Further adventures with a sharp pointy object
Today’s attempt at using my new INR self-testing machine was so very nearly there, but at the last minute went rather wrong.
Armed with advice from my co-admin on my forum, who’s a practice nurse and runs an INR clinic using the ‘pro’ version of the machine I’ve got, and my experiences from last week on how NOT to do it, I embarked on today’s attempt. Having been practising with just the lancets to get the blood sample, I’ve now established that using the higher settings on the lancing device, which means the lancet’s fired into the skin deeper, is essential. So too is pressing the lancing device firmly against your finger. If you just hold it against your finger, you get a bit of a nick, but no blood.
So, off we set this morning on the latest attempt. Everything was laid out, I’d made sure that my hands were nice and warm this morning by staying in bed tucked up in my nice new warm sleeping bag extra late, and after I’d been in the shower kept regularly doing my penguin impression, flapping my arms around and wiggling my fingers.
At first it looked as though I might have the same problem with getting the blood sample again when the first time I didn’t hold the lancing device quite firmly enough, and ended up with just a small nick, but quickly re-primed the lancing device and did it again with another finger. That one did the trick, and I was getting a reasonable drop of blood forming, so as the countdown timer on the machine ticked down, I set to applying it to the test strip.
Having learned from last week that trying to use the side-dosing method on the test strips really doesn’t work very well, I reverted to using the top-dosing method, and all seemed to be going well. Stick finger on the test strip and wait for the test strip to soak up the blood like a sponge and for the machine to beep to tell you it’s happy. Only it didn’t. Or rather it did, but it beeped to say “5″, which according to the manual means “blood application error”, most probably another code that means “you did it wrong you muppet!”
Afterwards, taking the test strip out of the machine, on the under-side of the test strip there’s a channel you can see where the blood sample sets sucked up the strip to where all the clever electronics bits and pieces are, and the blood sample had made it all the way up the test strip to the top of this channel, so I’m not quite sure what the problem was. I wasn’t out of time, and everything seemed to be going okay. Confused r us!
I’m in two minds whether to phone Roche’s information helpline and see if they’ve got any advice to offer, or whether to see what the nurse practitioner at the surgery says when I go to see her next week. Next week I’m due to have my INR checked at the surgery anyway, so at least the phlebotomist’s usually able to get blood out of me without too many problems.
Progress of sorts though. Now if I can only find out what this “5″ error code was all about, I may just have cracked this. As my Aunty J used to say, “watch this space!” 
