I have been ill for the past six weeks or so. It started with waves of nausea, followed by long periods of weakness, shakiness, lightheadedness, and dizziness. It would go away for a few days only to return back to torment me for a few days in a row. The nausea eventually left for the most part a few weeks ago, but the rest has stuck around. This is one of the primary reason I have not been doing any writing around here lately, as it's hard to concentrate on writing when all you want to do is lay in bed and eat crackers.

Those who know me well know of my intense dislike of doctor's offices and hospitals and, well, medical-type places in general. So, it should come as no surprise that it took a few weeks of this to push me into going to the doctor. The doctor told me what I had suspected, that a virus or bacterial infection would not have stuck around for that long. He suggested it might be hypoglycemia or possibly even diabetes. A nurse entered the room and drew some blood, the first time I have had to do that.

The test results came back as a good news/bad news situation: the good news, my blood test came back pretty clean with the only anomalies being a slightly elevated blood sugar level and a slightly high triglyceride count; the bad news, that meant it wouldn't be that easy to figure out what was wrong with me. I was asked to come in for a Glucose Tolerance Test. It takes four hours to administer the test, so I made an appointment for the first day that I could get off from work. That day was yesterday.

I went in at 7:45, having fasted since 8:00 the previous evening. The nurse made me go and give a urine sample and then come back to the lab to get stuck the first time. That finished, I was given a glucose drink, and told to drink it in the next five minutes.

About the glucose drink: imagine someone, some sick person, made orange kool-aid with several extra packets of drink mix and several extra cups of sugar and then served it lukewarm. Or imagine drinking the syrup that people use on sno-cones at room temperature. Drinking all 10oz. of the beverage in five minutes proved to be more than a little difficult.

Over the next four hours I went back for five more rounds of urine samples followed by the drawing of blood. After each round I went back to one of the exam rooms and laid on an exam table, listening the audiobook version of "Sideways" to pass the time. The drawing of blood was painful and left the swelling and bruises and tracks you see in the image above. The urine samples were bad in their own way, as it is hard to walk down a hall, a hall through which attractive women occasionally pass, while carrying a cup of your own pee.

I will meet with the doc sometime next week to get the results of the test. Part of me hopes some answer comes of this, as I do not wish to go through some other round of tests. In the meantime, I am actually pleased with myself for being able to sit in a doctor's office for four and a half hours and get stuck with large needles many times without going crazy.