A sampling of the world of diabetic cats

[cimorene]

People with diabetes have to use home blood glucose monitor devices to test their blood sugar periodically, and these devices function by feeding a drop of fresh blood to a fresh test strip with reagant on it that then tells the monitor how much glucose is in the blood.

People and animals have different blood, so the devices calibrated for the one aren't exact for the other, which is why you can now buy blood glucose monitor devices specifically for animals, and they come with little code chips for cows, dogs or cats... the thing IS, there's a lot more demand for monitoring people's blood, so people's glucometers are available in like tens of models, with a bunch of them costing about twenty bucks, and the test strips are cheaper, sometimes down to around twenty bucks (more like 25) for fifty of them. The Finnish shop has two animal glucose monitors, and one is the one we have that is now obsolete and they aren't even making test strips for it anymore but the test strips cost twice as much, and during our time using them they were completely out of stock anywhere in the EU three separate times before we gave up and started using MIL's old human glucometer instead. The animal glucometers both cost like eighty bucks instead, btw.

Now, you CAN use a human glucometer, it's just not calibrated for animal blood so the results will be SLIGHTLY off, but not far enough off for you to do any sort of conversions or anything like that to check the results. They still give you a good idea what to do, and in fact, until very recently everyone with diabetic pets was using human glucometers. (We should've just used one in the beginning except that all vets 'strongly recommend' the animal ones now without mentioning the other factors, which to be fair they might not know about.)

Because the test strips are REAGANT strips, they expire: after their lifespan they give wrong results or don't work at all. They're also device-specific, so the different makers of glucometers have special strips for different models in some cases. Test strips are not interchangeable from brand to brand, like ever. And because of THAT, glucometers are subject to obsolescence just like printers.

Since the low-end glucometers are so affordable it's not a big deal, I suppose, for a diabetic person to buy a new one, but the idea of buying a new one still gave me pause just now when we found nobody was selling the test strips we've been using for the glucometer inherited from MIL. But finally I did some googling to see which brands had widely available test strips, and then some digging to find out who made the different models.

I discarded all the expensive high-end ones; all the Internet of Shit ones because nobody needs a firmware update to make blood testing suddenly impossible nor do we want our glucometers recruited along with our smart fridges and toasters into bot armies for Russian trolls performing DDOS attacks on US infrastructure; and then all the ones by US-based companies because they're probably extra evil given the insulin price cartel there. Accu-Chek is Canadian and probably the most common brand here, and CareSens is Korean and also pretty widely available. I ordered one of the latter because they function on a slightly smaller blood sample and insufficient size of blood drop is a big issue for me because the drops in question come from the tips of these precious little tulip ears:


(Observe the pink dots of scar tissue. Sometimes there's a whole row on one side like he's a little punk who had to take out all his piercings.)

Comments

[vass]

This was super interesting to read.

Firm agreement on Internet of Shit. The one good thing about it is finding out which unnecessarily digital devices will run Doom.

[cimorene]

LOLOL!

I actually paid 2 bucks extra to buy one without NTFS just in case it's got some hidden wifi capability as well because I didn't feel like researching whether it would or not.

[stellar_dust]

I had to do that with my old cat for about 3 years. We had one of the pet-specific accu-check ones, i think, which the vet gave me at a large discount because it had previously belonged to someone else whose cat had recently passed. So I gave it back to the vet when my cat eventually died and i hope she kept it going to the next cat who needed one ...

Those poor ears. I hated pricking her so much.

[cimorene]

Yeah. I'm very glad the new one can work on less blood - the worst is having to come back and prick for a bigger drop all the time!

[pearwaldorf]

If you're willing to deal with an American manufacturer, OneTouch makes glucometers that are extremely cheap and readily available. I believe the Ultras and Ultra Minis are discontinued but they still make test strips for them. They also take generic strips (manufacturers are UniStrip and GenUltimate), although idk what availability is for them outside the US.

The only caution I have is that whatever is in the generic strips (enzymes maybe?) that reacts with the blood degrades much more quickly than the name brand ones. Those you can't use past the expiration, while name brand strips two years past the expiration date are still fine (I've checked with non-expired strips just to be safe).

[cimorene]

Unfortunately, they aren't readily available from the larger Finnish diabetes shops, so using them wouldn't be practical for us when you need such a constant supply of the test strips and test fluid. Too bad! Glad that's true for other people though.