Nurses prepped me for the cataract surgery. This remains the most memorable part of the procedure for me, probably because the pre-op routine struck a cord with me.
They clamped an oxygen monitor on my finger. This device provides a constant reading on the blood’s oxygen levels to ensure the anaesthesiologists don’t overdo the happy gas. Then the nurses started a rather problematic test of my blood sugar by the standard lancet- and strip-using meter.
My question as to why they did not use a scanning device such as the oxygen monitor confused them.
The oxygen monitor in no was breaks the skin to read the oxygen levels in the blood beneath the skin. Perhaps if I had asked "if there was such a blood sugar testing device" they would not have been confused. But I was specific in asking why they weren’t using one.
You see, I know the technology exists. I read in a newspaper in the 1990’s about the development. I’ve seen information about such devices on the US patent website. Yet healthcare professionals who do healthcare as means of making money, have no vested interested in seeing or remembering information about what is in this technological age, an absolute viability.
y tested my blood sugar. That didn’t go so well as they were having problems with the meter itself, then with finding lancets. They went to a different meter. If I wasn’t afraid of payback inflicted while I was under anaesthesia, I would have howled in pain when they jabbed my finger and carried on with the performance for a while. I have been known to entertain myself like that before, but didn’t want to wake up to find my penis dyed with iodine or something.
I was patient with the nurses, who were having considerable difficulty with this procedure that is so basic that senile elderly people are encouraged to do it at home.
The technology exists that anyone should be able to home test their blood sugar with a device that can read the blood sugar through the skin without breaking or puncturing the skin. The technology exists.
So why isn’t it available? Economics.
The meter companies give away meters readily. They’re not making money on the meter They make money hand over fist by selling the chemical test strips that read the sugar level and the lancets used to make the hole in the finger from which diabetic blood flows. A device that needs no test strip and needs no needle to poke the skin would put the strip and lancet manufacturers out of business. These companies with economic interests directly at odds with the benefit of the patients they sell to buy and bury the technologies that would vastly improve the lives of diabetics in physical and financial comfort.
You pay for that with every tax dollar that goes to medicaid..
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