Doctors...

[stickmaker]

Incredible. My mother asked me to stop by and show her how to use her blood sugar test meter. Turns out all the doctor did was write a prescription. No instructions on how to use the meter, how many times a day or what times of day to test. No instructions on what values to look for. (Naturally, she has no record of her office test results to use for comparison.)

Of course, he wrote the prescription six months ago and she's only just now getting around to trying it. :-(

Her first test was 178 mg/dl. Which I understand is slightly high but in the normal range. We don't know because nothing in the instructions said what to look for, either. Just that above 500 it will flash HI.

According to her, the doctor says she's not diabetic, but pre-diabetic, whatever that means.

Comments

[sraun]

By the numbers I recognize (which Wikipedia just confirmed), that's a pretty high number. By the current standards, 80-110 is the normal range (used to be 70-120). I don't know if they're still using this definition, but when I was diagnosed any single reading over 200, or any three over 150, were sufficient to diagnose diabetes.

Doctors have been pushing for tighter control of blood glucose - the big complications have been shown to be very sensitive to relatively small changes. Used to be if you could keep it under 160 they were happy, now they want at least 140, and would really prefer 120.

[alinsa.livejournal.com]

If I remmeber right, a *fasting* level of ~100 is normal. If you do it an hour after eating, it'll be a lot higher. I think. Pretty sure. But mostly uninformed, so take with a large grain of salt.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

My mother had just eaten some grapes when I stopped by. She wanted to go ahead and have me show her how to use the gadget. So her blood sugar was higher than fasting.

[sraun]

For a normal person, it doesn't go up all that much - 80-100 is fasting, peak an hour or two after eating is supposed to max out about 140.

179 is high enough that I'd be talking to the doctor again.