No Time for Healthcare

If you are like me, your primary source of health care is a combination of your OB and the kind physicians at your nearest urgent care center.  In my adult life, I have never had a primary care physician and am often embarrassed when I am asked to provide his or her contact information and either fill in contact information for my midwife (who is the person at my OB's office who actually takes care of me) or write N/A.  Recently, we have had several serious health care situations in my family that have give me cause to rethink my current keep well strategy.  I even took the time to Google local physicians with the firm plan to make an appointment to get a physical.  Since my last physical was about eight years ago and the result of my insurance company threatening to cancel my life insurance if I didn't make and keep an appointment, I thought, I should really get the works and make sure that all is as it should be for an almost forty super sleep deprived mother of five.  Whatever that baseline set of test results looks like.  The problem was that you have to fast for eight hours prior to the appointment.  For me, that means that I would have to forgo my morning rung (which requires that I eat something before hitting the road), in favor of a physical.  It was a pretty hard bargain as my run is the only thing that allows me to go into the day with any semblance of calm.   As luck would have it, I had to drop by Walgreens yesterday afternoon to pick up a new pack of hair bands for my girls.  At some point I would love to understand where the thousand or so bands I have purchased to date have gone -- separate point.  And found myself in a very interesting aisle which includes a whole host of home health care tests.  It turns out, that if you are willing to spend $200, instead of $20 on a co-pay, you can check for diabetes, cholesterol, colon issues and high blood pressure.  So I walked to the counter with a basket filled with goodies and headed home to read the instructions and take stock of my overall health.  I won't bore you with the details of the colon health test or the diabetes test, but I will tell the story of my cholesterol check.  The cholesterol test requires you to drop "one large droplet of blood" into the test well.  I thought, no problem, I've always been a good bleeder and have no fear of pain.  This will be a snap.  It turns out that piercing my finger to extract a drop of blood was slightly more challenging than I thought it would be.  I flinched.  I flinched again.  I called my husband in for assistance.  I chickened out.  Later that day, I was pulling paper off of my printer when I accidentally sliced open my finger.  I thought -- fantastic, I've got a little blood.  I'm off to run the test.  After smearing blood all over the well, I became concerned that I hadn't submitted a full droplet.  So I bravely tore open the lancet and poked my finger.  I hung my arm.  I squeezed.  The blood started to flow, but my aim stunk so once again, there was a smear of blood over the well, blood on my shirt, my cuffs and all of my fingers, but not a whole lot in the test area.  Alex came into the room right about then and said, "Mommy how did you cut all of your fingers?"  I decided to take my chances and run the test.  10 minutes later I read the result.  My cholesterol count was too low to read. My husband was peering over my shoulder looking at the results. He chuckled as he left the room mumbling something about me being crazy.   Hats off to the investors of the Cholestrak.  It appears to be utterly useless, but did provoke one user to find the time to get her cholesterol level checked using a professional lab and a full vial of blood.