No hormones for you!

I am tired and crabby. After two weeks of waiting, I got a little message on my phone that my blood test results should be ready (courtesy of gcal – all praise the mighty Google). I called up the medical centre to see if I could collect them, and the receptionist kindly offered to fax them to me. I then had to go pee from all the nerves of knowing any second now my results would appear in my inbox. By the time I got back, there they were, in all their upside down scanned glory.

Nine pages of results. Nine pages telling me everything I didn’t want to know, and two little blank spots where the results for my oestrogen and progesterone should have been. The only reason I went and got that done was to find out my progesterone levels, aka the 21 day test. So what have I learned from this? I think the take-home message here is that if a doctor doesn’t know what you’re talking about when you ask for a specific blood test, don’t trust them to order blood tests for you, because they won’t be able to order the right ones. Go find a new doctor.

On the plus side, my serum chemistry, thyroid profile, haematology, prolactin and androgens are all normal. I got negative results for my hepatitis and HIV serology, and my blood type is still A negative. Conclusion: at least one of the tests they did was done correctly.

My mum, a recently retired haematologist, suggested I call the pathology lab and ask them to test the serum for the two hormones they missed in my hormone profile. She said that the lab will still have my serum because required by law to keep it for at least a while longer, however they may not be willing to do the tests without the GP asking for it, or if it’s an expensive test. Right now I feel like it’s not worth the hassle. After all, the doctor’s intention was that I’d take these test results to a fertility specialist for analysis, but given the change in plans regarding the house sale, we might not be in Canberra much longer, and I really don’t see the point in going to a specialist and then leaving town four weeks later, before they’ve had a chance to do whatever it is they’re going to do.

Blah. It all feels like so much blah right now.

Update: I am SO ANGRY right now!

I decided to call the lab, like my mum suggested. They said that the doctor had not requested either oestrogen or progesterone, but that if I called the doctor and asked her to request it, they might be able to do the tests anyway, providing they still had my serum. I then called the surgery and asked the receptionist to ask the doctor to call the lab and request the extra tests. The receptionist said she’d pass on the message ASAP. So far, so good.

Then I get a call from the doctor saying that she won’t request the tests because she doesn’t know how to check for ovulation. I told her that the level of progesterone in my blood would tell her whether it had occurred, and she once again said that she doesn’t deal with fertility issues. I said that I wasn’t asking her to deal with it, I was asking her to get my blood tested to check for ovulation so that I could take that test to the fertility specialist. She said that the fertility specialist would order the blood test when it was the right time. I replied that it had been the right time when I had the blood drawn and all I needed her to do was to call the lab and ask them to do the test. She refused. I asked her whether it was commonplace for her to refuse to authorise a blood test that her patient had asked for, especially when the patient didn’t need her to interpret the results but needed the results to take to the specialist that she had referred the patient to. She said yes, so I thanked her for her time, told her I would never go back to her clinic and hung up.

And yes, before I get any comments about how doctors know best, I know she’s supposed to know best. That’s why I went there in the first place. That said, she didn’t know about a test that is commonly administered to check for ovulation and she wouldn’t authorise a test on blood that had already been taken. It wasn’t like I was asking her to authorise a new collection of blood, nor was I asking her to interpret the results. I already know that she doesn’t understand fertility issues, I didn’t expect any sort of treatment from her. All I wanted was a fricken test to confirm that my progesterone levels were elevated at that time. That would have been some sort of proof that my biphasic temperature pattern for my last cycle was based on hormones and not on whatever else might cause a rise in temperature, like a fever or whatever.

I’m feeling so shitty now. I just wanna go home and cry. In fact, I might just do that. It’s almost 3:30, which makes it almost home time (well, closer to home time than lunch time). And Mikey will be at home to comfort me about how stupid bloody doctors are. Gah!