Needle in the . . . HEY!

I have track marks on both of my arms. My left arm shrieks in pain when I move it and my right arm is saturating the wad of cotton pressed against the latest puncture. I have nae taken up any dirty habits other than the one that potentially got me in this position in the first place: indulging my sweet tooth. Turns out that I may have gestational diabetes. The good news is that it will probably go away once Baby X makes her appearance. The possible bad news is that I may have to start watching what I eat and *shudder* start exercising if the results of my glucose tolerance test doesn't meet my doctor's approval.

What does the test involve, you ask? The first step is drinking this odious glucose-heavy, fruit-punch-flavored abomination (imagine making Kool-Aid with four times as much powder than the instructions call for) and getting your blood drawn and tested an hour later. If you pass, as I did last time, you are free to go about your cannoli-lovin' business. If you don't, as I did not this time, you can't pass go, you can't collect $200, and you must go directly to a lab for a second, longer, more painful test.

This morning, having not eaten since 8 p.m. last night, I arrived at the lab at 8 a.m. to get my first vial of blood drawn and quartered. The vampire who stuck me seemed not to be able to get the blood out without leaving a huge bruise behind. My reward for gritting my teeth was to down yet another sugar solution guaranteed to dissolve what little enamel on my teeth I had left from the last round. Oh, and I had five minutes to do it. The drink was cold which helped numb my taste buds but it was no more pleasant than before.

I sat in the waiting room and got through quite a bit of the book I'm reading these days, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, when I was called away from beautiful Rome and its lovely pasta and gelato and mozzerella to get another jabbing at 9 a.m. with an encore performance at 10 a.m. and, by popular demand, a final curtain call at 11 a.m. By this time, I was nearly dizzy and faint with hunger and queasiness and ants-in-my-pants syndrome (it's a perfectly cromulent condition, you can look it up). I left the lab with four wounds in my arms, the first named "Bruiser," the second named "Better," the third named "I think she's finally gotten it," and the fourth named "Holy Hell, I retract my previous statement." I gingerly tottered out of the lab and called TP to pick my aching self up while I tried to eat a veggie burrito from Chipotle in the same amount of time I had to drink that vile liquid.

So now, I wait. By Friday I'll find out whether I am given a reprieve and permitted to eat all the sugary snacks my heart desires or whether I am consigned to a lifestyle of sugar-free this and what's-the-point that. If it's the latter, Baby X is in for a world of time-outs.