Hi Wendy and Mimo!
Welcome to FDMB
I live about 4.5hrs North of you in Fort Mac. For Mowgli’s diabetic supplies I use Shoppers, it’s the most affordable that I’ve found in town so far, and I can use my optimum points towards supplies. Because you’re in Edmonton, you might have some better options: for example, I’ve heard you can get some good deals at costco.
@Tracey&Jones (GA) is from Edmonton... any tips for Wendy?
I use the freestyle lite because at my shoppers the strips / lancets were the cheapest, it requires very little blood to get results, and the reading comes quickly. It also stores a lot of results. I don’t know if it was a promotion at the time or regular business but when I bought 100test strips I got the monitor for free and it came with a carrying case for the monitor, test strips and lancets. For beginner lancets I use 28 gauge because I can get a reliable bead of blood from Mowgli’s ears. I don’t personally use the lancet pen because I feel like I have less control with it.
I use BD Ultra fine syringes and buy a box at a time. The box looks like this
View attachment 45962
They have half unit markings which is really important for fine dosing (since we increase/decrease by 0.25u at a time here)
You can get a Sharp’s container over the counter too, some places you pay a deposit and they just give you a new one every time you return it full. At shoppers they gave me one for free.
All together a full restock of diabetic items without cashing in optimum points costs about 135CAD but it’s rare that I ever have to restock all at once. Keep in mind I’m in a northern community so I’d say I pay a little more.
Good luck with everything