Takeaway and Giveaway.

Let me start this off by saying that I am not a pushover. I am not easily influenced by free stuff – if I do not like it, I will say so. Just because Roche paid for travel, food, and lodging for the recent summit does not mean they have bought me or my opinion.

That being said, my OneTouch Ultra2 has seen better days at the ripe old age of five years old. And while I have tried a few times in the past year, I cannot seem to qualify for one of the free meters from LifeScan due to having type 2 diabetes and “only” being on metformin.

I was thrilled to receive an Accu-Chek Nano with ten free test strips, if nothing else, to have a backup meter should the Ultra2 fail on me. It turns out the new health insurance covers the test strips at the same tier as OneTouch, which would be important for that backup meter.

The huge advantage of the Nano is that I am able to set an after-meal reminder for testing if I choose to do so following a pre-meal test, something important for a scatterbrain like me. Knowing when the meter is ready to accept blood on the test strip  is also a positive for someone as impatient as me…

The meter averages of the OneTouch Ultra2 remain my favorite feature of that meter and why I will wear it out, especially since I cannot use the other tool given away by Roche – the Glooko.

The Glooko electronic logbook requires both an Accu-Chek meter (Aviva, Aviva Nano, Compact Plus, Nano) and an iPhone (4S, 4, 3GS) or iPod touch (3rd/4th generation). I will pick one random commenter on this post later this week (other than summit attendees), who does have these items available to them to work the system. 

EDIT: To clarify, I am only giving away the Glooko at this time, saving the Nano as a backup.