I have no idea what this means, and I won’t until tomorrow when I meet with the doctor again.
I had a 5-hour blood glucose test perscribed for today (well, a 4-hour test, but I’ll get to that later.) I went to the doctor earlier in the month for a general checkup, and I talked to him about fatigue. 'Cause I have it in spades. He asked me about diet and exercise, which I’m not exactly excelling at, and a bunch of other things, including testosterone level and whether I have night sweats (which I’ve excelled at as long as I can remember.) My maternal grandmother is diabetic, and my mother (who is bizarrely public about some aspects of her health and silent on others) may, to the best of my knowledge, be diabetic or pre-diabetic. So the doc orders this blood glucose test.
I had to fast about 14 hours prior to the test, so I was good and hungry when the test started.
The first thing they did was prick my finger and measure a drop of my blood on a digital glucose meter thingy. The number was apparently about what they expected. Then the technician handed me a 16-oz bottle of straberry-flavored liquid glurge, and said I need to drink it all within five minutes or the whole test is off. Let me say that after the first sip I almost called off the test, and we’ll leave it at that. I wouldn’t have anything else to eat or drink, not even water, until the end of the test.
Half an hour later, another skin prick and reading, and my numbers were in the ballpark of 240-ish (whatever this means). They had me pee in a cup because the numbers were so high (“to be sure the sugar isn’t spilling over into the urine”).
Another half hour later, and another skin prick and reading, and another peeing-in-the-cup thing, this time with a significantly drier bladder. By this time the sugar high is wearing off and I’m starting to get a little light-headed.
The skin prick happens only once an hour after this. For the second hour I read, but in the third hour I just crashed. I was sleeping hard enough that when the technician woke me for the next test, I was disoriented and feeling slightly fuzzy. The blood test numbers were coming down, though, which I’m told is a good thing. I slept again through the fourth hour, and the test after that showed my numbers in the neighborhood of 115.
Based on what little I understand about blood sugar, this is generally a good test result.
Then the nurse said that the doctor has seen enough, and I can go home now, but I need to come by the next morning to talk about the results. This is the part that has me a little freaked out. The last blood test I had here, they sent me the results in a flyer in the mail. After today’s test, I need to visit with the doctor the very next day to go over the results. It’s not like this doctor has ample free time; appointments are usually made weeks if not a month in advance. And the nurse and the technician were vague and coy when I probed about the results.
Let me be absolutely clear: I’m not asking for medical advice. I suppose I am asking for questions I should ask tomorrow. Should I even worry? I’m fighting a savage headache at the moment, so I’m not sure if I’m overreacting, but I’m definitely curious.
