number. I reloaded it and pressed the release….

Cudunk! Owwwwww. That really hurt! I squeezed the finger and a huge stream of red shot out, over my leg. Ooops. I reckon the number should be lower than no. 5. Bloody hell that hurts!

I picked up the meter with the strip in and dropped a big dollop of blood on the end of the testing strip. I waited for the bleep. I waited. I waited. Nothing. No numbers, no sounds…. Useless piece of crap. I’ll check the instruction manual again. I had put the strip into the meter upside down.....

I put another strip into the machine, the correct way round this time. I squez (English abbreviation of squeezed). My finger again. Lol…. Nothing it had begun healing. I’ll have to stab myself again. Not no. 5 this time though. No.3 methinks.

Cudunk! Ouch, but not too bad. I dropped a blob of my life juice onto the strip. Seconds later A BEEP! Woo Hoo! Some numbers appeared on the screen. It was over a hundred though. My blood sugar is over a hundred. I should be dead with a reading that high. It should be between 6 and 14. This is over a hundred.

After a small amount of time, the trusty manual informed me that there were two lots of results settings. One in the UK/EU format and the other, in the USA format. With the US numbers all over a hundred. Ahhhhh! That explains it then. I change the setting on the meter machine to UK.

Guess what???????? I had to stab myself again cause’ my finger had healed again. Cudunk! Ow! Squeeze. Blob. Machine bleeps. It reads 17. Eh? 17?. Should I be in hospital? Sod the instruction manual. I went onto the InterWeb. This isn’t good. I reckon I need to cut my sugar down.

Eventually. All us morons practice and it just becomes second nature to us. We work out that we have five digits and including the top and two sides on each digit, we have 15 possible stab points. On one hand alone. It does save mining down through a finger in the same spot every time. Causing colossal pain and damage to the finger.

Woo Hoo! I'm an expert!