5 hours at a lab on a Sunday morning
The meeting with the gynaecologist last week saw me spending a woefully boring 5 hours at a diagnostic lab to get blood and urine tests done. The event started at 7.30am and is called the GTT tests i.e, Glucose Tolerance Tests. First, I was tested for fasting blood sugar and then no breakfast but a glass of 100 gms glucose packet dissolved into a glass of water. It was...yuck! I don't remember going through this test during the first pregnancy and therefore found it awful.
The people at the lab were friendly, atleast that was a pleasant experience. I had already been told by the doc that I would be spending a lot of time and should carry a book. I took Shantaram with me but hardly went beyond 10 pages as I felt dizzy and fainted. Apparently, the sugar level must have gone up because of that horrible glucose drink.
I then recovered and asked the lab for a place to lie down and just spent the next 3 hours lying down while the lab assistants woke me up every hour, jabbed by skin and drew blood. In the little time that I was awake, I noticed that the people who were streaming in (and there were scores of them. Never knew blood and urine tests were so popular!) had a kind of sad look on their faces. Obviously you might say, no one can be happy if their doctor has advised lab tests but not even a sort of smile? Maybe, just maybe, we don't believe in being friendly in labs. But on trains and buses, we might get chatty, coz we are relaxed...
Also noticed that most elderly either come alone or have their spouses.Very few come with their children. Could be that the children are away? When my mom had to undergo tests, I insisted on being with her and my husband thought it wasn't my duty but my brother's. Okay, who's worse? The husband for his thinking or the brother who doesn't bother? Oh, it doesn't matter, to each his own.
Anyways, the tests finally got over around 11am and I breathed a sigh of relief. I had already received quite a few kicks in the womb for having stayed hungry for so long. And I wanted out of that claustrophobic environment.
But the business of testing blood and urine seems good. All you need is the right people and equipment and tie-up with all sorts of doctors and you can be assured of atleast 200 people walking into your lab daily. And the average cost of tests is around Rs.500 per person. Wow! Good money! Maybe I should've paid more attention to science in school...??
The people at the lab were friendly, atleast that was a pleasant experience. I had already been told by the doc that I would be spending a lot of time and should carry a book. I took Shantaram with me but hardly went beyond 10 pages as I felt dizzy and fainted. Apparently, the sugar level must have gone up because of that horrible glucose drink.
I then recovered and asked the lab for a place to lie down and just spent the next 3 hours lying down while the lab assistants woke me up every hour, jabbed by skin and drew blood. In the little time that I was awake, I noticed that the people who were streaming in (and there were scores of them. Never knew blood and urine tests were so popular!) had a kind of sad look on their faces. Obviously you might say, no one can be happy if their doctor has advised lab tests but not even a sort of smile? Maybe, just maybe, we don't believe in being friendly in labs. But on trains and buses, we might get chatty, coz we are relaxed...
Also noticed that most elderly either come alone or have their spouses.Very few come with their children. Could be that the children are away? When my mom had to undergo tests, I insisted on being with her and my husband thought it wasn't my duty but my brother's. Okay, who's worse? The husband for his thinking or the brother who doesn't bother? Oh, it doesn't matter, to each his own.
Anyways, the tests finally got over around 11am and I breathed a sigh of relief. I had already received quite a few kicks in the womb for having stayed hungry for so long. And I wanted out of that claustrophobic environment.
But the business of testing blood and urine seems good. All you need is the right people and equipment and tie-up with all sorts of doctors and you can be assured of atleast 200 people walking into your lab daily. And the average cost of tests is around Rs.500 per person. Wow! Good money! Maybe I should've paid more attention to science in school...??
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