Friday, August 12, 2011

The Longest Morning

You know what you get when you eat cookies before your glucose test? An invitation to take another one! Another, longer, fasting version with many more blood draws. Joy, joy! I had to have the husband stay home with the tot for this one so I got up especially early in order to be at the hospital right when the lab opened. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the 3 hr glucose test doesn't actually start until after your initial blood draw comes back from the lab. So despite arriving at 7am rearing to go, my actual test didn't begin until almost 8am. At which point, I had to chug down the same sugary orange drink and then wait an hour to have my blood drawn...again.

Did I mention this was a fasting test? So I had not eaten anything since 8pm the night before. For some odd reason, where I was sitting just happened to be the area where every nurse, orderly and visitor had to walk through with their boxes of donuts and trays of cookies for patients and staff. I tried to go to the gift shop and browse at one point, only to find that the register for the gift area was closed and if I wanted to buy anything, I had to pay for it in the cafe. You know, right next to the freezer case filled with pudding parfaits and brownies? By hour three, I was starting to hallucinate, I actually got to the point where I would see women carrying in bags that I could swear held birthday cake and cookies but ended up only being clothes on a second inspection. (I can't imagine what these women must have been thinking walking by the wild-eyed, enormously pregnant lady who was drooling at them).

Finally at 11, I had bruises in both arms and was done with the last blood draw. I was also famished and wishing fervently that I had thought to bring a snack in the car. I did the next best thing and hightailed it to the nearest drive-thru to pick up lunch. I rarely eat fast food, but that didn't stop me from finishing most of my fries before I got in the door.

Thankfully, I passed the test with no trouble at all. Which means I can go back to my nightly habit of double-stuffed Oreos and milk. It also means that I will be mentioning all of this torture and suffering to my daughter when she is at the "I hate you" stage of adolescence and complaining about how I never do anything for her.

1 comment:

  1. Blood glucose tests are a horrible, horrible way to torture pregnant women!

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