Okay, I read what Mrs. Doubtfire posted so I immediately called Dr. Fred's office. Frank, the nurse (who is studying to be a doctor and who knows us), well, I immediatly had him pull the blood test out of the computer and he said "Let me run this by Dr. Fred". Dr. Fred immediately came on the phone and I ran the possibility of the insulinoma tumor by him. He said "absolutely not".

He said "If Alan always had low blood sugar readings, he'd be hypoglycemic, but this was a 3 hour glucose tolerance test. Don't worry, the next time Alan comes in, I'll do a fasting insulin level test. I am not worried about this 38 reading."

I said "you know how he craves everything with splenda on it, and he goes, "yes, I know but don't worry, he doesn't have a insulinoma tumor".

I then told him Alan is scheduled for the spinal tap on February 5. He said "good", Next time he comes in we'll do another glucose tolerance test on him so don't worry". He seemed to know what the hell he was talking about.

I check Alan's sugar every day. It's always around 85 to 90. And as for craving sweets,(I don't know if you'd call this craving sweets, but when he does eat something he enjoys it more if it has splenda on it. He can't taste things that aren't sweet. Is that the same as craving sweets? Every night he has a bowl of fiber one cereal with some splenda on it. He never eats anything with sugar and he eats fish or chicken with veggie patties at night. I was told a long time ago that his enjoying things that are sweet was because of the taste perversion from the fentanyl pain patch he was on for over 2 years. That it did something to his taste buds. He can't have anything with salt either.

Will a spinal tap reveal anything about an insulinoma tumor?

Honestly, Dr. Fred didn't just brush me off, He had the blood tests in his hands (Frank had given it to him), he looked at it and said "Melody don't worry, it's the total count we look at. He never has low blood sugar.

So who am I to trust here.

I'm going to look up insulinoma tumors on the web.

Melody