I know the importance of sanitation. I wash my hands about a hundred times a day, especially when I’m in the kitchen. I wash them to clean them before I start working with food, I wash them upon returning from a break, I wash them when I go from prepping one item to another, and I wash them when I end up with goopy dough hands. Yeah, I’ve got this hand washing thing down. But it seems that I’ve forgotten a step.
My blood sugars had been beautiful all day. Then I check them before lunch. 269. Bull, I say. There's no way my sugar could have skyrocketed and I hadn't noticed. So I test again, this time on my pinky finger. 113. Much better, but I'm torn. I have to know the source of the discrepancy. So I wash my hands and see if the third time is a charm. 110. Sweet! (Or, unsweet, as the case may be.) Then it hits me. I made a good ole PB&J for lunch. Sure, I washed my hands before I started making it, but I didn't wash my hands after I put away the jelly. That jelly had more than doubled what my true reading was. I'm glad I decided not to take it as gospel or I'd have crashed big time.
So I'm going to make a more concentrated effort to ensure that my digits are sqeeky clean before I test, and encourage anyone else who's slacked in that department like me to do the same. It might save you a few units you didn't need and keep you from recovering from an "unexplained" crash into low-ville later.