Thursday, February 19, 2009

Getting Through the Mid-Day Slump

MMMmmmmmMMMMmmmm...
Image Courtesy of: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I know a lot of you out there self-medicate like me with chocolate, sweets, coffee, tea or even cigarettes to get you through the mid-day slump. Thankfully I don't smoke!

Today I can't have any caffeine, so I'm going crazy. I'll be the first one to admit that I have a caffeine problem. It's how I live my life and without it I feel completely lost. I'm really having a hard time keeping my eye balls open! haha But I must persevere. Normally at this time, depending upon what time I woke up, I would have a small cup of tea or coffee. Then at around 4PM, I lay down for about 45 minutes and then force myself to get up.

I thought well I could make something tasty to eat, but there is nothing exciting in our house at the moment. With both of us being sick for a week with the flu, a lot of our produce went bad! Our refrigerator was soo stinky once my sense of smell came back. I had to throw out a lot of food, so now we are really really low.

The place where I normally have my blood work done at, were unable to draw the IGF-1. So...I had to go to the hospital to get it done. /sigh They are doing a lot of construction up there, so the lab has been "closed". I showed up there and saw a lot of people considering it was "closed". The lady there, although she was very very nice, she obviously doesn't deal with many patients with small veins. I told her you have to tighten the band as tight as possible making it pinch my skin. She just kept telling me that that's not how they are trained and that she is not allowed to keep the band on longer than 1 minute. She kept saying the words patient comfort blah blah blah. I just kept telling her it won't work because my veins are small and in the end you'll make me uncomfortable with all the jabs.

Well after 2 jabs she tells me that they are trained not to jab more than twice and to make the 2nd one work. After 2 jabs patient comfort goes way down...No crap! During all of this, she randomly says to me, "How are you doing?" and in a tiny, high pitched voice, I let out a "OK".

To get all 4 vials, I was squeezing my fist as tight as possible and I convinced her to leave the band on. Thank goodness. The last vial took a long time to fill and we only needed 4. I've gone in to those places needing 9 vials with no problems at all. Obviously her following the rules didn't work out too well with me. It took her breaking them to get the blood out of me.

Sadly, I'm probably going to have to see her to get the renin and ACTH drawn. I still have to call the lab to see if they can do those in the outpatient center. My God, I hope so. I can't stand going to the hospital and that lady really was not that good. The women at the outpatient center are incredible. I haven't had a bad experience yet...Though I shouldn't speak too soon.

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