The 3 hour Glucose Tolerance Test

The dilemma I had when I was told to do this 3-hour nightmarish glucose tolerance test was that I am on Metformin for PCOS and you learn quickly with this drug to take it with food only. (Consequences are often messy, sometimes painful, but always unpleasant.)

This test requires that you fast beforehand, so I decided to take the pills about 30 mins before I was given The Drink. I was pretty sure I was going to have hell to pay, but, somehow, I was given a stomach waiver and made it through the day without any of the usual symptoms.

Fasting beforehand: They tell you, "don't eat for 8-12 hours before you're scheduled for the test." So, I chose 8 hours, and I ate mostly protein so I wouldn't starve throughout the whole thing. This worked out fairly well, although, towards the middle I was wondering how much just a small bite of somethin' something' might hurt, and by the end, I was willing to grab that stupid granola bar out of that toddler's hand and run with it. So, protein the night before highly recommended-- would've been way worse without.

Baseline: The first thing they do is draw your blood to get a BSG baseline. It has to be between 60 and 110 to start. So, if you fasted for too long, they may have you eat something small to raise it up to normal limits. If you didn't fast long enough, they may have you wait or return another day. Luckily, I was somewhere within that range, though they didn't tell me where.

I had a student phlebotomist doing the stick on me, but she got it on the first shot despite deep veins. All was well and I just had to wait for a half hour to get the baseline "ok" to begin.

The drink: I had the orange drink, typical of the 3h test. (I'm told the lemon-lime is for the 1h, the fruit punch is for the 2h, and the orange is for the 3h, so there were no choices.) I've done the 1h test before and frankly, I found the lemon-lime refreshing. Very much like flat Sprite and when well chilled, probably would be excellent with a splash of vodka. ANYWAY. Today I got the orange drink which was also served very cold. It was slightly thick, but not soupy and tasted like flat orange soda with a liiiiittle bit too much syrup. The taste was tolerable, though I would not recommend inhaling much during your ingestion. The smell hinted at something dastardly below the surface. But, all in all, no biggie.

The boredom: This is the real killer. My hospital doesn't supply the glucose survivors with recliners or TVs for some reason. Just the usual thinly padded chairs and worn magazines. (But finally, I did get to hear Shannen Doherty's reason for leaving 90210!) I was VERY lucky that a friend of mine offered to come and sit with me for the middle 2.5 hours. I actually am going to say the boredom is probably the one thing that makes this test so bad-- it's not so much having nothing to do as much as having so much time to focus on every...little...symptom that you are having in reaction to the drink. Bring a friend, upload a movie onto your iTouch, load an audiobook onto your iPod, whatever. Distraction is KEY. And if you can conquer the boredom, I'd be willing to say that 90% of you will say this test is no big deal.

The hourly blood draws: I'm a little biased here, because I would 100x over rather have blood draws than finger pricks so I was relieved about this. Given that you have a phlebotomist that is good at what she's doing, this is no biggie unless you're intrinsically afraid of such things. It takes two seconds and then they turn you loose to your own devices again. Unless...

The near-fainting spell: Presumably not everyone will experience this, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't be the type that would. But for some reason, after my 3rd blood draw (out of 4), once the blood draw was over I felt myself getting hot, then nauseus, then dizzy... suddenly my hearing goes muffled and a tech asks me, "are you gonna go out?" It felt like an academic question. "Do I look like I'm going to?" She says, "Yup" and from that point on I was trying to assure the phlebotomist student that this wasn't her fault while trying to convince my body that if I had to react poorly in some way, I'd prefer fainting to vomiting.

They even gave me smelling salts which irritated me because I wasn't passed out yet and all it did was make me whip my head away from it. Meanwhile, my little one is kicking the crap out of me which felt to me like she was aware SOMETHING was going on, and in the meantime I'm laughing and hoping none of this ACTUALLY goes through.

In the end, after being yanked into a horizontal pose, assaulted with smelling salts, dabbed with a cold washcloth, and fanned by a freaked out phlebotomy student for a few mins... I was back to completely normal and tossed back into the waiting room and finished up the series uneventfully. Vomit free is a win for me!

The conclusion: Were it not for the almost-vomiting episode-- I'll call it that 'cause that's the only part of almost passing out that bothered me-- I'd say this test was not nearly as bad as I had imagined. But, given that I did have a friend with me and did require medical attention briefly, I think my experience might have been somewhat atypical.

In short-- if you're well-prepared and willing to be distracted-- you'll do juuuuust fine.Now let's hope I passed this thing after all that. (Although, I'll suspect that I didn't.) I should find out the results today, I hope.

And immediately afterwards begins the 24h urine collection to test for protein thanks to "borderline hypertension". This is, indeed, as much fun as it sounds.