Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Urine Luck

The other day, in an attempt to get a diagnosis for my unruly neck lump that I'm pretty sure is growing by the second, I was sent for labwork.
Now, I know plenty of people who are afraid of needles, or can't abide the sight of blood. I'm not like them, and have tattoos and donate blood regularly. Bring the needles on, but stay the hell away from me with your Band Aids or medical tape.
For some reason, I have a completely irrational fear of the sticky stuff Band Aids are made of. Possibly because I spent some time in a cancer ward where nurses covered me with Band Aids many times a day. Having them removed for more injections was sheer torture, and truly my only clear memory of what was an otherwise hazy couple of weeks spent mostly unconscious. For real, the spinal tap was barely a blip on my radar, but the incessant pulling off of bandaids? Terrifying.
Possibly the fear is simply because I'm insane and have odd phobias completely unrelated to reality.
Either way, I typically dread having labwork for the sole reason of not wanting tape or a Band Aid after the blood draw. This lab, however, used some sort of magical non-sticky wrap to hold the little gauze square in place, and suddenly I knew which lab I'd be using for the rest of my life.
The part of the testing that tripped me up this time was the urine sample.
Not like I don't know how to pee- after all, I've been doing it since birth, and I even needed to, so actually giving a sample wasn't the problem.
The issue is knowing how much of a sample to give.
This seems like way too much.
Too much and I look over eager and like I can't control my bladder or urine stream or whatever the lab technicians are judging me on based solely on the amount of urine in the little cup. Too little and I look like a weakling who can't even give a proper sample. Besides, I have no idea how much urine a lab actually needs to do whatever it is labs do with urine.
How embarrassing would it be to be called in again simply because you didn't give them enough pee? Like you're the dim-witted child who can't follow simple instruction and are incapable of getting something as basic as peeing in a cup done properly.
What would be super handy is a line on the cup. Or actually, two lines. One for the bare minimum required to perform the test, and another that means "anything over this is overkill and looks like you're trying too hard."
Really, I wonder why no one has thought of this before, because I'm quite sure I'm not the only person who has ever dumped out half of their sample because they were sure it was simply too much.
Of course, then you run the risk of dumping out too much and needing to provide more and being unable to.
You see the problem with the current system?
This following unclear directions is exhausting and completely bananas. I need to be told precisely what to do and how to do it, usually eleventy dozen times. Unless, of course, it's written down, like a mark on a cup. Then it's just a few dozen times.

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