Guessing games

A funny thing happened right before I went to eat lunch the other day. I could tell I was low and had waited a tad too long to eat. I tested my blood sugar and this is what I saw:
YIKES!! I re-tested twice and saw this:
And this:
That made a whole lot more sense. BUT . . . .

There have been several posts recently regarding the accuracy of glucose meters. For those of you who don't know, the FDA only requires meters to have a +/- 20% margin of accuracy. While this doesn't sit entirely well with me, I've never really had a problem with my meters. Usually they give me numbers that reflect how I'm feeling and if not I either need to wash my hands or dry them and I get a more accurate read.

Today I was left a little more flabbergasted. I had recently washed my hands and they were completely dry. Why was my meter being retarded? And then I remembered the night a few weeks after I started the pump when I was attacked by the high from hell. I was in the 300s all day, by night time I had battled my way down to the 200s. I had changed everything, my site, my insulin and I was losing my mind! All of a sudden I went from the mid-200s to 168! Victory! Wait? 168? WTF?

I re-tested and sure enough, I was 276. Ah ha.

Never mind.

And the more I paid attention the more I notice this kind of thing. Has this always been happening and I'm just noticing more because it's in the forefront of my mind right now? Or are these recent occurrences just flukes? I don't know. But I will say it's really confusing because I don't know what to do with these numbers. Do I average them? Usually I end up testing several times and playing the "2 outta 3 wins" rule. But it's scary. What if I'm basing treatment on a number that's totally off? If my blood sugar has been high and it's coming down I want to stop bolusing like crazy! On the other hand if it's not budging I need to make sure that I correct. How do I know what to do and which test to believe?

I do know that this whole diabetes business is hard enough when everything works correctly (insulin, meters, pumps, will-power . . . ). Throw in glitchy technology and those whole mess becomes a friggin' guessing game. And that's one game I don't want to play with my health.

Am I the only one this happens to? What do you do when the meter doesn't match how you feel? Or throws you a bizarre number out of left field? Do you keep testing (and throwing strips and money out of the window) until you see a number that makes more sense? Or do you assume it's right and treat based on the number you got?

I guess that's it. Ramble over.

~Layne