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A little while back, Kerri at SUM let me know that there were nice features within the Medtronic Minimed pump that allowed you to see the daily totals for bolus, basal and carbs.  This is a great way to compare blood sugar results to amounts of insulin and carbohydrates.  In trying to share information here on Blogging Diabetes, I am pleased to let you know about a nice little feature on the OneTouch UltraLink meter that I just found, pretty much by accident.

The feature is for immediately after checking your blood sugar.  All you need to do is press the down arrow and it will bring up a comment screen with a few different options.  Some of the options that I think would be very useful are: illness, not enough food, too much food, exercise and feel hypo.  These comments would help if you were trying to analyze your numbers to see trends or possible problem areas.  The one that kind of made me laugh is the “vacation” comment.  I guess a lot of people may tend to run high/low while on vacation because they are possibly out of their routine.  Lifescan should give the user the option to add some comments for things that may be specific to them.  I could think of a few comments I would like to write after seeing one of those 300s or 400s…

Here are the instructions shown in the UltraLink manual on how to add a comment or meal flag.

Here are the different comment options that are available.

The UltraLink also allows you to add a meal flag to note if the reading is before or after a meal.

Also, page 40 of the manual shows how to add a comment to a past reading.  Some of the benefits LifeScan notes are:

One question I don’t have the answer to is if the comments are sent to CareLink when using the software to upload the data to CareLink. The reason I don’t know is because I use my pump to upload the data from my blood glucose readings and this feature isn’t available with the pump.  Since the UltraLink communicates with my MiniMed pump, I don’t use my meter for analysis, I just link my pump via the wireless connection.  Does anyone use the comments or meal flags with their meter?  If so, has it helped with control?