my husband's company offers a health incentive to its employees every year which involves taking an online screening tool and then getting a basic panel of bloodwork (cholesterol, glucose) and a simple physical evaluation. the end goal is helping employees and their spouses identify any potential health red flags. the silver lining is each person gets a monetary bonus if s/he completes the screening by a certain date. we always do it... hey, it's free money!
so this year i had been dragging my feet about getting it done since you're supposed to be fasting (yeah right!) and i have to drive to a sort-of-far-away lab to get it done. i finally made it happen on monday, and just got my results today. they are FULL of red flags!!
my favorite?? my waist circumference is alarmingly high, which puts me at risk for blah blah blah. yup.... breaking news! if only i knew how to fix this health problem....
Re: congratulations, you're alarmingly overweight
My office started doing the the online assessments this year that would give us a discounted insurance rate. I just went through and picked random numbers for all my measurements and BP, lol
Seriously creepy! I can get having healthy bp and cholesterol levels but would you get increasing funds depending on how much you weighed or your waist circumference? Seems like that's a recipe for disaster. Hopefully there are ranges and not "ideal" weights that don't take individual differences into account.
I was totally berated in the results package. Like, you're pregnant!!! You can't be drinking!!!
I fell for it, now they think I'm a terrible mother.
sorry, eme... doesn't work for me
Your lipid panel results (triglycerides, cholesterol) were out of whack because most pregnant women have hyperlipemia of pregnancy. It's totally normal. It's not recommended to do that testing until at least 3 months postpartum.
I'm a medical laboratory scientist so see this stuff pretty frequently. The scary part is when primary care physicians interpret the results incorrectly because they don't realize some tests are so affected by pregnancy. It's normal for pregnant women to have high lipids, high white cell count, and high ALP. A1C values are usually low due to increased blood volume (which equals dilution of red blood cells).
If you have questions about the results, I would take them to your OB.
Baby Girl Born: April 2014
If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, I will answer you:
@sweetpeace13 - now THAT's how it should be. You should definitely get an exemption if you are pregnant. It doesn't make any sense for these screenings to be one-size-fits-all.
But in my case, it's worth $1500, so I do it. This year, I was only in my 1st trimester, so my numbers were normal.
My favorite is the "oh" that the Wii makes when you step on it, I always feel like such a fat ass lol.