I am on my period and I need to check my ketones. Every time I check for ketones, the pad on the stick is covered with blood and I can not read whether I have ketones or not. What do I do?
Before you attempt to read your ketone number, make sure you always wash your hands with warm water for at least 40-60 seconds. You may use toilet paper, or a rag/cloth that you may dispose of later. At first, make sure the toilet paper or rag that you have chosen is dry. Wipe your whole vaginal area, cleaning it of blood. Dispose of the toilet paper if you used TP after. If it is a rag/washcloth, wash the rag in the sink with some soap, as to cleanse it. Leaving the rag damp and wet after you wash all of the soap out of it, cleanse your whole vaginal area again with the wet washcloth or rag. If you have chosen toilet paper to do this process, simply wet another piece of toilet paper and do the same cleansing method for that area. I would do this with warm water, too. Do this with the washcloth/toilet paper until you can not see anymore blood on the washcloth/TP. It usually takes about 2-3 tries to wipe all of the blood away, depending on how much blood is down there at the moment. After all of the blood is gone, wipe your whole vaginal area dry again with toilet paper/a washcloth. Before you hold the stick up to urinate onto it, make sure you have a totally full bladder. Urinate a little bit into the toilet first. Sometimes the first 1-2 streams of your urine will be a little bit bloody from the blood being mixed into it earlier on accident. After you see that your urine is a normal yellow/clear color with no blood, go ahead and urinate on the stick. If you are bleeding heavily, and the blood keeps getting into your urine on accident, you can put a ball of toilet paper on the lower part of the vaginal area where the blood is coming out. You can hold the toilet paper there with one hand, while you urinate on to the stick by holding it with your other hand.