How Does Someone Just Lose Your Blood? Or, How Our Lives Almost Became A Dean Koontz Book

Have you ever been to see the doctor when you had to have blood work done?  It's usually a pretty straight forward process.  You sit in a chair, they wipe the inside of your arm with some alcohol, a small prick, squeeze your hand into a fist, (try not to pass out, in my case...) and it's over in a jiffy.  Your blood looks thick and gross in those little tubes, but the magical fairy takes those little tubes to be analyzed at some lab and results come a few days later.

That's how it usually works...

For this pregnancy, we had an option open to us that apparently wasn't available three years ago.  Well, maybe it was available, but not for the purposes that we wanted it for.  One of the tests you can have performed on you early in your pregnancy is a screening for genetic defects, specifically for things like down syndrome.  It's called Cell-Free Fetal DNA testing, and is actually a pretty clever in how it works.

The bases for the test is that when blood from the mother circulates to the placenta, some of the baby's blood gets into the mother's bloodstream as well.  By simply taking a blood sample from the mom after a certain number of weeks, BOOM you have baby blood too.  Obviously the first thing the doctors look for is chromosomal anomalies such as Down Syndrome (which would show up in some of the blood cells and not others, i.e. the mother's).  Another thing that they can look for is the presence of a "Y" chromosome floating around in any of the blood cells which would indicate a male baby (since mama doesn't have a Y).

Pretty neat process but it seems like something Average Joe could think up in the shower.

Since this was a non-mandatory test (seeing as we are still not considered "high risk") we still had to pay for it, but getting to know the gender like 10 weeks earlier than with an unltrasound?  We were on board.  We scheduled an appointment, Jun got her blood drawn and we began the 2-week wait to find out our results.

We were told that it might be sooner earlier than two weeks, but sure enough after waiting the entire designated period, we placed a call to our doctor's office, who assured us that they hadn't heard anything.  

Ok, Well, I guess we'll just go right to the source.  We got a name of a representative of the company doing the test and after going back and forth with her we found out that the never did our test, although they did have a record of receiving Jun's blood sample.  

"Well why didn't you test it?"

"Um.....

...

...

...

...we lost your blood sample."

"What?"

"We got your sample, but we can't find it."

How does an organization (Pun?  I'm not sure.) go about losing this sort of thing?  I mean, it's basically what they do.  Presumably you need some sort of degree to work at a place like this, but maybe they accept people with degrees earned by mail in the Caymen Islands.

Then a thought more sinister set in.... what if the blood wasn't lost, it was stolen.  What if Jun's blood contained a cure for an illness that would be extremely profitable.  What if they are doing weird genetic experiments?  What if there is a clone of Jun out there right now?  Will I have to get both of them an anniversary gift?  I spoke to my dad and he agreed that this is how a good techno/horror/thriller novel gets started.  I guess only time will tell...

Mr. Koontz, be sure to cut me in on a share of the royalties when your book with this premise becomes a #1 Bestseller.

Anyway, we have another appointment to draw blood tomorrow and wait ANOTHER two weeks.  Hopefully they don't "lose" this sample.