Anyone who knows anything about blood clotting?

[Munchlet]

So once a year I do a home blood test to check my Thyroid levels. It's a long story but it's agreed with my GP and he's happy with this.

The method is a finger prick test that goes off to a lab and gets analysed.

To be honest it's a bit of a messy procedure and I think I'm going to get the GP to do them in future but basically you prick your finger and drop some blood into a test tube which is not that easy as it's fiddly and you are trying to drip blood into the worlds smallest tube.

I was doing this just now and dripping the blood in. The whole process had taken about 20 minutes and I then stupidly knocked the tube over and the blood came out.

What concerned me was the blood was mainly clotted. I've never really noticed before because I've not knocked it over or really looked but is this normal?

I'm now worrying I've got something wrong with me blood for it to have formed a clot and I'm also questioning how they can do the test with a blood clot.

I've already diagnosed myself with about 10 different things and now having a complete meltdown! :weep:

[mare serenitatis]

Your blood clot timing is reliant on your INR. Your blood is supposed to clot. Your INR can be affected by many, many things. People on blood thinners are told to be careful of certain foods because they can affect your INR drastically enough that your dosage can change.

I’ve never heard of someone doing these sorts of tests from home. Also; I don’t know what they’ll end up checking from a pin prick. If you’re concerned, I’d do them from your GP from this point onward. There’s multiple variances in what a doctor can order in terms of thyroid blood panels. And as far as I knew- they require more than a prick. I don’t know how you go about this, but there’s ways to handle and store blood, so unless you’re dropping it off somewhere, I don’t really get how this is helpful.

Whatever 10 different things you’ve diagnosed yourself with, I’ll be willing to bet you have 0 of them. A lot of what we lay people read in terms of medicine removes a lot of really important diagnostic criteria that any person actually trained in medicine would be able to see didn’t apply immediately.

If you’re older, overweight, sedentary, have bruises on your legs- and at risk for certain things there’s really more benefit in seeing your GP for that. Otherwise, I don’t really think that doing this yourself is good if you’ve already got anxiety. It’s probably also just better to see your doctor once a year, in general.

[lucymarie]

I do home blood tests but because of the ones I need they have to be done by a local professional privately, although I have seen finger-prick ones for certain, less complicated tests. I had some done only recently actually and I had a quick look at the tubes (ew never again lol) and it did seem pretty clotted. If there was any issue with it the lab would likely comment on it when it arrived.

---------- Post added at 17:36 ---------- Previous post was at 17:33 ----------




I’ve never heard of someone doing these sorts of tests from home. Also; I don’t know what they’ll end up checking from a pin prick. If you’re concerned, I’d do them from your GP from this point onward. There’s multiple variances in what a doctor can order in terms of thyroid blood panels. And as far as I knew- they require more than a prick. I don’t know how you go about this, but there’s ways to handle and store blood, so unless you’re dropping it off somewhere, I don’t really get how this is helpful.


Sometimes in the UK our GP's don't want to run tests for whatever reason or less frequently than we would like etc. We can order home-kits online that are either finger-prick or they send you blood collection kits and you take them to a local professional and then post them back to a specialist lab who uploads your results with GP comments online. It's super quick and is often more efficient than our NHS system which can take a long time. I guess it's just personal preference really.

[mare serenitatis]

Oh cool! I didn’t know that! Thank you!

[Munchlet]

Hi Guys

Thanks for the replies, I do my own because over here the GP's can only order one of the thyroid tests which measures the TSH level in your blood. It doesn't show the free level of thyroid hormones and unless your TSH level is out of range they won't do it.

My TSH level was 0.19 away from being out of range and I had lots of symptoms. It's also really common in my family so my GP said a trial of thyroid hormones would be worthwhile. I also had only just in range levels of the free hormones (I got those tests done myself) so we agreed rather than wait for my TSH to finally reach the level he would treat and I'd get the tests done. It just made sense as it had been slowly rising over the years and he said it was ridiculous the NHS didn't look at the bigger picture when it came to Thyroid problems.

Sorry that was really longwinded by just wanted to explain as I guess it does look a bit odd doing your own blood tests at home.

I have calmed down a bit since I've read they coat the tubes with specific chemicals which induce clotting or prevent it dependent on what they are testing. I'm assuming looking at my blood it was coated with the chemicals to promote clotting, especially as it looked like normal blood when it was coming out.

Thanks for responding though, I was a quivering wreck this morning!