Today's Adventure...

Today I went for my Glucose Tolerance Test. For anyone who doesn’t know, this is a blood test to see if you have developed gestational diabetes. (If for some reason you absolutely, positively must know more about what it is, just google "gestational diabetes.") Otherwise, just read on...

Anyway, it’s not as easy as just a blood test though. No no no.

First they make you starve yourself. Now first of all, not letting a pregnant woman eat is just mean.

Then, they make you drink this syrupy sweet carbonated orange soda that tastes like Sunkist with about twenty scoops of sugar tossed in for good measure.

THEN, they make you sit for an hour (still without eating) while the magic syrup does its work, which is to shooting your blood sugar sky high. (Ben really enjoyed this part... it sent him into a writhing frenzy of feet and fists)

Then, they take some blood and a few days later they let you know if your blood sugar STAYED high (bad) or if it came crashing down (good).

I can tell you right now, I’m a crasher. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. And if I follow my usual pattern with not eating/lots of sugar, I’ll develop a raging headache in about three or four hours. Can’t wait.

All this would not have been SO awful if it had only taken an hour like it was supposed to. But I went to Labcorp. Their motto may as well be "Sit down and shut up. We’ll take your blood when we’re good and ready."

So I entered an already crowded waiting room at 8a.m. and found myself stuck behind a very very old woman who was apparently there to give a stool sample. According to my watch, she entered the one and only bathroom there to produce said stool sample at approximately 8:15 a.m. At 9:15 she still wasn’t out. I guess she had performance anxiety. Meanwhile, the Labcorp people aren’t bright enough to decide to just take me ahead of her. Hello? Hungry pregnant woman with an hour’s wait ahead of her?? A little consideration would be nice. But I guess they couldn’t handle this little change to their routine so there I sat. Me and all the other people who were getting blood drawn for god-knows-what communicable disease they might be carrying.

At approximately 9:30, they finally made poopy woman come out of the bathroom. She had to come back later when she was more prepared.

Finally, at 10:30, after I had chugged 10 ounces of the icky orange soda, and sat in a sugar –induced coma for an hour, a very rude woman stabbed me, took my blood and sent me on my way.

If, by some strange twist of fate, I failed this one-hour test, I have to go back for what one of my recently pregnant co-workers dubbed the "three-hour tour." All the same routine only they make you sit there, starving and high on sugar for THREE hours. What other pregnancy torture is in store for me? Stay tuned…