Week 26: Sweet!

So, yesterday I took my doctor's latest orders to the hospital to do a bunch of testing. One of the things I was not looking forward to was the gestational diabetes glucose test. I had heard you could pass out or get sick, and seeing as though I come from a long line of diabetics and hypoglycemics (and feel hypoglycemic half the time though I've never been tested) I was expecting the worst. As we pulled into the hospital, I told Cristiano "Just watch. As always, there will be some 'problem' preventing us from doing these tests." Getting pregnancy care here has been a big bureaucratic nightmare/scavenger hunt that requires me to bounce back and forth from my gynecologist's (who tells me which tests I need to do) to my primary care physician (who is the only one who can write up the referrals and who has no phone and keeps bizarre office hours) to the various hospitals and clinics that offer the tests. Every time I go to do a test in the hospital with the "official doctor's orders," they find some niggling problem or detail that has been left off (such as, the "u" in my last name looks too much like an "i" and therefore doesn't match my health card) and thus refuse to do the test.

Anyway, this time I had resigned myself to having one of these problems and having gotten my butt out of bed before 8 a.m. on a Saturday for no good reason. Sure enough as I got up to the front of the huge line, I was told "It's 8:30 a.m. You should have begun the glucose testing by 8 a.m." I asked why. "Well, signora, you will vomit if you drink glucose after 8 a.m." I explained that neither my doctor nor my gynecologist had explained this "hard-and-fast" rule of glucose testing. I begged the woman to let me in, explaining that I work during the week and did not have four hours to spare on Monday to sit around drinking glucose in their hospital. She went to check with the technician and said "OK, but know better for next time. I really hope you don't vomit." I was shocked that she let me in as there are usually "no exceptions to the rules" when it comes to these kinds of ridiculous things (of course, Italians find lots of excuses for breaking many other laws or disregarding other rules but when it comes to a "u" that looks like an "i" or drinking glucose 30 minutes too late, they become sticklers).

My initial blood sugar level reading (before drinking anything) was 84, which apparently is perfectly healthy and normal. I drank the first dose of glucose, which was pretty gross but sweetness-wise (and I HATE sweet things in the morning especially on an empty stomach), it wasn't as bad as I expected. Cristiano had originally planned on leaving me there with my newspaper and stack of magazines so he could go run to the electronics store down the street and look at nerdy computer stuff. But because the woman had so freaked us out about how I might react to glucose "after 8 a.m.," he decided to stick around. Good guy! I sat there and sat there waiting to vomit and reading my newspaper. It never happened. In fact, I didn't really feel much of anything except the effects of not having had any breakfast. No vomiting. No shakiness. No passing out. I guess you can take the test after 8 a.m. and survive! I get the results this coming Friday.