Friday, March 27, 2009

Glamorous

I failed a couple of last week's blood tests. Besides being a bit anemic (hey, could this explain feeling tired all the time?), my glucose test showed a level high enough to warrant the dreaded 3 hour glucose test. While he was drawing blood for the first test, the nice young Russian tech sympathized about how gross the glucose drink is. "And that one only has 50 milligrams of sugar. For the three hour test, the drink has 100 milligrams." Great.

glucose drink, round one 
Oh joy, this again. Same yucky taste, now with twice the sugar.*
I'll go back next week for the three hour "we don't trust you to leave the building where you might fill up on sugary treats before we can tell you not to" test. Good thing I have a laptop, or I might have to take sick time for this. 
In the mean time, I am on a self-imposed sugar black out. Well, except for inch of OJ in the morning, to wash down the iron pill. If I fail the second test and am on a real no-sugar diet, it may be at the expense of my overall mental health. Chocolate, or huge babies? What kind of a choice is that? Once again I am reminded of Ellen's line: isn't pregnancy glamorous? 
*It may amuse no one else, but it cracks me up that I even took this picture. How classically navel-gazing blogger-y is this? I am put in a room and told I have 5 minutes to drink. So I drink a bit, then stop for a photo shoot, then drink the rest.  

9 comments:

  1. Maybe I'm weird but I don't mind the taste of the orange drink. They serve it nice and cold and it tastes like orange soda to me.

    Good luck with the 3 hour test!

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  2. Was it cold at least? I pounded mine in one gulp and tried to pretend it was beer.

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  3. Oh god, I had to do the 3 hour once - before I was pregnant. It. was. hellish. I'm so sorry.

    I'm hypoglycemic though, so it's sort of an extra hell for me - headaches, the shakes, the sweats.

    In fact every time I have to fast for something, it's a special sort of dread.

    And ugh - just looking at that orange drink made a little nauseated.

    Sorry about the anemia too.

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  4. Um, yeah. Classic. I didn't mind the drink either - but I only took the first one, not the three hour one. Good luck with that. And I must admit - I'm so jealous you can drink oj while pregnant - the smallest sip of it gave me terrible heartburn - man I missed that during my whole pregnancy!

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  5. i could hardly finish mine.

    but maybe its because it was warmer than room temp.

    n.a.s.t.y.

    and yes, i would have stopped to take a picture too.

    hee hee hee

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  6. Nora. I hate to be the bearer of bad and worse news, but when I took the "3 hour" glucose test about 15 months ago

    1. It took 4 hours.
    2. Interstate Kaiser had no wireless internet.

    I did have knitting with me, but it was just about the longest 4 hours of my life, in part because every hour I had to go get jabbed with a needle.

    My advice: get all the blood draws from the same arm. Makes that arm unusable, the other one is A-OK.

    Also, bring something from Pix for afterwards

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  7. Bleagh. How can you fail a blood test? I mean, what a terrible phrasing - couldn't they say just that your test indicates such and such?

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  8. At like 11 weeks, I failed the one hour, and passed the three hour.

    So they made me do the three hour again at like 28 weeks. Sucked.

    But I passed again.

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  9. Thankfully I had a lovely midwife who didn't make me drink the orange gunk -- turns out there's the same amount of sugar in a box of smarties plus 10 extra smarties hah!

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