are your highbeams on?

so, i have a little bit of faith restored in my clinic. the dude that saw me on tues (was it tues? they're all running together) mentioned he was a fellow which made me feel happy, though whether he was specifically an RE fellow or an Ob-Gyn one, i'm not sure because i forgot because it's been a busy week and i've been moving and crap is every-freaking-which-where and the semester is ending and my brain is mushifying. yes, that's right, it's mushifying, so if i speak in circles and walk in jagged edges that's the reason. mind you, it's not that i mind seeing residents (i'm verging on resident status myself soon), and if it was our own newly minted resident i'd be happy as a wee little ocean bound clam. but, somehow i seem to pull confused residents each time, the ones that can't find my left ovary at all and spend 20 minutes looking and aiming the wand at extremely awkward angles before finally going to get help.

so, anyway, where was i? oh yes, dr. fellow with the venipuncture in the study. he had mentioned the prolactin redo with the tsh companion piece which i reluctantly agreed to (i should just move into the venipuncture lab i'm there so much...even with the constantly rotating staff, i'm beginning to become familiar to quite a few of them. it's sad when one is recognizable on sight by no small number of phlebotomy techs. but i'll tell you what's worse. i'm probably recognizable on sight but by my other end to a sizeable contingent of the gyn staff, and they rotate through pretty quickly as well. oy. but i digress...

anyway as i was saying this morning i dutifully showed up for the draw when i saw they had added a testosterone level to the mix. fair enough. i've got no signs of pcos but while they're there, they might as well check, nu? i also saw that the prolactin was a sendout macroprolactinemia panel. which i had never heard of. so, like any good obsessive-compulsive patient i looked it up when i got home. i wouldn't say i completely
understand it but the upshot is it can make your prolactin look like it's elevated when it's not. so i'm glad they're at least checking for that before sending me off into a tube to have my pituitary perused. contrary to popular opinion, i actually do, on occasion, have other places to be during the day besides at my clinic getting my bits and pieces worked over. shocking, but true.