Early Morning Blood Draw

 This little darling needed to have some bloodwork done before his next neurology appointment on the 11th. I decided we needed to drop off his paperwork at the lab a few days before we brought him in to try and avoid the long wait we had last time. Rod dropped the lab slips off on Monday and asked what day would be best to bring him in. They told him either Wednesday or Friday would be fine as they had extra staff on hand and could have two people available for Owen. I decided we'd aim for Wednesday so we'd still have Friday as a back up just in case something came up. Rod had worked a long day on Tuesday and volunteered to take Owen in for the lab tests since he didn't feel like going to work right away again anyway.

  Owen normally gets his morning medication at 9:00am, followed by his breakfast and his morning "juice" complete with keto approved laxative to help with diet related constipation. These tests needed to be run before all that so he and Rod headed to the lab at 8:30. We'd already warned them we'd be in AND dropped off the paperwork so they could have all the vials ready. But, Owen didn't get called back right away. He is really hungry in the morning and we're not supposed to be off schedule by more than an hour with his medication, so any wait is a bit problematic. Rod could see the technicians thumbing through the paperwork and checking the computer screen, so he went to the counter to ask if there was a problem. It seems that when the lab entered Owen's Clobazam (onfi) test into the computer it was flagged by the CDC. The CDC is doing special monitoring on this particular drug and the computer message was telling the technicians to do the test differently from what Owen's neurologist had ordered! The problem was that the CDC testing would have given Owen 4x the amount of medication he currently gets and require him to wait in the lab for 2 hours before the blood draw. They finally decided to do the test the way our doctor had ordered so the we could actually get the information the doctor needs not what the CDC wants.

 Owen was an absolute trooper! He just said "Ow, ow" over and over and didn't cry. They once again took the maximum amount of blood they are allowed to take out of him. He was a little wobbly and dizzy for a few hours, but perked up by afternoon. Now, we just have to hope the results are back by our appointment. Sometimes the lab forgets to pass the information on to the doctor's office. It really helps us to have the test results before the appointment since so much of his care depends on how he is processing the drugs and how the diet is affecting his blood tests.