Oh, The Pain

Today I endured the 28^th week (or 29^th, in my case) ritual of the pregnancy glucose tolerance test.

Firstly, can I just say how much I miss my old OBGYN. They didn’t make me drink obscene amounts of water before my ultrasound. They didn’t make me fast before my glucose test. They gave me the super-sugary carbonated drink thing to take home, consume at my leisure (provided I drank it in 15 minutes or less) and then come into their office an hour later to have my blood drawn – no waiting at all. They were good people. Oh, and they had in house blood-drawers and ultrasound technicians. No separate office/additional paperwork/other business hours to deal with.

That is not to say that I don’t like my OBGYN now. He’s fine. He has extremely small hands, which is totally a plus. And he makes Lij feel welcome every time Lij comes with me to an appointment. But he does not have an in-house blood-drawer (or a full-time ultrasound technician for that matter). I have to go to a different office to have my blood drawn. Still you might be thinking that’s not so bad. And up until today I would have agreed with you. But today was different.

For starters, the lab office has only one staffer there at any given time. This person answers phones, collects insurance information, does paperwork and draws the blood. That means that when they’re in the back drawing blood, you’re in the front waiting at an empty reception desk.

Secondly, I was not able to drink the “soda” at home. I had to show up in the office to get the drink and consume it there. Then, after drinking the thing, it’s a mandatory 1 hour wait until they can draw blood to use as a sample. Oy!

To top it off, they now have a policy that no one but the patient and the blood-drawer can be in the blood-drawing room. This meant that Alexander had to take the morning off work to watch the kids while I waited in the reception area (first to get “checked-in”, then to get my drink, and finally for the hour until they could draw the sample – totaling an hour and a half of waiting).

Even that wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the actual blood draw. The tech, apparently not wanting to “stick” me again after an unsuccessful attempt to strike vein the first go around, decided to just leave the needle in my arm and move it around until she hit something. By the look of it and from the feeling in my arm (that has continued all day), she seems to have hit plenty. Nerves, muscle, possibly bone. The only thing I can be certain that she hit – somewhere in there – is an actual vessel (no idea whether it was a vein or an artery), because a sample was successfully collected. The good news is there should be no more blood-draws for this pregnancy.

Now if only the pain in the crook of my arm would go away I could get on with life.