A three hour tour....a three hour tour...

Wow. That picture turned out way teenier than I thought it would. Sorry 'bout tha', as Hagrid would say. For those of you without a magnifying glass, that's the cast of the show, Gilligan's Island. I was a Nick at Nite junkie as a teen. I know the whole Gilligan's Island song.

I had my one-hour gestational diabetes test on Monday, and may I just say how much those finger prick things hurt? Owwwwwwww. I'd rather have blood drawn out of the crook of my elbow than do those finger pricks. Those mothers HURT. So anyways, I flunked the one-hour test by two measly points. Sheesh. So they signed me up to do my three-hour test this morning.

Which is where I come to the "three hour tour" part. Whenever I talked to Ben about my upcoming three-hour test, he'd start singing that part of the Gilligan's Island theme song, but sing, "A three hour test...a three hour test..." He's pretty cute.

So. I had to fast for ten hours before my appointment, which was super-fun. I was allowed to drink water, but not Gatorade, which meant that, as I lay there from 11:30 p.m. until I fell asleep at 4:30 a.m. (Restless Legs Syndrome is something that people who go to Hell will have. I'm certain of it. It makes you want to just DIE), I was soooo nauseated. I barfed at one in the morning, which made me feel a little bit better. The Gatorade really helps with the nausea, so I was suffering without it. It's my crutch. My binkie. My blankie.

Then Sadie woke me up at 6 a.m., and I barfed again. Why is it that she is waking up so dang early, now that school is out? So wrong. So very, very wrong. And then I lay there while she watched Cartoon Network until it was time to go. My lovely mom watched my kids. The woman is a saint. One of my old friends was asking what my mom does, now that all of her kids are out of the house. I said, quite sheepishly, "Welllll, she helps my sister and I a lot." It's seriously all she does. I feel really badly about that. I try not to ask her to watch my kids too much. But it's been kind of a medical necessity during this pregnancy.

So I check in at eight, the phlebotomist (who has a sweet White Snake-era mullet) takes my blood, and then I'm led into this big room. She asks what kind of super-sweet flavor I want in my super-sweet drink, and I choose orange. Then she came back to take my blood three more times, every hour. I found out later that this big room is the catch-all of everyone that is taking any kind of insulin resistance or diabetes test this morning. We were all thrown into this room together. They had a TV that was maybe one foot by one foot big, and no magazines. I thanked my lucky stars that I brought my book. I settled down to read by myself for the next three hours.

I hardly touched my book.

Because these people would not stop talking to me!!! People from all walks of life. There was Lady Who Was Doing Her Personal Progress Again. Lady Who is My Age and is Married to a Sixty-One-Year-Old Man. Soon-to-be Eighth Grader Boy. Really Cute, Skinny, Tan Fifty-Year-Old Lady. And my favorite of all, Probably High on Drugs and They Couldn't Find Veins in Her Lady.

Really Cute, Skinny, Tan Fifty-Year-Old Lady was watching the Today show and asking me if I knew this celebrity gossip or that celebrity gossip. I knew most of it. I am an avid People Magazine reader. I can't remember why she was there. But I remember she has thyroid disease. It must be hyperthyroidism. Because she was really skinny. She was outta there in just two hours, the lucky stiff.

Lady Who is My Age and is Married to a Sixty-One-Year-Old Man was really quite sweet. She has Multiple Sclerosis, and her doc wants to see if her difficult episodes are due to some kind of insulin resistance or diabetes. She is scared to have kids, because she knows her health will deteriorate. She doesn't think it will be fair to her child. She and her husband live with her extremely elderly mother-in-law, who thinks she is lazy, but she's not. It's just that her husband has OCD and doesn't like how she cleans or cooks. He insists on doing everything, so that it's done the right way. He's on drugs now, and he seems to be doing a little better with the OCD thing. She was outta there in 2 1/2 hours.

Lady Who Was Doing Her Personal Progress Again was very, very quiet. Her scriptures were really weird-looking. The extremely chatty people in this room couldn't take her from her goal of doing Personal Progress. She was outta there in 2 hours. I'm not sure why she was there. She wasn't in a sharing mood.

