Tips for getting the most out of medical tests

What is it with doctors that they think their time is more valuable than yours, leaving you to cool your heels in the waiting room for an hour or more past your scheduled appointment?

One way to get around this is to make sure you get the first appointment of the day or the first appointment after lunch. No one will have tied up the doctor or staff before they see you, and everyone will be more refreshed and less rushed than if they're running between you, the "chronic cough" and the "foot fungus."

If you call your dermatologist in June and ask for an appointment for your annual skin check in August, the receptionist may say, "Why don't you wait until December when you don't have a tan and it's easier to see any irregularities?" She will go right ahead and make your appointment without passing along this vital information. But now you know, so hold off on that exam until winter.

Okay, guys, you can tune out here. This is just for the ladies.

Before you schedule that annual Pap test, check your calendar. The best time for the test is the week before or after you ovulate, usually the first or third week of your menstrual cycle, says Dr. Mary Hardy.

This is when the cervical opening is widest, so it's easier to get a sample, and the cervical mucus is thinnest, increasing the accuracy of the test.

Another one for the ladies.

Ladies, whether anyone talks about it or not, having your breasts squeezed between two glass plates in a futile attempt to make them as flat as a pancake hurts. But it must be done (every year or two from age 40 onwards).

To reduce the pain, time your mammogram for the week after your period, suggests the Canadian Cancer Society. Your breasts are less tender and, an added bonus, a major study found mammograms taken during this time are more accurate.

They're less likely to result in false positives, while mammograms taken during the second half of your menstrual cycle are twice as likely to miss a cancer.

Just the thought of it gives us the shivers, but once you turn 50, a colonoscopy should be as much a part of that passage as a midlife crisis.

You can make the whole thing easier on yourself by following a liquid diet for two days before the procedure so during the pre-procedure "clean-out" you don't have the, ahem, "matter" to clean out.

No one likes lying on the cold metal bed of a PET scanner waiting to learn if he has cancer. But if you're covered with a warm blanket, the test will not only be more comfortable, but more accurate. That's because special tissue called "brown fat," the kind that keeps you warm, also tends to absorb the radioactive tracer used in a PET scan to identify cancers, misleading doctors into thinking the fat cells are cancer cells or even hiding actual cancer cells.

The warm blanket, however, can reduce the amount of tracer the fat takes in by 62 percent.

Other ways to ensure an accurate PET scan include abstaining from strenuous activity and caffeinated beverages before the scan.

Follow these steps and take the headache and frustration out of these essential stops.