The 3-hour test

By kate on December 21st, 2005

I went for the gestational diabetes test today, although I don’t get the results until tomorrow.

I had to fast for 12 hours beforehand, so I arrived hungry and had to drink a small beverage (~12 oz.) containing a HUNDRED grams of sugar* within 5 minutes. It was rather sweet. I wondered if feeding me spoonfuls of sugar might have been more efficient.

Then, I got my arm poked with a needle four times (once every hour for 3 hours) to test how well my body processed the sugar. The blood draw took less than 5 minutes per time, leaving about 50 minutes to wait in between. Luckily, Steve came with me so we had fun stepping out to a different place each hour.

First, Burgermaster for Steve’s breakfast (having just consumed so much sugar, I wasn’t hungry… not that I could have eaten anyway). The second hour we spent at Tully’s, using a laptop (Steve) and reading the paper (me). During the final hour, we walked around some of the children’s stores in the area and looked at things like strollers and toys.

After the last needle poke, I dropped Steve off at home and headed to work, where I had a most welcome sandwich for lunch.

For comparison, a 12-oz can of Coke contains 39g of sugar and has 140 calories. That means the calorie content of my glucose-laden breakfast drink was 359 calories!