Saved by Strawberries

This morning I had to go to the hospital in the nearby larger village for a three-hour glucose test. This is a prenatal test for gestational diabetes, only required if you fail the one-hour test given at the doctor's office. And for the first time ever, I did fail it.

Way to go, little girl! Keep on differentiating yourself from your brothers! (But not this way, please.)

So I had to go into the hospital, where they took a blood sample after I fasted overnight to see what my fasting glucose level is, then gave me a gaggingly sweet orange-flavored bottle of grossness to drink, and then drew my blood once an hour for the next three hours.

Because it took almost an hour to do the registration and initial blood draw, that meant I had to sit at the hospital for four hours.

I brought a book. It was okay. I didn't pass out or throw up or anything. Not even a headache. And hey! I got to read for four hours! Practically a vacation!

But I could still think of a lot of other things I would have liked to have done this morning. And I bet A. could think of a lot of things he would have rather done than supervise our three sons and Cubby's friend who came over early for a day o' play.

So is an overnight fast and four hours at a hospital with multiple encounters with a needle a better alternative than four small boys careening around? Jury's out on that.

Anyway.

By the time I finally got jabbed for the last time and was free to leave, I was really, really ready to go. But just as I walked out the door of the hospital, I saw . . .

Strawberries?

Yup. There was a guy setting up a table right outside the entrance and putting out various fruits and vegetables for sale. I guess he's there every Wednesday at 11 a.m., and I just happened to walk out right as he was setting everything out.

Good thing, because there were only six quarts of strawberries, and I bought two of them. I suspect the remaining four didn't last long.

So the first thing I got to eat after fasting for 17 hours was a fresh strawberry. Yum.

I decided after that it would probably be wise to not ingest any more sugar, even in fruit form, so I dutifully ate the nuts I had brought to break my fast and brought the rest of the strawberries home to the kids.

I wouldn't say the strawberries made the whole trip worthwhile, but it made the end of it that much sweeter.

(I don't have the results of the test yet, so just cross your fingers for me, okay? Thanks.)