Reli-on premier meter giving me various different BG readings

Hi everyone,

Today is the first time I noticed the Reli-on premier meter giving me various different BG readings, is this normal?
This morning when I tested Belly and saw 107, I was surprised because she's been testing in the high 80's/low 90's and been OTJ for 15 days now. So i retested 5 different times in the morning and got these readings:
AMBG: 107, 94, 98, 102, 108

i retested +3: 85, 87, 83
i tested my non-diabetic cat at this time too and she was at: 75, 77

i retested again at +6: 77, 79

Is this normal? Should i be concerned about her high AMBG? Belly had only been on insulin one week, when I started noticing her AMBG drop day after day i stopped shooting her.
I really hope this isn't a set back. Can anyone offer any advice?
I haven't added today's numbers to the spread sheet because i'm not sure how to interpret the variance.

thanks everyone!
Lily

 

Hi Lily,

Its perfectly normal to get different readings when doing a series of tests at the same time. One can even get different readings from successive tests of the same blood droplet. The reason for this is that there is a permissible meter reading variance of +/- 20% of 'actual' BG.

A very occasional dip into the blues on the spreadsheet is OK during an OTJ trial. If Belly were to start to show a marked trend upwards then it might be necessary to restart insulin treatment (probably a tiny, tiny dose) for a short time to give the pancreas beta cells a little longer to rest and recover function. At the moment, Belly's looking really good. Did you by any chance transition her from a high to a low carb diet after she was diagnosed?

Talking of looking good, that's a great photo of the two of you.


Mogs
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Thanks for your reply . I am so new to all of this I'm not sure how to interpret everything. I'm also a terrible hypochondriac, and it seems to be affecting my care of Belly, I worry at the slightest negative sign.
I really hope I can give her little ears a rest, what sort of testing should I be doing these days? What sort of signs should I watch for when deciding if she needs insulin again?

thanks,
Lily

 

I can relate to that. I have a number of anxiety disorders and anything that I think might be out out of the ordinary gets me really worried. Anti-jinx, it looks like Belly is going into remission, which is great!

At the moment, test morning and evening before feeding for the next week or two (AMBG and PMBG). Withhold food for the two hours before the AM and PM tests (so your readings will be for fasting BG level). If the numbers are under 100 that's cool. If they are over the 100 try to test again about 2-3 hours after Belly has been fed to see if BG drops down into the greens again (shows how well the pancreas is coping at mealtimes). If Belly stays the vast majority of the time in greens on no insulin for 14 days then she can be considered a diet-controlled diabetic. (A very occasional blue reading is OK.)

If the remission didn't hold you'd start seeing a general upward trend in BG levels. Were that to happen you could then post to ask for members with good Lantus experience to review Belly's spreadsheet and give you some feedback on whether she might need a little more support from insulin.


Mogs
.