Hi Nancy,
Two things.. first, with meters, a certain amount of variance is allowed with all of them. There's nothing saying your FS was not giving you "good numbers".. the highest one is one I personally felt was not accurate enough and your medium one is known for reading high over roughly 300. Most meters do tend to read quite accurately at low numbers, and then kinda do a more poor job at higher numbers. The important thing is to pick one meter you like and stick with it to keep your sanity. :mrgreen: Most people initially pick a meter, use it for a while, then start trying others. A good number of us have ended up right back with the meter we started with, oddly enough.
The Maxima is a good meter, and you can not beat the prices of their strips. I did have a problem with it that some others had that you should keep in the back of your mind and that is that it periodically threw me a LO during a seemingly normal test. If you see that, always instantly retest. Other than that you probably will like the Maxima quite a bit.
Secondly, regarding your high and flats.. and with deference to Steve's concerns (hi steve!), we think he's potentially an acro/iaa/other condition high dose cat.. we often find that we have initial response to dose increases for a short time, and then not. The dose needs to be increased as you see that flattening occurring. It's an odd thing but pretty common with the high dosers. Just means the body quickly put up an immunity to the increased dose and you must push past that barrier until the body stops doing that and settles down to a more normal curving cycle. INCREDIBLY simplified explanation there, but that's just the way I can explain it without sounding like a fool LOL.