Friday, January 04, 2008

Voyage to diabetes (sooner or later)

Today I went to the health centre for my semi-annual round of blood letting. They test for a range of conditions including cholesterol and blood sugar levels. For the latter the doctor had arranged for do a glucose tolerance test which required me to give a series of samples over a couple of hours to help determine the severity of my insulin resistance.

As fasting is required I had no breakfast and got to the health centre around 8.30. First I picked up my month's supply of Lipitor before sitting down to wait for the pathology nurse to call me. This didn't happen until 9; after she had done a pin-prick test to make sure my blood-sugar wasn't too high she then extracted the first lot of samples. Then I drank a small bottle of a glucose drink (tasted just like flat lemonade) before returning to the waiting room.

An hour later she called me back and removed another lot of blood (from the other arm this time), then I went back to the waiting room. Luckily I had a magazine and my radio/mp3-player to keep me amused.

During this hour I made a follow-up appointment with my doctor to discuss the results of all the tests - unfortunately not until the week after next. At the end of the hour I returned for the final extraction after which I was free to eat at last.

I had a meal in town before wandering in the heat (hot again, alas) up to work.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Sigh! I'll probably be following in your footsteps next week, depending on how my fasting glucose turns out.

11:53 pm  

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