I bought the machine two days ago, but silly me, I thought I could use it repeatedly. Wrong. You can only use it twice! It cost me $70. After finding out that only two punch stands and two cartridges were included, I figured I could at least order more. Wrong again. You can only use the whole kit and kaboodle twice. What do people think? I used it (first time I did not have enough blood, though), and it’s good to know what my A1C is.
Interested to hear from others. Thanks.
Well, there are cheaper cost-per-test kits available. You can buy this 10-test kit from Walmart for $118 USD. I’ve seen 2-test kits for under $50.
Since I have access to a quarterly A1c test provided by my doctor, I don’t often use the home test kit. When I went six months between doctor visits, I would use a self-test at the halfway point between visits.
Since I use a continuous glucose monitor, I prefer to watch my TIR or time-in-range % as the best guide to assess my exposure to glucose. I believe that the A1c test is flawed since two people with the same A1c can experience vastly different glucose exposure due to different glucose variability. Lots of lows can hide behind a respectable A1c. TIR won’t hide hypos and hypers the way an A1c will.
I think the A1c is a good supplemental check from an independent source but I could live without it. I mostly get it to satisfy my doctor’s need to monitor this metric.