Susan shares what preventions she is taking for the future.

When we last left off, I was telling you about my latest round of thyroid woes—my numbers have been all over the chart and I’m having a really hard time regulating my levels with my current medication. Even though my medicines have been working well all along, lately they seem to have given up the proverbial ghost.

I headed back to the doctor for another round of blood work and found out in the process that my fasting blood sugar was too high, and that my physician wanted to test my pituitary gland to see if it was connected to my thyroid issues.

Not too long ago, a friend of mine told me that she might have diabetes. She was clearly surprised and taken aback at the potential diagnosis and was sucking in air. So was I, quite frankly, when she told me what was going on.

Coincidentally, less than a week later, my physician told me that my fasting blood sugar level from my latest round of blood work was too high. I started sucking in air all over again. In addition, my thyroid levels were off again.

What do you think about online laboratories? There are so many out there (similar to a recent post about online pharmacies), and I'm curious if anyone has tried them, and have found them credible?

I am worried about people ordering their own lab tests without a doctor's approval or recommendation, for many reasons:
1. Self-diagnosis is not always the best way to go. I think the ideal is to have a healthy patient-doctor partnership.
2. False-negatives and false-positives. Tests have different rates of "false" results based on a number of factors, that they lay person is unaware of.