50 Comments
Have you ever experienced other people acting fearful or otherwise negatively about you checking your BG levels or disposing of glucose strips because of the blood?
You must be logged in to post a comment.
© 2023 T1D Exchange. All Rights Reserved.
Not that I ever noticed, so I answered No.
Around 8 years ago at a new job I tested my BG at my desk and a co-worker (the manager, actually) said “That’s disgusting. Do that in the bathroom next time”. All I said was “No” and left it at that. He never said anything again.
👍👍👍
A friend in high school would leave the room anytime I checked my blood sugar. My last employer asked me to check my blood sugar and take my insulin in the locker room instead of the break room. My current employer doesn’t want me to check my blood sugar at the lunch table/in our office either. There isn’t a locker room at my current workplace and we agreed the bathroom wasn’t acceptable, so the deal we made was that I can check my blood sugar at the table as long as anything with blood on it stays in my lap and doesn’t actually touch the table.
I have not but I always ask before I do if anyone has any issues.
In high school they wanted my daughter to test in a separate room away from the cafeteria because of blood. She just tested under the table in the cafeteria and no one even knew
My first boss at my previous job was a bit of a nut, and she had a thing about both germs and blood. One time she caught me checking my blood sugar at my desk, which was in a completely different room from where hers was, and she told me not to do it in the office. I tried to tell her I was in another room and not disturbing anyone, and her response was, “Yeah, but the bloody tissues will still be in the trash can.” I did later hear rumors, after she’d been fired a couple years later, that she did in fact at times dig through employees’ trash for one reason or another, and my coworkers and I wouldn’t have been surprised at all if we found out she had the office bugged. She was a total piece of work.
It’s something I have to do to stay healthy & alive so I don’t look around to see if someone is offended. If so it’s their problem not mine.
Not a level of caring I can afford to give.
I cannot say that anyone acted fearful because of my blood testing, etc. However, I did have an embarrassing faux pas once. I signed many papers daily in my work. One time a secretary came to me and showed me blood near my signature on a piece of paper I had recently signed. It was obviously the result of my finger bleeding after a blood test. I apologized, and was more aware of checking papers after I handled them.
That’s happened to me a couple times as well.
Yes, I was told at work by management that I couldn’t test where someone to see me testing.
No, but if I’m around people that I don’t normally test around, I do my best to be discrete just in case.
Not a blood issue but sometimes a negative reaction —I’ve had a Dexcom for many years now so I do finger sticks rarely but I do look at my phone often for my BG read out. If I’m with a person or people who are unfamiliar with the technology, I usually explain that I’m not texting or reading emails when I look at my phone, instead I’m checking my blood sugar. Before I explain(ed) this I sometimes get/got judged for phone usage while I am/was “supposed”to be socializing or eating or working. When people learn the real reason for me glancing at my phone, they drop the negative attitude quickly.
No one has ever said anything to me. Concern if too high or low. But I have had embarrassment when a used test strip shows up unexpectedly!! I rarely check bg due to Dexcom sensor’s accuracy, but recently removed my sandal and there was a strip. It had fallen out of case!!
I don’t think I would call it “fearful” but have noticed that some people look rather uncomfortably about me checking my BG in public. I do try to be very discreet about it but that’s not always possible.
I try to keep the blood out of sight in public, I don’t want to cause anyone to pass out from seeing a drop of blood. I also use Dexcom, so my finger pokes are rare.
I answere yes. About 13 years ago I had a coworker who didn’t like the sight of blood. He gave me a long story explaining why. After that I was more descreet particularly around him. Now I don’t care as much. I don’t draw attention to it but I will do it in public.
I put unsure. I’ve received some sideways glances. I assume this is curiosity rather than negativity. My husband does get a bit snarky when he finds used stray strips in the house/car. Haha.
Those dang strips get everywhere! …and I swear the move on their own… I find old strips in the oddest of places and I think, “where are their little legs?!” ;p
About eleven years ago I had a job with Child Protection. The interviews with families would sometimes take several hours. Once I felt my glucose was getting low, so I checked my glucose (before I had a CGM). The next day I was called into the supervisor’s office who told me to never check except in private while at work. I quit shortly thereafter. I knew what they told me was illegal but I just didn’t want to fight the fight.
I had been told, “no one wants to see that” when I was checking my BG in a small office. I thought I was being inobtrusive but…
My mother use to say that to me when we were in a restaurant! I’d look at her and ask, “Well, what would you like me to do?” Now that she has LADA, she doesn’t make that comment any more!
Not really, it’s more a reaction of surprise or curiosity. After a short explanation, it’s a non-issue.
I’ve had people i sit with be uncomfortable with blood, so among new groups I’ll ask beforehand, and ask that they avert their eyes and let them know when it’s safe if they have a problem with it.
I have never had anyone even notice I was checking.
Yes, before CGMs were available, I would test before eating a meal. If we were eating with my sister-in-law I knew to expect a loud negative comment from her. She has since been dx with T2, along with three other siblings in my spouse’s family, and now she takes insulin before eating. I’ve never seen her test.
This is poetic justice. Don’t wish it on anyone, but just sayin.
I’ve encountered fear/negativity at two jobs. In both cases I was told I had to go to another room to test.
Good God Almighty!!!
Good grief!!! People can be so ignorant.
