Back to the Phlebotomist

Boy, this sure was something I haven't been missing out on these last few months!

Today I had to drive 30 minutes into the clinic for like a 2 minute blood draw. (Can I say I already miss having the RE only 10-15 minutes away?) I guess I can't really complain because it was over so quickly. I was expecting it to be a lot worse, but it was only two vials of blood, and really not that bad. I've heard some girls say they had over 10 vials drawn for these tests! The girl who took my blood had the tourniquet so tight I thought my arm was gonna fall off! Maybe that's what made the draw go so well?

Anyways, we are doing an Antinuclear antibody and Karyotype testing. These are the two tests that the new doctor wanted to run as part of our RPL (recurrent pregnancy loss) testing.

I found this statistic today and was kind of surprised by the figure:
•70% of first trimester losses due to chromosomal abnormalities.

Back in 2003, I had a large number of autoimmune disease tests done and nothing came back as positive, so I'm hoping the Antinuclear antibody is negative this time around as well. I already did the Anticardiolipins antibody and Lupus back in December and those were negative. Hopefully we continue to eliminate more factors from the list.

One good thing, I think, they don't consider blood draws office visits, so that means no co-pay! Hopefully this just goes as some random medical expense and not actually infertility related so it ticks away at our funds.