On Monday, I certainly didn’t expect to spend four days this week doing medical stuff!
On Tuesday I went to my GP to ask for a lactose tolerance test, as Tamara says I am unusually gassy lol. The doctor ordered both a celiac test and a lactose tolerance test. But they had never done one at that office before, and they didn’t really read the instructions on how to do it.
The doctor’s office drew six vials of blood– 5 for the lactose test and one for the celiac test. When I was arriving in the driveway at home, they called and said they had not understood how to give the test, and I had to drink something and get 5 blood draws over the course of two hours. So they said to go to LabCorp the next day to do the test.
So Wednesday morning, I woke up early and didn’t eat breakfast to go get my test. I didn’t bring Felix because he doesn’t enjoy blood draws, and I knew I’d be wanting to play on my phone, and he doesn’t like being in my lap while I’m playing on my phone. I figured it’d just be two hours of mostly sitting there with low stress, so I didn’t need him.
Unfortunately, I didn’t count on the incompetence (if you think this is strong language, keep reading!) of the LabCorp techs. They called me back to do the test and had no idea how to do it. I had looked up the instructions (the same ones they had on their computer) the night before and understood them in 5 minutes. It took them 45 minutes, and multiple explanations by me of how to do the test. They didn’t know what solution to give me to drink, and they could NOT understand what intervals to test at.
The instructions said to have me drink the solution, then take samples at 30 min, 60 min, 90 min, and 120 min (and a fasting sample before the test). They insisted I should be tested after 30 min, then wait an hour for the next test, then wait an hour and a half for the next test, etc. Finally I convinced them to do the sampling the right way.
They gave me a drink, I drank it, and did the whole two hour test. With all the time they spent trying to figure out how to do the danged test, I was there three hours.
Just as I was pulling in the driveway home afterwards, they called me and told me they had given me the wrong solution to drink! They said come back the next day to do the test again……
My veins were already in bad shape what with a big blood draw on Tuesday and 5 blood draws (all from the same two veins) on Wednesday. But I really just wanted to get this over with.
Tamara came with me on Thursday because she wanted to be able to speak up for me if there was a problem. This time I double checked the solution! They again had problems understanding how often to sample (Tam and I both had to speak up about that!). They also had numerous problems with other patients, forgetting to do tests, forgetting they’d already taken blood from some people, they called the same guy back three times, etc. It was terrible. But I got the test done! My two veins that they used for all 11 samples between Tuesday and Thursday were all bruised and painful.
Keep in mind that I had to fast for the tests on Wednesday and Thursday. I had to fast again on Friday!
I had a HIDA scan of my gallbladder at a local hospital this morning (Friday)! Tam came with me again, thank goodness. They needed to give me an IV but the veins in my arms were shot. So I asked them to do it in my hand. The one tech tried, and blew out a vein. She also got blood ALL over my dress.
So the other tech did it in my other hand. He did it great. They injected me with radioactivity and other stuff to make my gallbladder contract, and I had to lie there for an hour and a half while they took pictures of my gallbladder.
Tam got some pictures of that scan taking place. I was just SO happy to be done with medical stuff for the week!
We decided to celebrate by going out to lunch at McAlister’s with a gift card my brother in law got my for Christmas. We had a really tasty lunch and a great time talking!
Oh and my results for the celiac and lactose testing came back. It’s normal for my celiac, and my lactose testing was inconclusive. A test result of 30 or more is good for lactose tolerance. A result of 20 or less means you are lactose intolerant. So 20-30 is inconclusive. My test result was 22. I’m guessing that means I am mildly lactose intolerant, so when I eat or drink a lot of dairy, I will take a lactaid pill.
I also just checked and my HIDA scan came back normal, too. So no idea what is causing my nausea. So this has been one interesting and bloody bad medical week. I’m looking forward to a week of snow days starting tomorrow, with lots of Farkle and Mexican Train Dominoes and fun times with my family of three.