It has been a long time, as the switch to Dexcom G6 eliminated most of my blood sugar tests. But, on several occasions at restaurants I’ve had people tell me to go do it in the restroom.
As a teen on MDI I realized that the public bathroom was the worst possible place to draw up insulin or any other diabetes task. I am not ashamed to take care of myself. Once in a public restroom drawing up my insulin, someone accused me of doing illegal drugs. I did it at the table from then on. No one has to watch.
I had one dept head who understood when I was hired that I had T1D (didn’t know alot about it, but knew about my T1D). Anyway while walking around introducing a new asst mgr stopped by my office and at that time told me I was to do my fingersticks outside of the office, suggesting my car as the place to do it. The new asst mgr asked if all employees were to plan getting papercuts in their cars! That new asst mgr was great.
Good grief!!
Definitely have gotten looks and two times that are notable:
I had a gentleman on a plane who I thought might actually asked to be moved.
I had one dear, sweet co-worker who almost fainted on me when she bopped into my cubicle just as I was squeezing my finger. I was way more careful about how I positioned myself after that. (Turning a certain way my body would block the whole procedure so that no one could see.) And, she was careful, too. But, I haven’t been around new people in awhile, and I stopped noticing in any case.
I’ve found that if I’m nonchalant about things, nobody really notices anyway.
I had a business associate nearly faint when I was just talking about testing my blood sugar at our lunch table. This was in the early to mid 1980s. I found out that even talking about blood testing or shots, as I was to another associate at the table, was enough to cause him to sweat profusely and become dizzy.
I’m sorry, but I find that funny. How would those people survive if they became T1D’s?
Although, while I was at the Joslin Center in Boston, a T1D patient who was in the room with me totally passed out when the doctor gave him his first shot of insulin. They remove him from my room, so I don’t know what happened to him afterward.
I answered “I don’t know” because I don’t pay attention. I am doing what it takes to stay alive.
Yes, and it was ridiculous.
I am discreet in restaurants using my purse to hide it. I get that people may not want to see blood while they are eating. The only other time was I was in a doctors office and I felt myself go low. My husband was with me because we weren’t sure of the results (luckily negative). A nun had followed us in. I paid no mind to her. But my husband told me later she looked very disapprovingly at me. I work at a Jesuit college. They don’t scare me but my husband went to parochial schools back when corporal punishment was permitted, especially in catholic schools. He is scared to death of nuns. He said if looks could kill I would be dead. Haha! He loves horror films but when one came out with a nun in it, he wouldn’t watch it.
I said I was unsure, but after giving the answer remembered a time when a more accurate answer for me would have been “Yes, but so what?”
I never had anybody react negatively to that time but had one time shortly before the Ryan’s Buffet restaurant in Enterprise, Alabama closed when one customer not at my table raised a fuss with restaurant staff because I was “being gross and poking things into my finger and then shooting up drugs at the table.”
I had been using an Insulin pump for over a decade by then, but that was one time when my Medtronic Insulin Pump needed replacing so I was on MDI while waiting for the replacement pump to arrive.
It just happened that time that the person waiting my area was one of my pool business customers and she knew al about my Diabetes before the other customer complained about my “shooting up at the table” and took charge by telling those at the table that raised a fuss about me that if they didn’t want to see me taking shots before eating then they would absolutely hate to see “what happens to him if he doesn’t take that shot before eating” and then offered to let the party at the table that complained about me either move to a different area of the restaurant or leave and go elsewhere to eat, but if they did that they would get no refunds since they had gotten the buffet and had all already had at least one plate of food from the buffet before complaining about what that other “druggy customer” was doing at the table.
That waitress waiting my area then told her manager what happened and the manager then came to my table, apologized for the actions of that other customer and insisted on giving me a whole pie to take home as compensation for what he thought the other customer had put me through, but truth was that if the one waiting my area of the restaurant hadn’t said anything about it to me, I wasn’t paying attention to others so wouldn’t have known that anybody had complained at all about my actions at the table if the restaurant staff wouldn’t have mentioned it to me.
I selected “Yes” as a person that I worked with ‘collapsed’ when she witnessed me testing my blood glucose. I learned after that not to test my blood glucose level in front of others unless I KNOW that I wouldn’t have such an effect on anyone else … and this was more than 35 years ago.
Blood glucose strips are not considered medical waste, or hazardous waste, as per California H&S Code
I chose unsure as my social skills are not good.
I really don’t know for sure since I don’t look at people’s reactions, but I have always done it discreetly so people who are queazy with blood don’t faint. (I have literally fainted reading medical articles. I love medical articles but if the article gets too graphic, I have fainted. LOL. My poor mother thought I was having an insulin reaction. ) So yes, it is my duty to care about others.
I have one relative that cannot watch me poke my finger! LOL! After 56 years of T1D, I have the process of meter-testing BG down to an art (on my lap under the table at a restaurant). I keep a cloth in the meter case that I use to wipe off any drops and I drop the used strip in the cloth until l get home. No strangers have acted like they noticed or it bothered them
Sometimes they don’t understand the look is disgusted but others are curious and what I’m doing and I explain what I’m doing kids are fun some kids have different machines but where the same
Some people thought I should dispose of them in special biohazard containers. I explained it’s a tiny amount, the same as if you blow your nose and it bleeds a little, it goes in the trash.