Finally, the two hours of waiting in the lobby were over, and I got to go back into an exam room and get poked again for some more blood work. Then I headed home and ate a big lunch. I spent the rest of the day as I usually do, catching up with work, taking care of my family, and trying hard to remain positive about my test results.
The friendly phlebotomist said it would probably be a few days before I got the call from my doctor’s office, so I knew I had to be patient, which is not one of my virtues when it comes to waiting for the phone to ring.
To keep busy, I continued researching diabetes online and talking with friends who either have the condition or are married to someone who does. I learned through my reading that my blood samples would be tested to find out what my fasting blood sugar level was, as well as two hours after drinking the orange pop. And of course, different numbers would indicate different things.
For example, upon rising in the morning, ideally you want your blood sugar to be between 70 and 99. If it’s 100 to 125 you would be considered to have an “impaired fasting glucose” or to be “pre-diabetic” and if it’s above 126 on more than one occasion you would probably be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
After drinking the pop, the numbers get to be a bit higher. In a perfect world, my results would be less than 140. This reading would mean that my system dealt with the massive amount of sugar really well, and cleared most of it out as it’s supposed to. An “impaired glucose tolerance” or pre-diabetic reading would be between 140 and 200, and anything 200 and up would be considered type 2 diabetes.
I probably don’t need to tell you that I was really hoping to hear, say, an 85 or so for the fasting reading and maybe a 135 for the 2-hour results.
Heck, the way I was feeling, I’d even take a pre-diabetic result of 160 or something. I was literally praying every hour that I wouldn’t be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. But I had this awful feeling that at least one of the results would be in the diabetic range, and that my weight and lack of taking proper care of myself had come back to bite me in the proverbial patoot.