Sunday, September 16, 2012

A Three Hour Tour

Just sit right back and I'll tell you the tale, the tale of a fateful trip.......

With each pregnancy that made it to 27 weeks I've gone in and taken the one hour glucose tolerance test. And, with each of them, I struggled to keep the orange drink down for the full one hour. There was at least one time that I threw up immediately after they took my blood but despite not enjoying the test, I always passed. Except this time. This time I was actually offered my choice of nasty, sugary orange, lemon-lime or fruit punch drink. I opted for fruit punch as I actually sometimes like to drink an orange Fanta and downing an orange glucose drink makes me never want to drink orange soda again. I got it down within the five minute time frame and managed to keep it down until I got to my car a little over an hour later. I found out about two hours later that I hadn't passed. My first reaction was "but I've never failed a test in my entire life." Then, oh wait, there was freshman Latin in high-school that was a huge struggle and perhaps I had actually failed a few of those tests, but nothing in more recent memory. I was disappointed and nervous. It seems silly to feel bad about failing a medical test, it's not as though I didn't do enough to prepare, but that didn't change that I felt as though I need to do something to help me pass the dreaded three-hour test.

And so the googling began. Did you know that some doctors recommend you actually eat a high carb diet in the two to three days before taking the three-hour test? It seemed counter-intuitive but made more sense when I thought about how you are trying to train your body to react quicker to high amounts of carbs (sugar). Well, eating carbs is not really an issue for me so upping my daily amount came pretty easily. The night before the big test the husband and I actually had the night to ourselves as my in-laws took all three kids overnight. We went out to eat at a neat local place, the North Avenue Grill, and then headed to a movie. It was actually hard to find a movie to go see. I'm not sure what is going on, but lately when I look at the list of movies that are out very few seem to speak to me. In the end, we actually ended up seeing a classic - Raiders of the Lost Ark. In keeping with trying to eat more carbs, I loaded up on popcorn, sat back and enjoyed the movie. What I didn't enjoy was waking up at 2:00am and throwing up every.single.thing. I had eaten earlier that night. I also didn't enjoy knowing that I wouldn't be able to eat breakfast in the morning as the glucose tests require you to fast.

I got to the lab right at 8:00am but wasn't called for my fasting blood-draw until 8:30am. After having the blood drawn, I opted for the orange flavored drink. It took everything I had to get it down in five minutes. It was hard enough the first time around but with the three-hour test there is actually twice as much sugar in the drink as there is for the one-hour test. Gross, gross, gross. Then, I sat in the waiting room for an hour playing Temple Run on my Kindle Fire and reading some magazines. At the one hour mark I had blood taken again and then it was back to the waiting room. Rinse and repeat one more time and I was done! The drink made me a little dizzy and a lot nauseous so I was happy once it was over and I stopped for lunch on my way home.

Later that night I received the email with my results and good news - I passed!