If you don’t have to do a glucose tolerance test DON’T.<\/p>\n
I went to one unsuspecting, and the bad part was, that I probably had bad enough fasting blood sugars in a year’s set of tests, to warrant skipping that.<\/p>\n
So I tell people all the time, I “flunked” the glucose tolerance test, and that I didn’t … that is didn’t tolerate glucose.<\/p>\n
And see if you can find a lab that can process the blood immediately. I didn’t get any treatment until the next Monday and even then we didn’t know how bad off I was.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Here’s what happened to me.<\/p>\n
We had a Friday off (teacher staff development which I’d done in the summer), and since the test takes an entire morning (I did the 3 hour version), I did it then. My first mistake? Checking with the blood lab that I usually go to, to make sure that they did glucose tolerance tests on Friday. I’m comfortable with their technician, plus it’s located next to my house.<\/p>\n
So I had to hunt down a lab that would take my insurance and do it that day. The pressure was on, because the lab wouldn’t do any glucose tolerance tests before 9:00 — because it would interfer with the technician’s lunch and break schedules.<\/p>\n
So I DID find a lab and got there 15 minutes before they “closed”. They did a blood draw, handed me a bottle of vile sweet liquid, and I swallowed it down as quick as I could.<\/p>\n
Within 15 minutes, my vision was blurred. I also got more and more angry, though at the time I was attributed it to one of the side trips I took while waiting for blood draws. Oh, and I couldn’t eat breakfast before it started, and the only thing on my stomach was the vile orange liquid. It really was all I could do to keep the stuff down.<\/p>\n
I’d brought several things to read and my notebook computer, but they didn’t do any good, since the vision was gone.<\/p>\n
Yes, even driving was difficult.<\/p>\n
I was also doing a mammagram in the afternoon, and I REALLY feel sorry for those people. I was in a absolute rage from the glucose.<\/p>\n
I got through the weekend, though the vision was still blurred. I probably should have called the doctor. And I was still in a rage. <\/p>\n
Monday morning, I got to school and KNEW I wasn’t going to make it through the day. I called the doctor’s office, and they were calling me. I felt just horrible, and I really couldn’t even express why.<\/p>\n
The good news, is they knew, they had the results from the glucose test. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I had left the place with a blood sugar over 400.<\/p>\n
Doctor immediately put me on glucophlage, but those of us who have gone through diabetes education know that glucophage doesn’t work right away, and that one pill isn’t going to do it. However, the side affects can be so bad with glucophlage, if they give you what you need right away, you won’t tolerate it.<\/p>\n
I scheduled diabetes education right away, which was a good thing, because that’s how I got my first meter. Doctor’s office wasn’t clear on this, though they did ask me which one I wanted. <\/p>\n
During the two days (see the entry on diabetes educators) my blood sugar was never under 350, and at one point hit 500. <\/p>\n
That was again another trouble stop, and worth another entry.<\/p>\n
And the good news? I’m a much better diabetic because I know how bad being too high can be. It did take months to recover from that, but I’m much more controlled, I think, because I did hit such a horrible high.<\/p>\n
So maybe it is a good idea?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Flunking the glucose tolerance test<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[44,52],"class_list":["post-4063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background","tag-diabetes","tag-glucose-tolerance-test"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/diabetes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/diabetes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/diabetes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/diabetes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/diabetes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/diabetes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/diabetes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/diabetes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/diabetes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}