at-home blood/urine collection…

I originally intended for this post to be about micronutrient testing I had done recently, but I have now written over 1,000 words on just the at-home urine/blood draw procedure, and won’t put you through another 1,000+ right now. So, look for a post on what the test actually measures and my results next time.
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I mentioned previously that I was interested in having micronutrient testing done and was seeking out a functional medicine doctor here in southern California that could order the test. When I developed the nerve pain, I decided to put that search on hold for a while until I had the nerve pain under better control.

As you know from my last post, a friend recommended a local doctor who I love, and who I recently discovered uses micronutrient testing. She suspects I have some nutritional deficiencies that are causing some of my symptoms, including the neuropathic pain, headaches, allergies, joint pain, and nausea, and I suspect that she is right. I know I am often deficient in iron and vitamin D, and it’s hard to imagine those are the only ones.

Because my doctor practices functional medicine, she doesn’t have a blood draw nurse on staff. For the micronutrient testing, you can take the test kit to an independent lab (like Quest or Labcorp), or my doctor contracts with an in-home service. I had never had a blood draw performed at my house, so I decided to give it a try.

Urine Test
For the urine test, I was told to pee in a plastic cup (like the Solo beer cups of your youth) and keep it in the fridge until the blood draw nurse came to my house. There’s something very unnatural about at-home urine collections because:

1) without fail, I always end up peeing on my hand a little during urine collection. Even when I think I have the cup lined up right, the stream splits and…bullseye. Lab bathrooms have those motion-sensor faucets and soap dispensers, so if your hand is bathed in pee, you don’t actually have to touch anything. I don’t have those in my bathroom.

2) There’s somewhere to put the pee cup when you’re done, or if you fill it up quickly and are NOT done urinating. You know how lab bathrooms have those cute little cubbies, where you open the little door, deposit your specimen and order a side of fries? I don’t have those. I also don’t have that sterile shelf above the sink to set your cup o’ pee. What I have is a bathroom counter on which I set used to set my toothbrush after I was finished brushing my teeth. There’s no amount of bleach spray in the world to unsee peeing on your own hand and touching a bunch of stuff.

I’m not going to tell you in which bathroom I collected my specimen because if you ever come to my house, you’ll have fun guessing.

3) Where exactly in a fridge is the proper place to store a cup of urine??

Blood test

For the blood test, I had to fast until my 1:00 pm appointment. I don’t always eat breakfast, but then I’m starving by 10:00 am. So I don’t do fasting. If I ever went hiking and got lost, I’d be dead by noon.

Blood draw nurse shows up right on time. I debated locking up my dog, because he’s a little overprotective and I wasn’t sure how he would react to a stranger sticking needles in his mama. I texted the blood draw company a few days before the appointment to notify them that I have a dog in case whoever they were sending was allergic or terrified of dogs.

So blood draw nurse shows up, my dog sniffs her and goes and lies down on the rug next to the table where she and I will sit. We have about 6 tubes to fill. She sticks me with the needle which has a cup on the end where you can attach a vial to fill with blood. It’s called a vacutainer. Except she misses the vein. Instead of pulling out and trying again, she keeps maneuvering the needle, trying to pierce a vein while it’s still in my arm. Doesn’t work. She pulls it out, and there’s blood everywhere. She tries again. Same problem – missed the vein. Tries maneuvering the needle in my arm to find the vein again. She thinks she has it and slides a vial into the vacutainer for filling. Nothing comes out.

If you’re not a blood draw regular, you may not know that each vial is sealed with a rubber stopper. There’s a small needle in the vacutainer, so when you slide the vial in, it pierces the rubber stopper. Each vial is sealed like a vacuum so that it sucks the blood into the tube once the rubber is pierced.

But blood draw nurse broke the seal and released the vacuum pressure when she inserted the vial into the vacutainer. She thinks that’s why blood isn’t flowing into the vial. Now she needs to go get a new vial from her car because this one is unusable without a proper vacuum seal. Blood draw nurse told me to hold the needle in my arm (apparently her tape was also in her car) while she ran outside for a moment.

Blood draw nurse obviously doesn’t have dogs, because she gets up and runs straight towards my dog (who is lying on the rug nearby). She was actually running for the door, but to a dog (especially one that has been abused), that looks threatening. He gets up and starts barking at her.

I’m going to insert two important asides here: 1) I should have put my dog outside before blood draw nurse came over. She wasn’t at fault at all, and I don’t want to make it sound like she is. Lesson learned. 2) I found out after all of this that blood draw nurse had previously been bitten by a dog in a similar situation, and is terrified of dogs. Which would have been good information before she came over, or at the very least, when she showed up that day.

So my dog is barking at her. I yell at him to back off, but he can’t hear me over his incessant barking. Blood draw nurse is too terrified to move. Dog keeps barking and I assume he thinks something is wrong because I’m still sitting at the table, instead of coming over to let him know it’s okay. I try to stand up, but after being stuck multiple times and not eating anything for 18 hours, I’m a little dizzy. I try again and go to pull my dog away, but I’m using my right hand to hold a vacutainer in my left arm, so I don’t have a free hand to grab him. This goes on for a while, me chasing my dog in circles around the house while holding a blood-dripping needle in my left arm like a disturbing game of tag. Finally blood draw nurse is able to sneak out the front door to her car. By the time she comes back about 5 minutes later, the dog is in an upstairs bedroom with the door closed, and I apologized profusely.

She inserts the vial into the cup and a tiny bit of blood squirts into the tube, but again, not much. Finally she gives up on the left arm, pulls out the needle, and tries the right. After another two tries, she eventually found a vein on the right and we were able to fill all 6 tubes.

So, NO, I will not be doing in-home urine collection/blood draw again.

“I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance.” – Garth Brooks

Smell ya later.
– Linds