Soon-to-be-Eighth Grader Boy was just adorable. Not sure why he was there, but he wouldn't bend his elbow. The White Snake phlebotemist kept telling him to bend his arm. Let me explain. At this place, instead of putting a needle into you four different times, she put this little device in the crooks of our elbows where she could just come get blood out of us every hour without sticking us over and over. Admittedly, the thingey hurt. It hurt me to bend my elbow, for sure. White Snake phlebotomist kept telling Eighth Grader that his thingey was clotting because he wasn't moving his arm around enough. She would tell him to bend his arm, and he would just kind of keep it straight, but move it in circles. He was adorable. He played his Nintendo DS the whole time. Straight-armed. He was outta there in 2 1/2 hours.

Probably High on Drugs and They Couldn't Find Veins in Her Lady. Oh, my. What a piece of work. She was on a mission to keep everyone centered on her. As we watched the Regis and Kelly show, Christina Aguilera came on to perform a new song. High (that's what I'll call her for short) snorted loudly when Christina came on. "OH MY GOSH, CAN YOU SEE WHAT SHE'S WEARING??? WHAT A SLUT!!" Everything High said was in a shout. At one point, Christina was talking about her toddler son, and High said, "SEE? A TOTAL SLUT. WHO KNOWS THE FATHER OF THE BABY." Me, being a People Magazine conneisseur, said, "Actually, the dad is her husband."

"REALLY? WHO IS HER HUSBAND?"

"Some record executive."

"WELL, SHE PROBABLY GOT PREGNANT BEFORE GETTING MARRIED. THEY PROBABLY HAD TO GET MARRIED."

"Nope. They were married long before she had the baby."

"OH."

So then Christina starts singing, and High snorts loudly again. "SHE IS SUCH A SLUT. LOOK AT HER DANCING. HER VOICE IS SO CRAPPY. I THINK SHE HAS THE CRAPPIEST VOICE I HAVE EVER HEARD."

On and on about Christina Aguilera. Whatever. I tried to open my book for the twentieth time, but was forced to close it when High decided to sit right next to me. She had bright green bandages all over her, from all the failed attempts to find veins in her arms. Every now and then, she would yell to Eighth Grader to bend his arms. He would swing his arm around, straight as can be. At one point, High actually goes over to Eighth Grader and wrestles him down and makes him bend his arm. I just sat there like, Um, have you ever heard of personal space, High?? It's his funeral if his blood keeps clotting and he has to get re-stuck with a needle every time. Poor kid. He was very uncomfortable with that situation. As I would have been.

So High has some kind of stomach problems. She's been hospitalized a lot. The doctors don't know why her stomach always hurts. And she hasn't been getting her period since she had her son. So her gynie sent her to see if she had insulin resistance or diabetes. She was going to see her gynie later this afternoon. She asked if I wanted to see her son. Sure, I said. She showed me a picture on her phone. He's cute. I ask how old he is. Two, she says. She's not married to the father, and she lost parental rights soon after her son was born. She didn't elaborate on why she lost parental rights. I think her folks are raising him. I laughed within myself, thinking, "Why is she being so harsh on her false ideas about Christina Aguilera, when she herself had a kid out of wedlock?" High has the nastiest toenails I have ever seen. She needs a good scrub brush. And a nail clipper. And a shower. Her hair is really greasy. She used to be a track star in high school. She is pretty heavy now. High got out of there even before I did. I was the final gal to go. High couldn't find a ride home. She was sitting in the foyer when I finally waddled out of there. She wished me luck on my baby. I wished her luck on her stomach stuff and her period stuff.

I'm excited that I didn't barf the drink up, though I wanted to. I guess I was distracted enough by my strange new friends. I came home and had lunch and still just felt sick as a dog, all day long. I went to Ben's work to drop off our hot glue gun for a presentation he was making tonight, and when I saw his face, I just started bawling. I just felt so sick. I bawled all the way home, and then I felt much better. Emotionally. Not physically. I still feel like I might ralph soon. I find out the results of my three-hour tour tomorrow morning. Wish me luck. I'm not wanting to add Gestational Diabetes to my long list of problems in this pregnancy.