It seemed like a good idea earlier this week to book the nurse’s appointment for 8:00am on Saturday, since we’re usually up ridiculously early most days anyhow, and rarely sleep past 7:00am on weekends. Hey, did you know that when you buy life insurance, they send someone over to take your blood pressure and make you pee in a cup? Anyhow, this whole process also requires fasting for 3 hours beforehand, and I figured the less time I was without snacks or coffee, the better – so 8:00am it was. And then we’d be free to get on with our day without waiting around for our appointment.
And then this past week happened, with having to navigate managing work’s presence at a local event, go on an off-site course and do all the regular work stuff quite literally all at the same time. A couple 12-hour days later, and suddenly 8:00am Saturday seems like a very bad time to have some random stranger with rubber gloves and a clipboard show up at my door.
So the alarm went off at 7:00, and I snoozed it until 7:36, at which point I figured that despite his status as a health-care professional, I should probably put on pants for the impending visitor, and stumbled into the bathroom for my morning pee. Oops.
Mid-stream it hit me – I’m going to be required to pee again in about 20 minutes – without the aid of coffee.
We went through the questionnaire, we went through the height/weight/blood-pressure checks. I went through a couple glasses of water. Neil went through his questionnaire. He went through his height/weight/blood-pressure checks. I went through another couple glasses of water. Neil peed in his cup. I went through another couple glasses of water. The only thing I had to offer were complaints about my now painfully distended belly full of liquid, and not a drop of pee.
The nurse waited around for another 15 minutes – I still couldn’t pee.
And not for lack of trying! Oh how I tried! I tried relaxing, I tried willing myself to pee, I tried running my hands under very cold then very hot then very cold water, I tried applying pressure to my general bladder area. Not a damn drop.
So the nurse agreed to break the rules since we appear to be generally upstanding citizens, and not the type who’d have a stash of someone else’s pee in the bathroom, or otherwise try to cheat the test. He left me with the jar, instructions not to have anything but water until after I’d peed, and to please record the temperature of the pee (there’s a stick-on thermometer on the outside of the cup) and he’d come by and pick it up in-between some other appointments nearby later on.
Finally, FINALLY about 20 minutes (and another glass of water for good measure) later, I peed! Neil cheered, we High 5’d and did a happy dance (ok, I drew the line at the dance – I haven’t needed celebration for going pee-pee in the potty since I was 2 or 3) and I dutifully recorded the temperature of my sample. And the nurse came back, gave me a receipt for my contribution, and in about 3 weeks our next of kin can throw us under a bus for a tidy sum.
But now, of course, I can’t actually leave and get on with my day, because with all the water I drank earlier, I can’t stop peeing. Seriously. Every 10-minutes or so I need to go again. And I suppose it didn’t help that I finally had coffee as well.
And I was going to try and think of something pithy to close this with, but I need to pee again.
It’s must be just your company – Mel and I both have life insurance, and we just had to get a mouth swab.
Yah, I think it’s a combination of the company, your assessed risk, net worth and the amount you’re asking to be insured for. Our financial planner was really surprised the company didn’t request a blood sample as well (apparently they usually do).