Sticking it to the Pregnant Chick

For those of you who don’t know, about halfway through your pregnancy the docs start checking you for gestational Diabetes. I had actually had an even earlier test because I was high-risk, and it was negative. But when it came time for my actual test, I was borderline.

I begged to retake the test, but my regular OB was out on maternity leave and try as I might to explain OVER and OVER that I had just come from 2 weeks in Cape Cod and had not exactly been sticking to a reasonable diet, they sent me in for the fasting glucose test. Which, under normal circumstances, is not fun. You chug this horrible sugar drink and sit there and let it work its magic until you feel like you may pass out and then they draw your blood every hour.

Now, when you factor in that I was 6 months pregnant and not allowed to eat for 8 hours before the test and three hours during, you’ve got one hell of a cranky fat chick on your hands, I’m just saying.

So the people who check me in are SOOOOO nice! They say they’re so sorry I have to suffer, but it will be done soon. They offer me water and show me where to sit to get the best wireless signal (because no way was I taking freaking PTO for this!) and tell me to just go on back when my hour is up.

So I go back for my first blood draw and this woman is sitting there with a sour face. Right off the bat, she’s just kind of unnecessarily put out by the fact that I am going to be plaguing her for the next 3 hours. Like I’m having a damn fiesta here trying not to hurl, thanks.

So conversationally I tell her what I told the doctor: that I ate nothing but junk for two weeks! Dude, I even had a sundae for dinner…and finished the evening off with ice cream cake. I’m positive I’m not Diabetic, I tell her. I’m just a hormonally effed up pig! I had my dad test me three days ago and I was low!

Look, I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe a little sympathy? Even just a “we’ll see, just relax.” Instead she sighs and goes “you might as well face it, you’re Diabetic.”

WHAT? You haven’t so much as opened the damn syringe!

So I’m already put out because you know what? You work in a maternity ward, you should be used to hungry whiny pregnant chicks. I’m not the first, I won’t be the last. Have some damn bedside manner if you’re not going to have pity!

Then to further make me LOATHE her with the fire of 1,000 suns, she refuses to listen to me on something I am actually pretty medically accurate on. I don’t know what the official medical term is, but I’ve got sucky veins. I’ve never come out of a blood draw without looking like I’ve gone a few rounds with a prizefighter. The constant misfires and mistakes have made me pretty good at pointing out to the lab techs where they might find a good vein.

And, as I told Little Miss Stormy Cloud, you ain’t gonna find one in my right arm. She sighs at me and says “I can’t very well take 4 blood draws from one arm, I have to do two and two.” I sigh right back at her “you can try, but you’ll be lucky to get one from the right arm.”

She purses her sour little lemon face and proceeds to STAB THE CRAP OUT OF MY RIGHT ARM and then has the guts to say to me “gee, this vein probably won’t even have enough for one draw.” Did I not…I mean, were we having the same conversation????

So as I am cursing her name and about to go total snob and ask for a new lab tech, I happen to glance up at the cabinets above her work space and I see her sour lemon face next to a ruddy-faced kid HOLDING A RIFLE STANDING BY A DEER CARCASS WITH HIS DAD. Oh but it explains so much! And yet, where the hell but in the freaking country is that considered appropriate office décor??

Incidentally, days later after I’d gone through a tube of concealer trying to cover the bruises that bizzo left, she called me to tell me I DIDN’T HAVE DIABETES, AFTER ALL. Suck it, Bambi Killer, tell your story walking!

And then a week later when I was finally cleared to get the swine flu shot, who should walk in but Deer Carcass Mom?? I looked at Scott pleadingly, but there was nothing he could do and I admit I was a teensy bit sarcastic when I said “probably best to do the left side this time,” and mayyyybe I pointed at the still visible bruises on my right? I can’t be sure, those were trying times. But there was no mistaking that shot went in a LOT harder than it had to.