Sterile My A**!!!!

Sorry guys but this is going to be somewhat of a very big rant!

My blood sugars are doing much better these days which is awesome but taking away that major stress is making some of the other more normal difficulties of pregnancy even more irritating! Last week when I went to see the high risk doc he told me he wanted to do a 24-hour urine on me. For those of you who don't know what that is it is just what it sounds; it's a urine analysis checking for protein but instead of just taking just one sample they collect EVERYTHING you pee out in a 24 hour period. So in the office he has the nurse get me a collection kit and a sheet of instructions, she put it in a bag told me not to forget to get blood drawn when I was done and I was on my way.

After I got home I was reading the instructions (not that I haven't instructed patients a million times how to do these but just to be a good patient), as I was reading I was a little concerned that the container they gave me wasn't going to be big enough (roughly 3,000ml) but Charlie assured me that they knew what they were doing, and its in an OB's office so they always have pregnant patients who pee a lot not to worry. Fast forward a week and it was time for me to head back to the Dr's office to see the diabetes educator.

I got home from work Wednesday morning and started the collection at 8am so that I could pee for the last time at 8am today before heading in to the doctors office. What you guys have to understand about me is that pre-pregnancy I peed easily twice as often as the normal person, during this pregnancy its been a giant joke! The only time I can ever go more than 2 hours without making a trip to the bathroom is when I'm sleeping, when I'm awake it's at least once an hour, sometimes as frequently as 3-4 times an hour. I'm going to attempt to spare you guys the details but by 2 in the afternoon when got up for the day I had already filled almost 2/3's of the container. I debated at this point what to do, I knew I peed most in the morning and during the night so I though maybe I would be okay but to be safe I decided to stop drinking as much just incase.

I went through the day stuck in the house, but in the afternoon I had to run to church so I was thinking as I was on my way maybe I could stop by my work and con them into giving me another container just incase. By the time I made it to church and got the things and talked to a few people I NEEDED to go home right then because I though I was going to pee my pants! I don't know about you guys, but I wasn't prepared to tote around 3 liters of my own urine with me in a brown paper bag every time I left the house so I gave up on the idea of stopping by the hospital (most patients didn't even have that option so I figured I'd be fine).

The next thing I'm sure you have all seen coming... around 11pm I ran out of space in my little (giant) orange container. By the time I woke up again at 2am I was running around the house looking for some sealable clean container that I could fill (and never get back). I was planning on using tupperware with the screw-on lids, but much to my dismay they had all disappeared, so I collected a random assortment of bottles and decided on the large 1500ml Gatorade container. I washed it out really well (with no soap so I didn't contaminate the urine) and went on my way. By the morning I had completely filled the gatorade container also.

My appointment with the diabetes educator went really well, we didn't change much and things are getting better so after I saw her I headed down to the lab with my 4,500ml's of urine at my side! I walked in and already the tech was irritated because I wasn't on her schedule, but she said she'd see me anyways. I handed her the urine and she looked down at it then looked up at me with a face of disgust. Our conversation went like this:

Lab tech: "What is this?"
Me: "My 24-hour urine sample."
Lab tech: "Yeah, but what is this? "(lifting out the gatorade container)
Me: "My pee."
Lab tech: "Who gave you this? Why isn't it in the orange container?"
Me: "It didn't fit, the orange container is totally full."
Lab tech: "What am I supposed to do with this?"
Me: Blank stare
Lab tech: "Did I give you this?"
Me: "No, the nurse did, last week."
Lab tech: "Didn't she give you instructions?"
Me: "Yeah, and I read them twice, it says is that if you miss collecting ANY urine you have to start over, it says NOTHING about what to do when the container gets full!"
Lab tech: "Well WHAT am I supposed to do with this?"
Me: "I didn't know what else..."
Lab tech: "You realize this isn't sterile right? The orange container is sterile until it is opened, THIS... (pointing disgustedly at the gatorade container) is NOT sterile! I don't even know what kind of detergent you used to clean this!"
Me: "I didn't use soap cause I didn't want to wreck the test, I just used a lot of hot water."
Lab tech: "They're not going to accept this. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with this?"
Me: (about to lose it) "It was 2AM, What was I supposed to do!"

At this point there are a million things running though my head! I wanted to scream at her, I mean they make people do this all the time, I can't honestly believe that I am the first person ever to run out of room! And who is she trying to kid, that freaking urine container became unsterile the second I opened it. They are having me pee repeatedly in a hat in the toilet then pour it into the container, with no instruction on how or even if I'm supposed to be cleaning the hat. Do I just leave it and let it collect bacteria and bugs between voids, or do I clean it with tap water and a towel every time (effectively making it less sterile than the gatorade container). I mean common, they weren't even having me do clean catch urine samples, which means that no matter how clean I keep the containers, the urine is FAR from sterile!!!

The conversation above continued for quite a while but after my 2am comment I just stopped talking and stared at her. After she asked for the 5th time what she was supposed to do with the urine it took every bone I had in me not to get out of my chair, grab another clean "Sterile" orange container from the shelf above her head pour my "gatorade" pee into it, hand it back to her and say "Here, problem solved!" But I knew that if I did that I would just stomp out of the room and never go back, and she hadn't drawn my blood yet, and if I left without getting a blood test they would throw the urine away anyways so I kept my mouth shut! Stupid, I was so irritated when I left I didn't even know what to do with myself! She was acting like I was an idiot someone picked up off the street and dropped at her doorstep.

End of story she finally drew my blood (irritated again that no one gave me a lab slip) and let me leave but not before warning me that "the Lab is going to reject this sample and you are going to have to do it again." Well if it does fail I'm pretty sure they better wait a freaking long time before telling me, because if anyone even mentions the words '24-hour' and 'urine' to me together in the same sentence anytime in the next month I might just throw my decaf coffee in their face! Sorry... I'm blaming the pregnancy hormones for some of my irritation but seriously, I'm not joking about the coffee thing!

-Cait

P.S. On a brighter note, I'm seeing my regular OB in the morning tomorrow (if she hasn't gone into labor herself) and will hopefully have a lighter, shorter update to post after that!

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