Don't Be So Sensitive! Part 1

About a year and a half ago, we finally "cut the cord" and cancelled our long-standard DirecTV subscription, moving instead to a series of streaming services, including Hulu (plus Disney+ and ESPN+), HBOMax, and appleTV.  While we have Hulu plus live TV (I can't not have live sports when college football and hockey season are in session), we don't pay for the topmost tier, and since we switched, we've been exposed to more commercials in the past 18 months than I think we've cumulatively seen in the last 10 years.  If you have any of the streaming services with commercial breaks, you know that the set of ads that rotate through become pretty familiar, playing over and over again.  One we've viewed several times now is for Everlywell, an at-home testing service; while they offer several testing options (including a COVID diagnostic), their most popular offering is related to Food Sensitivities.

I'd been pondering the idea of testing for food sensitivities for a little bit.  While I've never been a person who has manifested as truly allergic to any foods (although I do have my eye on coconut...), over the past year or so, a handful of symptoms have popped up fairly regularly, making me think that maybe I'm putting something into my body that it doesn't really like.  Thankfully, the symptoms I've experienced have been pretty calm, all things considered - mild bloating, gas pain/pressure, plateauing on weight loss, migraines (unrelated to alcohol consumption, menstrual cycle, stress), and so on - but they're not fun.  Not only would I like to get rid of all of this, but I figure if my body is trying to tell me something, perhaps I should attempt to actually listen to it every now and again.

After sending out a note to the Facebook hive mind and getting some good information back from a few folks (thank you, Trisha and Shyla!), I found a sale on the Everlywell site and pulled the trigger.  My kit shipped through the USPS, and it arrived safe and sound just a few days later, on a Monday afternoon (their shipping confirmation said it could take 2-8 business days due to everything going on right now, but my time was at the shorter end of that spectrum).  That evening, I unpacked everything, watched the collection videos, read the FAQs, and got ready to take my sample.

Trigger warning time - if you're squeamed out by blood, turn back now!  There's not a lot of it (very little, as you will see), but fair warning.

Okay, moving on!

Laying out everything that comes with the test kit:

Instructions, my sample card, gauze, an alcohol wipe,

two disposable lancets, the biohazard return bag, and a Band-Aid.

The paper plate was supplied by us;

the instructions said to ensure you bled all the way

through to the back of the sample card, 

and I didn't want to get blood on our counter.

The instructions say to drink a glass of water, wash your hands in warm water, and move around/shake your hands to get your blood flow going, so I did all that:

High quality H2O

Shaking it to the left...

...shaking it to the right...

...being barked at by the dog.

I cleaned my finger using the alcohol swab (the instructions said to use your ring or pinkie fingers, so I picked the ring finger on my left hand), used the lancet to poke a hole on the outside of the finger pad, and wiped away the first drop of blood.

Swabby swabby

Stabby stabby

No!  Bad Amy!  No eat!

After all the prep, it was now time to officially collect my sample (read: to bleed on the card).  As you can see in the picture with the box contents all laid out, above, this specific test needed me to fill in five different circles with enough blood to soak through to the back of the collection card.  The circles were little, so this shouldn't be a problem right?  That's what we thought!

I started by squeezing my finger as shown in the instructions, and slooooowly, I ended up with a big enough droplet to fill in about half of the first circle.  Why was my blood flowing so poorly?  I almost always have cold hands, so maybe I have some sort of circulation issue, too?

I kept going, massaging my hand from the wrist down to the finger tip as suggested in the pamphlet, but I didn't make that much more progress.  I also tried keeping my hand below my heart, except for getting eye level with it to ensure I hit the sample circle on the card.

Come on, little finger!

You can do it!

This was seriously getting ridiculous.

After the second circle (again, of FIVE) was filled in, we gave up the ghost on the left ring finger and moved to prep the one on the right - maybe since that's my dominant hand (and I don't wear a ring on it), the blood flow would be better there?  I drank more water, washed my hands again, and engaged in some jumping jacks, again with Zoe's assistance:

"Mom, are we DANCING!?!?!?"

OMG, can I be done now, please?

I already worked out today!

After repeating the whole process on the right hand (Chris worked the lancet on my right ring finger, in case I'd somehow lanced myself improperly), I ended up with two more full circles and one sad little reddish splotch in the fifth bubble.  

Pathetic.

Poor bandaged fingers.

I wonder if my issue was maybe that

I'm a super fast clotter?

Maybe I've fallen down and busted myself so many times

that my body had to become a fast clotter,

just to survive?

I hopped back on the Everlywell website and found that you could send them a picture of your sample card, and they'd give you their opinion on whether they felt it would work for the lab.  Sending off the email that evening, I wasn't sure how long their response might take, but it came first thing the next morning - they said that my four circles should work, so I packaged it up as required and dropped it at the post office (they also told me if it didn't work, they would send me a new sample kit for free - I was planning to request like 8 lancets, just in case).

Look at my little bruised digits!

The one on the left was sore for a few days - 

that was the one I lanced,

so Chris absolutely did a better job than I did.

In the next blog, my results!

Later!

Amy

PS - In case anyone wants to try this out yourself (or any of the other kits offered by Everlywell), feel free to use my link, which I've added here.  If you use my link, you get 15% off your purchase and I get a $35 Amazon gift card.  I'll be completely honest and say that you can sometime catch Everlywell sales that are 20 or even 30% off, so my 15% link may not be the best deal out there.  However, if you use my link and score me that gift card, I might be inspired to use $5 of it to buy you something really dumb, but hopefully amusing, on Amazon and send it to you.