JUST THE WORD DIABETES IS SCARY! Having to take a test is not fun. At UCLA they preform the 2hour test as their standard. You have to fast at least 8 hours before your test, no food, no drinks. They take your fasting blood level in about 4 tubes of blood. Then they have you chug an orange fizzy drink, its not that bad it literally tastes like orange crush. Then you wait, they take your blood again and again for 2 hours and give you a measurement for each hour to see how your body responds to the sugar.

The American Diabetes Association has set the following “above-normal” levels:

• Fasting:  At or above 92 mg/dL
• 1 Hour:  At or above 180 mg/dL
• 2 Hour:  At or above 153 mg/dL

You can read more about Gestational Diabetes here: –> American Diabetes Association Gestational Diabetes.

This article is about my experience.

I took the test and felt fine! After the drink I started to get an immediate feeling of energy, sugar after fasting, and then about an hour later I began to crash. After my second blood drawl I started to feel really tired and anxious and my arm was tingly. I’m pretty sure this was due to my blood sugar dropping and just having blood drawn 2times within an hour and the tight wrap they put around your vein site. So I started to walk around the UCLA medical plaza a bit to breathe and get my blood flowing. This helped a lot, I didn’t walk fast but I did shake out my arms a bit. I didn’t go up stairs or walk to far away from people just in case. Since you can’t have water or food while your taking the 2hour test you just have to kind of wait it out. I felt so much better after walking around so I did this again after my next blood drawl and tried to remain up and alert. At the two hour mark I felt totally normal and fine; probably because I knew I was about to eat peanut butter and jelly crackers have some water and go to lunch with Brendon. I enjoyed a normal lunch and felt fine the rest of the day. I thought for sure I was out of the water and had passed the test…little did I know what was next…

Check out my next blog on my follow up from my test results.