Feb
22
2021
In my previous post I talked about meeting my new family doctor for the first time on the phone. She ordered a full set of blod and urine tests. Today is my appointment day to that clinic where they specialize in taking such samples.
I am not scared of needles so I go there without fear. It's my first blood sample ever but I have given blood in the past, can't say I loved the experience, the needles where huge and would stay in for quite some time. But it's fine, I have seen the needles used for a blood sample vs giving blood because my girlfriend is a nurse. As I write this text and she is reading my previous post, she is kind of surprised that I mention I was scared of doctors and nurses but I am still with her. The fact is she was not a nurse when we met. This alone might have changed things way back then more than 20 years ago.
We are still in the middle of the Covid pandemit, appointments are really booked tight, I need to be inside at exactly 1:40, not before not later. I am in the parking lot maybe 15 minutes before and I have been holding to pee for a while because I know I need to also give an urine sample. So all I want to to get inside to go do my thing quickly. I get inside and there are in total 3 persons in the waiting room, one person is given her papers to the nurse. Another person is waiting with a plastic container in her hand for the bathroom to be available, and then there is someone in the bathroom too.
I broght a book to read because my last experiences in the healtcare system taught me to be prepared to wait a lot. But I barely had the time to take a seat that another nurse (or maybe an assistant) came directly see me and asked to get my papers. She looks at the time and my name and tells me to follow her. I get into the other room and see 4 stations with at least 3 nurses and/or assistants and not a single patient. She directs me to one of the stations where I meet another nurse. She confirms my name and date of birth. This is a technique they use to make sure they have the right patient (my nurse girlfriend told me that. I have to say my name and date of birth and not them, to avoid a misundertanding.
She prints a few labels and sticks them on 2 vials and a sealed cup. She hands me all that plus two wiped, one is wet and the other is dry. She explains that after the blood sample, I will go in the bathroom, pull my foreskin and wipe my glans with the wet one, then dry it with the dry one. After that I need to pee a little in the toilet and start collecting in the cup only mid-stream. After I finished I can transfer some urine from the cup into each vial filling them at least half way and bring only those vials to a rack she shows me.
I did not say anything but in my head I am thinking I can't pull my foreskin for that cleaning. Then she asks me which arm I prefer for the blood sample, I show both arms and she grabs my left one and says I have a wonderful perfect vein right there. She asks me if I am scared of needles, to which I answer "not really if you don't have to try 10 times". She replies that whith such a vein, she can't miss. She puts a kind of elasttic band around my upper arm and tells me to squeeze my hand, she get's the needle perfectly in there in one smooth move and fills up 3 vials of blood in a matter of seconds. She sticks a coton ball and wishes me a good day. It took literally less than a minute and I feel kind of strange leaving already.
So I go to the bathroom for the urine sample. I take the wet wipe and do what I can to clean around the foreskin and my pinhole phimosis orifice. I obviously can't really follow the exact procedures, my forskin does not retract at all. I dry it up and sit down to pee. I can't really pee standing up because the flow is erratic and I make a mess. I do pee standing up but only at urinals or in the woods. This bathroom being common, there are no urinals. So I pee a quite a bit before getting urine in the cup. I had a big amount of pee from not peeing for quite a long time before the test. Also, because of my pinhole phimosis, I don't have a big flow and a regular pee takes ma usually 1-2 minutes to really get it all out. So after like 15 seconds I get the cup and start filling which takes me about another 30 seconds. As I am doing this I am thinking how my blood got out of my body through a rather small needle faster than I can pee.
I don't usually inspect my pee (or pee in a container for that matter). Most of the times since I sit down to pee, I do a number two at the same time. Now I am peeing in a container and can have a look at only undilluted urine. It is very dark, not brown or red but certainly more orange than yellow. Just by the color I can feel there is something wrong. It also foams a lot and having read a bit on the internet, I know this is not a good sign.
I fill up my vials from that cup and then proceed to wash my hands and get out. I go to that rack where the nurse told me to put my vials when I am done. As there is nobody around anymore, I am kind of staring at the other urine samples already present in that rack and realize again how dark mine is compared to the other ones. I am pretty sure right now that I have something seriously wrong and it scares me a bit. But I am generally a calm person and won't panic before I actually have the results and see my doctor. Who knows, maybe I am just dehydrated. I take another look around and there is still nobody, so I put my vials behind the others vials to kind of hide mine with the other normal ones.
Here in Canada, we have a website to manage all our medical information. The test results will show up on the website, but there is a rule that you can only do so either after the doctor had time to view and analyse your results or 60 days after the test. My doctor told me that her secretary will call me as soon as they get the results to book my next appointment. So I can only go home and wait now.
In my next post I will talk about that next appointment.