Who remembers the old test strips and methods?
I've had diabetes for 26 years, A lot has changed since then.
I stared on Regular insulin and NPH.
Does anyone else remember those test strips that you had to time with a watch, and wipe the blood off after a min, and then you only got a range in the end of say 80-140 or 150-200 . HA !
Makes the CGM seem like spot on perfect ! It is hard to believe any of us survived those days.
My first finger stick meter weighed 2 lbs and I felt lucky to have it !
I wonder if anyone else out there remembers even before that.
Humulin R just came out as I was diagnosed so I never used animal insulin.
I went to the Minimed museum after I had my pump training and those early pumps were laughable !
How did anyone dose insulin before home testing? Surely there is 1 or 2 people who survived to tell.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Equestrian on -
Is there really a minimed museum? Where is it ? I want to go.
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Permalink Reply by Tim on -
The alternative to the Autolet in 1982, were little sterile-packaged sheet metal pointy things you could open up and use the sheet metal to poke your own finger with. Compared to them the Autolet seemed like a pretty neat idea :-)
They gave me two autolets in 1982... I had one of them until the mid-90's. The individual lancet form factor is still one of the commonly used ones today (just in a different mechanical poker.) A decade for a finger poker mechanism is pretty good. Today I destroy the finger pokers left and right, usually after a couple months of abuse, but sometimes I've busted them up the same day I get them. Back in the 90's B-D used to sell this really flimsy finger poker, I could go through several of those a month!
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Permalink Reply by jeffri kay on -
you had me at 2 pound meter! too funny!
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Permalink Reply by Michael McClure on -
I was diagnosed in January '82, and was shot up with pork insulin at that time. Had I been dx'ed just one short week later, I could have been a part of a trial of new human insulin that started that next week, but because I had had pork insulin in me, I was x'ed from the test. Too bad -- I would have had all my insulin, syringes, test strips, etc. covered for me for five years. Ah well...
/\/\
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Permalink Reply by Marie B on -
more blasts from the past can be viewed at the Diabetes Photo Museum Group
http://www.tudiabetes.org/group/diabetesphotomusuem
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Permalink Reply by EdamameBean on -
Hi all, I'm new here. Glad to have joined the TuD community.
I have an autolet horror story. I was diagnosed in the mid-80's and during my first night in the hospital they woke me up every hour to test my BG. Sadly, the nurse assigned to my room that evening had never seen an autolet before. She figured that you were supposed to place your finger ON the platform rather than under it. This meant that the lancet entered a part of the finger tip with lots of nerve endings and it got jammed in and had to be manually pulled out...all while I was screaming bloody murder. I was horrified to think that this was what I would have to do for the rest of my life!
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Permalink Reply by Michael McClure on
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OMG!
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Permalink Reply by Chris Miller on -
I was diagnosed in 1974. I used beef and pork insulin (Lente and Toronto) for over 20 years. I didn't even have a glucose meter those early years, just the ketones tester with the test tubes and big pill you dropped in your urine. My first meter had a 45-second countdown. Half the time it would tell me Not Enough Blood, and i'd have to start all over again!
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Permalink Reply by Jim on -
The one thing I miss is with my first glucometer we would cut the strips in half and the machine would still read. 1/2 price strips!
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Permalink Reply by Timothy on -
Wow just hearing words like "glucometer" and "test tape" make me cringe.
I still hear nurses use the term glucometer to mean any kind of meter.
I had the paramedics called a few years ago when I had a low event, and they carried both oral glucose gel and a GIANT DEXTROSE syringe for IV injection.
I live in the US but I guess every state is different. Orange juice and sugar seems silly as orange juice alone is usually pretty potent.I was dx,d in the late 80s and they showed me how to clean a glass syringe because it was part of their checklist. Of course no one had used glass syringes for 30 years prior.I believe it had a 12 gague needle too.
Someone had described an injector device similar to the lancet device that was posted here for that giant needle in that glass syringe.Ill bet that was loads of fun.
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