Found another old Ames meter on eBay, not sure what year it is from.
Vintage Ames Glucometer 5885A
here an old Ames from 1973
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-ames-eyetone-physician-521005497
I remember my Mom waking me up in middle of night, forcing orange juice into me. Hated OJ ever since. (And sometimes my sweaty forehead was likely due to 90 degree temps, no AC, but I got OJ anyway.)
Me too. Orange juice with sugar dissolved in it was the ADA-approved hypo treatment at the time. I was OK with orange juice before diagnosis. After diagnosis I hate it for all of the past 38 years even today. I cannot look at it without tasting the extra sugar dissolved in it and nurses at the local hospital trying to pour it down my throat.
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I was 5, in hospital for 10 days, but not in ICU. I had a nice nurse and a mean nurse. The mean nurse always wanted me to drink more water. The nice nurse kindly suggested I drink more, or she would call the other nurse!!
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There is a museum of all the old diabetes contraptions at the minimed site in northridge ca. They don’t only have their own stuff.
They go back to insulin bottles from the 20s and glass syringes that you had to boil.
The first insulin pump in a backpack
It’s fascinating if you are in the region.
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OMG! I had a Direct 30/30! I loved it, but it was time-consuming to set up the test & then clean it off & prep for storage, if I’m remembering correctly. It was a little like my little personal bio-chemistry set! When they took it off the market, they had a deal with Lifescan, and I got my next meter free from them.I think that the one I had before the Direct 30/30 was an AccuCheck.
I was diagnosed December 29, 1986, at the age of 21. I used Chemstrips (yup, 1 minute with blood, then wipe fully but carefully, so as not to remove the top layer of chemical, then another minute for the colors to finish changing). Those metal vials were great for all sorts of things, like pins and sewing needles. I probably still have a few around the house here and there.
My first meter was an AccuCheck, but not until a year or two later. Not sure why, though it was probably a balance of cost over accuracy. I seem to remember that the first Lifescan (OneTouch???) cost a lot. I want to say $2K, but I might be misremembering. It took the companies a few years to realize that they could make more money in the long run with cheap/free meters and expensive strips.
I had a breif flirtation with the Jet-Injector. My skin kept toughening up, and we thought that the jet injector would work better by zapping right through the skin … not the best idea that I ever had. It had an adjustment for deapth/force, nad if you gor it wrong, you might have insulin too shallow (practically on the surface of the skin), or too deep, which was like getting jabbed hard by the end of a broom handle. 
!
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I seem to have a small museum!
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Not sure what happened to the third picture, because I can’t see it, so I’m trying again.
Drum roll!
The Medi-Jector EZ!
Anyway, state of the art in the late 80s. Just like Star Trek! LOL
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It was about 1991/1992 where the strip manufacturers began to realize that they could sell the meter for cheap and make all the profit on the strips. I have no idea how much my first generation AccuCheck meter cost (my parents would’ve dealt with the insurance and I was just in junior high) but I remember being in grad school and paying for everything out of pocket in the early 90’s, and the 2nd generation AccuCheck meter you show, costing circa $80-$120 OTC in 1991. And I think it was $22 for 25 chemstrips and $40 for 50 chemstrips at the time too.
People talk about the price of insulin today and I agree it’s crazy high and was a lot cheaper in the 80’s and early 90’s (just $10-$14 a vial). But if I hadn’t been for me cutting my Chemstrips into thin strips and visually reading, I would’ve been spending $100+ a month of test strips back then, so I remember historically test strips being a much bigger budgetary hit for me.
In 1983 I was at first job out of college. Back then the employer insurance could deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, so I paid 100 percent oop. But fortunately Lente, syringes and early bg strips were my only costs oop, medical dr appts were covered with low copays.
My first glucose meter was the AccuChek ll in the i980s, I think it was 1985. That was 40 years after my diagnosis in 1945. I was so excited to finally do blood testing at home. I think the glucometer is the most important device I have ever used. More important than the pump or CGM.
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I’m in my 51st year of Type 1 and very grateful to have no issues. I was dx June 1969.
I too used to cut my strips up to save money because after my divorce in 1979 I could not BUY health insurance and because I was married at the time I started working at the company I I declined health insurance because I was on my husband’s policy.
If I remember correctly there were 2 types of insulin, 40 or 80. I would take 1 shot in the morning for all day. Since my initial dx I’ve only been in the hospital one time because I forgot my shot one day and went into diabetic acidosis.
Boy was I sick… I had small children when I was first diagnosed and I wanted to make I lived until they were adults so I always took my condition very seriously. I’m so grateful that I’ve lived long enough to see my grandkids become adults.
Thanks for reading this long post.
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Hi @Shirley7, you have done a very good job avoiding complications! I agree that it is nice to see our grandkids become adults. Mine are 13 and 17 years old.
I don’t think Shirley is a very common name, but that is my sister’s name. She lives in Virginia.
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Ahh, the glass syringe. Only one, because you didn’t need more than one kind of insulin, right? Lived in an alcohol bath in what was probably originally an olive jar, boiled it weekly. Now with pen needles and cartridges, I’m because to about the same amount of plastic waste I produced then - other than the outrage of the G6 inserter.
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Actually they taught me how to mix Regular and NPH in a glass syringe. I thought mixing was OK for most pre-analog insulins, it’s only the newfangled insulins that we aren’t supposed to mix?
When I was diagnosed in 1982 they sent me home with the glass syringe I was trained on (although I never ever used it at home) although I only ever used plastic syringes at home. They even taught me how to boil it and I remember… “Yale Solution”? … was that an alcohol bath? I remember Yale Solution being more like bleach. But again never did that at home, just when being trained in the hospital.
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I use a Better Living Now 14 day sensor. I LOVE it. I just hold the reader over the sensor and there’s my number.
I can test as often as I want and my fingers don’t get sore anymore.
I think you are getting Freestyle Libre cgm, from Better Living Now ?
Great post, and hits home for me…I was diagnosed in 1982 also. So many struggles early on, with sports etc. Thankfully my mother found a good specialist to see (instead of the family doctor who had me on one giant shot in the morning and another at night). I shifted to quicker acting insulins, with multiple shots per day, and that was around the early days of blood glucose monitoring, as you displayed. I still see the same Endo (I must have been one of his first patients) and thankfully I have no complications to date. Just switched from Dex 4 Platinum to the Dex 6…they stopped supporting the 4 a few weeks ago.
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Yes, you are correct
.
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Two shots a day with R and N mixed was entirely conventional in the 1980’s. It never worked very well for me. I remember really lopsided doses with my morning shot being really huge amount of N. I think the intention was that R handled the next meal after the shot and N handled the second meal after the shot. Of course N is way too broad to really be a mealtime insulin so I don’t think it ever could’ve worked all that well. That said, for the 1980’s it was entirely conventional.
I myself shifted to MDI, 4 shots a day with R (for meals) mixed with N (for basal) in the late 1980’s on my own. I think I may have read about it in one of Dr B’s early books. It was way better than two shots a day!
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