Week 1

Hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July this year! Mine wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible. One of the nurses took us outside to watch a couple fireworks shows that were actually pretty cool. We NEVER get to leave the research floor, so believe me...going outside was like a fat kid eating a supersized Hershey bar! (mmmmmm, that sounds yummy...)

So Week-1 flew by pretty fast. I checked in on June 25th and had my first test the next day. The Dual X-Ray Absorptionetry (DXA) is a method of measuring body fat tissue. It's pretty much like a regular X-ray, where you lie on a table and this big arm moves down your body (head to toe) to get a complete scanned image of your bone structure and fat tissue. It was kinda funny when I saw the image, cuz it looked like this enormous marshmallow-creature (ME) swallowed a really skinny person! Hahahahaha!
Last weekend was spent being lazy; except I did take a GMAT diagnostic test in which I scored 69% (go figure). On Monday I did an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test, where they stuck me with an IV line, took like 10 blood samples, had me drink a really sweet orange soda-type drink (w/ 75 grams of dextrose in it), and then proceeded to take additional blood samples over a 3-hour period...which ended up being something ~15 tubes of blood. It wasn't bad, except, I realized that I absolutely hate IVs......woopie, I'm probably going to get stuck with 20 different IVs before I'm done here! hooray! Right...
Ok, on Tuesday I went into the Metabolic Chamber which wasn't too bad; boring, but not horrible. I'd say the worst part was collecting my urine. The smell of pee kinda makes me nautious, so our little secret...I sort of deprived myself of liquids that day cuz I didn't wanna keep peeing (hehe)...ya, wasn't so funny come bout 5 o'clock, when this POUNDING headache started and continued to persist at 10:30 that night...so of course I broke down and started chugging water & asked for some Tylenol. The headache finally went away around midnight, but of course after chugging 2 bottles of water in a 3-4 hr. span, I had to pee all night...so needless to say, I didn't sleep well. Anyhow, after leaving the chamber the next morning, I went for my MRI at St. Joseph's hospital downtown. Now, I'd had an MRI about 3 years ago & don't remember it being such a 'tight fit'...but now I know what Bart means by "I'm not closter phobic; it's just that the fatter I get, the smaller my surroundings are" *LOL*...so ya, if I could remember what it was like 27 years ago, I'd probably compare the MRI machine to that of the birth canal for a fetus...a rather 'tight fit.'
I went back into the chamber on Friday, which of course I drank water ALL DAY, and slept great that night. So it's Saturday now, and since there's virtually no tests on the weekends, there's not much to say about the wild weekend I'll be having :-D.

Anyhow, I love you guys. Nighty night!
*1 week down, 9 more to go*