Question

Hi, I think it would be unlikely that the results were wrong. Have you seen the Dr again about your high prolactin, have you been referred to an endocrinologist? I remember your previous post.

If your family wind you up like that, maybe you need a new family. I suppose that they think they are being nice by telling that it could be wrong. They are not. You have enough on your plate just to deal with what is real and can be checked. Wild theories just suck your energy away, you don't need it. What you do need right now is love and support - ok maybe that is what they are trying to do, but just not in a good way.

Your condition is not serious just because it is unusual. There are medicines for it that work and work well. You do not have cancer.

Yes, we are all human including doctors and of course one time in many thousand a mistake can be made. Your doctors and nurses know that too and that is why they double check everything, using different people to check on each other.

Most of us replying to you have already been through what you are feeling now and we know that it is real and how hard it is to face. But it will be over soon and you will have good life ahead of you. I won't insult you by saying relax because when it was me, I couldn't relax either. But at least try not to make it worse by listening to fairy stories.

Glad things went OK good luck with everything. If you need any advice or anything just ask. I remember when I went through all that, it was a shock as I'd not had any health worries before and didn't know anyone who'd experienced a similar thing!

Hi,

I work in a lab in a hospital. Your doctor won't really have much to do with your blood test - all he does is order it and look at the result. It's the laboratory staff who will have a lot more to do with making sure your result is 'correct'. There are a lot of steps we go through to make sure everything's OK.

First, we make sure that all your details match up between your blood test and the tube of blood we recieve, to make sure the person taking your blood didn't accidentally put someone else's blood with your test.

Then we run the test - most tests are finished within a few hours of collecting your blood. All the tests we do are checked every 3-6 hours to make sure all the machinery and the stuff we use to do the tests is working correctly.

When your result comes back, a biomedical scientist checks it to make sure it's valid, and most of the time we'll repeat a test if it had an unusual result just to be extra sure it's correct. Then, an even more senior kind of scientist will check the result and think about it in the context of your condition, add any notes for your doctor to see, add any extra tests that would be helpful.

Usually, because of the extensive checking system, the only time a 'wrong' result will actually get out is if the person taking the blood made a mistake and got the wrong blood in the tube - e.g. by mixing up name stickers and putting your name on a different person's tube, because the lab doesn't have any way to know that happened unless you had another blood test very recently and the results are now wildly different. And trust me, it's a very big deal to us when we find mistakes, and your doctor will be notified if a mistake is made.

thank you for the clarification my dear