There will not be blood… labs

Unfortunately, we’re not talking about the lab that your professor assigned for homework this week. Those are still due.

But in the midst of classes and labs, you may have gotten stressed out and strolled on over to Wellness Services for a little TLC, and if so, you may have noticed that due to the recent budget cuts — MRU will no longer be offering medical laboratory services to the students and staff at the school.

So unless you’re one of the lucky never-get-sick people, you’ll have to get your blood-work done elsewhere.

We’re all familiar with the horror stories of the public laboratory services, which usually sound something like, “the wait time was horrendous”, “the staff were just plain cranky”, or “it was so hard to get an appointment that worked with my schedule”.

But as much as we hate to admit it, behind every horror story lies a certain degree of truth.

If you’re planning on heading down to a public laboratory to get your blood-work done, you may want to set quite a bit of time aside for the task. Wait times can be arduous at many of these establishments because they serve the larger community.

Getting an appointment for your blood work greatly decreases this wait time, sometimes cutting it down to as little as 15 minutes, but the problem for students is getting an appointment that suits your needs.

Unless you book your appointment well in advance, there may not be a whole lot of opportunity to get a time that works with your class and work schedule.

“I think it’s a shame to see the labs go,” says Kelly Innes, one of the lab’s many visitors who will now have to rely on the Calgary Laboratory Services (CLS). “It was really convenient to be able to get the lab work done at school, whereas now I’ll have to take hours out of my day, just to get the same thing done somewhere else.”

So from now on you’ll want to take your vitamins, stock up on tissues, and make your best efforts at staying healthy, otherwise that illness may just cost you even more time than you think.