Is My Coke Really Diet?

If you have Diabetes and you're a soda drinker, there's one thing you know; You're often finding yourself questioning whether the drink you were served is really Diet or not.

I'm the annoying customer always asking my server, "It's Diet, right?", to which they always respond yes... which often leads me to wonder if they actually know that it's really Diet or if they're just in a rush and want to please me.
With Type 1 Diabetes, a regular Coke will cause your blood sugar to skyrocket. For someone like me, who's prone to ketones, that could potentially put me in a really bad situation. Actually, if we're looking at it technically, it could kill me. A mistake like that can technically throw anyone with Type 1 into an uncontrollable downward spiral.

A while back in a Type 1 Support group, I learned a genius trick. If you use your meter and put a drop of the drink in the test strip, you can find out if it's really Diet, or if it's an imposter. I have the Bayer Contour Next USB. If it's Diet, for me, it gives some sort of reading like 1.1 or 1.2 or something around there. If it's not.... what you see in this next photo will happen..



PS- For my US readers who don't use mmol/L, with Diet it was 19.8 mg/dl, and with Regular it was 288 mg/dl.

However, I've been told that some meters don't work properly with this. Someone told me that for their meter, it reads "Error' for both Diet and Regular. In this case, I was just given some great advice by a fellow Type 1 on Facebook, Diastix! When I asked permission to use his screenshot in my blog post, he asked me to share his hashtag with you guys; #WrestlingTheDragon. So here's to spreading around Anthony's hashtag! Thanks Anthony!

So yes, tonight McDonald's tried to kill me. Okay, I'm being a little dramatic. But I am so grateful I tasted something off and decided to do the test, because otherwise I would have been in for a rough night that could have led me to get really sick. Luckily, this trick is relatively widespread in the community and a lot of people know about it but, it can never hurt to share it a bit more!

So here's a little plea to servers in restaurants of all kinds, be mindful when someone asks for a DIET Coke. They might not be on any sort of diet, it's not a joke, and it might be for health reasons. Be as careful as you can even though we know you're in a rush. We rely on you for some serious reasons! And we apologize about asking you to triple check that it's Diet :)