Labs, labs and More Labs

In my life, I have fainted more times than I can even count, no exaggeration at least 20 times, if not more.  I faint at the sight of blood, so giving blood has always proven difficult.  So of course, because life has a funny sense of humor sometimes, when you live with infertility you give a lot of blood and you do it often.  So as we gear up for round 2, that means more blood work.

Here are my tips for giving blood to make it as easy as possible:
1 - Drink lots of water before you go. This makes your veins bigger and easier to find.
2 - If you are a fainter like me, insist on laying down.  Not all facilities have a place to lay down so call ahead if you need that.  I give blood at a LabCorp and I drive to one further away, but that has a bed for me to lay down on.
3 - Tell the phlebotomist up front that you are a fainter, or that you don't want to watch, or whatever your concerns are and be stern and strict with them.  A lot of them just shine me one and I have to tell them how serious I am.
4 - Bring water or something to drink immediately afterwards.

 Once I learned these tricks it made my life so much easier and its been about 2 years now since I last fainted, and that was only because my IV came out and it was a seriously gross situation.

Now on to the latest round of test.  Below is my initial set of labs to just get a starting off point of where my hormone levels are and iron and a few other key vitamins.  I also did my latest STD testing to bring it all current.  All these tests meant 7 vials of blood.  And I survived just fine.  Just waiting to get the results back.


Tests Ordered
004259 TSH      
010389 Free T3      
001974 Free T4      
006684 Thyroid antibodies      
070104 Reverse T3      
004465 Prolactin      
322744 Hepatitis Panel (4)      
083935 Panel 083935      
012005 RPR, Rfx Qn RPR/Confirm TP      
001321 Iron/TIBC      
004598 Ferritin      
005009 CBC w/diff & PLT      
081950 Vitamin D25-OH      
005215 Sed rate      
001503 Vitamin B12

Thanks for Reading,
HEATHER