All,
It just dawned on me that I can prick my daughter's toes instead of her fingers to give them a break. I wonder if readings from toes are as accurate as fingers.
I appreciate your thoughts...
Hello~
I haven’t really checked the accuracy of toes vs. fingers, but we have done our daughter’s toes almost exclusively since she was diagnosed 3 years ago. Her endo said we could from the beginning and our daughter preferred it. It’s only been recently that we started doing fingersticks some of the time.
Hope this helps.
Jessica
Thank you Jessica!
Hi,
We use both the toes and fingers on our son. Sometimes it is easier to use the toes on him. He is 3 and sometimes gets mad about the testing. Plus it is not as painful in the toes (the big toe).
In terms of the difference in reading our Endo explained that the toe reading is a bit different, but nothing to make a big difference.
our endo said toes are fine…as long as they’re clean 
We also do toes which was suggested to us by our endo. We have a continuous glucose monitor as well and the toes correlate and are a reliable testing source for us. Keep in mind that you will get some fluctuation of numbers between fingers and toes, but will also get from finger to finger and between different machines using the same finger. (sometimes we feel like experimenting at our house). Sometimes I think John’s toes are cleaner than his fingers anyway, but we always clean with soap or alcohol. Be aware that many people are afraid of using toes because they’ve heard you should never mess with a diabetics feet. This is only true if they are non-controlled diabetics with high numbers due to circulation issues. Our little ones are fine. (Just FYI because a mom in another discussion group really tore in to me when I said we used toes.)
we have occassionally done the toes, mostly when checking in his sleep and his feet happen to be more accessible than his hands:)
Interesting… I will ask our Endo tomorrow about that.
I use toes fairly often, no issues. Don’t really see why there would be any difference no matter where you took the blood sample from, as long as the site is clean.
We recently started checking Becky’s on her arm. There is a clear cap for the lancet that has to be used. Her fingers were looking like pin cushions so this was somewhere new. It does seem to bleed a bit after the poke, but just think of the surface area.