If you've been reading for a while, you know needles make me pass out. I don't know why, it's just some weird thing I have. Even if I don't look at them, I pretty much go to an unconscious happy place immediately after whatever blood work or shot has wrapped up.

So it may come as no surprise that I never get a flu shot. Ever.

I prefer to not go through the passing out thing on a yearly basis.

But this year, my mom nagged the crap out of me so bad about it (seriously, I was getting daily calls, texts or emails linking me to news stories about how a whole bunch of healthy people died this year from the flu), that I finally caved.

So yesterday morning, I secretly ducked into the health clinic at my office, sheepishly told the nurse my issue with needles and figured I'd knock this flu shot thing out as quickly and with the least amount of embarrassment as possible.

Then she mentioned that while I was there she could also do some baseline blood work to test for cholesterol, sugar levels, etc.

It'd been a while since I had everything tested, and I figured I may as well get it all over with it one visit. Plus those are just good numbers to know for overall health.

The shot was painless. The finger prick for the blood work was not, but, I didn't completely pass out. Sure things definitely got a little blurry in the vision department, and the nurse started sounding reallllllly far away, but I'm fairly certain I remained conscious the whole time. We'll call that a win!

At one point the nurse even brought out those nasty smelling things that help wake people up from passing out, I took a whiff, felt my head clear for a second, then went right back to almost-passing out land.

Luckily she had some cookies on hand, which definitely started to make me feel better and bring my blood sugar levels back up.

By the time we got my almost passing out under control, the results from the blood test had processed.

Despite 6 weeks of inactivity because of my injury, my blood work numbers were freakin' fantastic:

• Total cholesterol - 134 (healthy level is <200)


• HDL "good cholesterol" - 70 (healthy level is >60)


• LDL "bad cholesterol" - so low the test couldn't even measure it! Booo-yah! (healthy level <100)


• Triglycerides - <45 also so low the test couldn't get an exact number (healthy level is <150)


• Glucose - 85 (healthy level for fasting test 70-99)


• Blood pressure: 96/50

Sooo, apparently I have really super healthy blood! Go me! And also, all those eggs I'm eating every day are not having an sort of negative impact on my cholesterol levels. Whoop!

Being the data nerd that I am, I actually really love having these kinds of numbers. If I didn't pass out every time a needle came within a foot of me, I'd get these tests down more often to monitor things. I actually wish this test would have been a little more in depth and given me some idea on iron levels, vitamin levels, etc.

Guess I'd have to go to the real doctor and actually have multiple vials of blood drawn for that. We'll save that for another day I guess. ::shudders::

Do you get your blood work done regularly?