Epic Fail

As if last Tuesday wasn't emotional enough saying goodbye to my cardiologist of 32 years, I failed my glucose tolerance test that same morning.

I was a fairly decent student in high school and college, so "fail" and "test" haven't appeared in the same sentence very often.  (Let's not talk about hitting a road cone on the parallel parking portion of my first driver's licence test.  I'm still nauseated that the word "fail" was circled next to the offending reason, "ACC" for accident.  It was a road cone, people, not an old lady.)

So when you're preggo, there comes a time when you fast for 8 or so hours (ideally while you're sleeping, because if you're like me, you'll want to be unconscious through the feat), go to the lab of the doctor's office and drink 12 ounces of what tastes like really stale, under-diluted Kool-Aid.  (Two years ago, the stuff was carbonated and I was all, "yay, this tastes like pop!," something I had given up in college.  Has the economy crisis spread this far as to not allow for the luxury of carbonation in medical glucose tests?  Someone should let Obama know; now I'm officially unhappy with our nation's health care).  Anyway, you sit awkwardly in the lab drinking, trying to envision that you are sipping something else, somewhere else, and wait an hour reading outdated magazines before they draw your blood to see how your body is processing the sugar.  And I'm sure I mentioned this the first go around, but it's worth repeating:  Why can't they just give you a Snicker's bar?  Just sayin'.

A "failed" glucose test means that my blood sugar went too high, requiring a 3- hour glucose test to see if I have gestational diabetes or if I had actually snuck in a Snicker's bar.  "Do you need to fast for this test?" the clinic receptionist asked me when I called to schedule it for Friday.  "You tell me," I said, running out of patience- because seriously, I was told to call the clinic so they could give me special instructions, not the other way around.  "Hold on,"she said, then came back to read me the script about not eating for 8 hours before my test.  Don't eat, don't drink, don't chew gum, don't open your mouth in the shower.  Well okay, you could have sips of water, but only enough so that you don't wither up.  They need your veins, after all, to draw your blood.

Wanting to make this as positive as I could, I stayed up late on Thursday night, so that when I arrived on Friday to drink the toxic sugar, I would be tired enough to drive home and sleep for three hours, again unconscious to my hunger pangs.  I sleepily rolled out of bed on Friday and drove to the clinic.  They had me sit in a lab chair and the phlebotomist poured me my drink.  "Lemon-lime today," she announced cheerily, and set it on the desk.  I reached for it, but she stopped me.  "Wow, you really want that, don't you?" she laughed.  "We have to get your blood first this time," she said.  Okay, I thought- maybe you could have let me know, and not placed a sugary beverage in front of the pregnant fasting woman before walking away.  She came back with her lab tubes, looked at me, then moved the bottle and cup farther away.  "We are keeping this away from you!  I know you want it, but you'll just have to wait!"  I was tired and cranky, but knew better not to say something equally as condescending- after all, she was the one with the needle in her hand, and I have terrible, terrible veins. 

"Here you go, it's what you wanted!" the lady handed me the cup of sludge after poking me, then said seriously, "you have five minutes." 

I closed my eyes and gulped.  After two minutes, the lady stood in front of me with her hands on her hips.  "I'm trying," I said.  She responded by telling me that if I threw up, I would have to reschedule the test and do it all over again.  I didn't get it...was I supposed to be drinking it slower?  Or faster?  This test was hard. 

"So I come back in three hours?" I asked after handing her my empty cup.  "Oh, no, we have to take your blood after one hour, then after two hours, then after three hours.  And you're not allowed to leave the premises, you need to be observed.  Most women get sick.  We need to find places for them to lie down.  Heck, I'd get sick, and I'm not pregnant."

Wait.  Wait, wait, wait- I had to be here for three hours?  I might have taken a shower this morning if I had known that.  Heck, I would have even put on a bra.  And slept last night.  And most certainly, I would have brought something to do.  I walked to the main waiting room and picked out a few magazines, all the while panicking.  If anybody would get sick, it would be me, I thought.  I just knew it.  Where would I lie down?  Would I faint before being able to ask for help?  Who would find me heaped on the floor in front of my waiting room chair, the mother and daughter across the room who sounded suspiciously of having active tuberculosis?  How on earth was I going to fill three hours on little sleep, fasting for almost twelve hours, with glucose rising and plummeting through my system? An episode I had just seen of "30 Rock" came to mind; it's the one where Liz couldn't find someone to drive her home from the dentist after a root canal, and after the sedation she thought an office plant was Bon Jovi and started making out with it.  I looked around: no office plants, but if there was any, I'd probably eat them.

A woman sitting nearby broke my stream of active worrying.  "How are you today?" she asked.

"Fine, thanks, how are you," I said wearily.

"Are you having a baby?" she asked and bit her bottom lip, with a girlish look on her face like she just found out my secret.

"Yep."  Duh.

"Are you due this month?  You must be, like, 37, 38 weeks?"

My face burned.  "January," I said flatly, hoping I had added what was an air of "lady, you are way too nosey, I am tired, I am hungry, I have not cleaned myself up for the day, and please just stop making me feel worse."

Her jaw dropped to the ground.  "Whoooooaaah," she said.  "So do you have two in there?"

"Just one."

Again, the jaw.

"Is it a boy or a girl?  Can I be nosey?"  Oh, now you ask if you can be nosey?  "What is it?"

"We don't know," I lied, because I could, and it was making me feel better.

"You don't want to know?" She asked.

"Nope," I lied again.  Lady, be quiet and leave me alone!

She began telling me about her children and their ages and probably a lot more, but was then thankfully called to her own appointment, leaving me to brood and tabulate a list of how many things were annoying me today.  I picked up the phone to whine to Michael, who was sympathetic until my call dropped and my cell phone went dead.  No!  I couldn't even smartphone my way through the morning! No phone calls, no AOL, no Facebook!  No obnoxiously texting people who were in the middle of a workday! No Blackberry Messaging my sister about home organization strategies!

I remembered, then, something I had promised myself to be working on earlier in the week.  I'm going to have crappy days.  I'm going to deal with crappy circumstances.  But I do have a choice as to how to deal with them, and I did have options.

So I cheated.  No, not the Snicker's bar.  I mean that I left the premises.  Just to the parking lot, but it was not under anyone's observation.  I was going to clean my car.  Again.  (Nesting has taken full-force this month.  By the time this baby is here, it may not look like anyone lives in our house any more.)  Paging through a binder of old coupons, I found a little bag of gift cards.  $60 worth, to be exact, to Target; $20 to Wallmart; $15 to Blockbuster; and two others, Barnes and Noble and Michael's craft store, without amounts attached to them.  My spirits rose as quickly as my glucose did.  I grabbed my to-do list for the day, and happily added to my Target run:  "iTunes gift card."  Merry Christmas to me. 

Ninety-five dollars richer, with a bit of fresh air, some magazines, and now a really clean car, I am pleased to say that I made it through my three hours without getting sick.  I won't lie, I was so hungry that at one point I walked past a smoker at the doorway and thought "ooh, that cigarette smells good!"  But I didn't have to lie down, I didn't throw up and have to repeat the test, and I didn't make out with any plants named Bon Jovi.

Oh, and this time?  I passed.