full medical lab panel - isn't

A “full panel”, blood and urine, gives a bunch of numbers for your doctor to look at. But the definition of “full” is more “what your insurance company will pay for” or “only what your doctor asked for” than “everything.”

Three things that are *not* part of a full panel (at least in my area), are:

Thyroid

Vitamin D

Testosterone

I had to look up my own symptoms and then ask for the tests. There was no problem with my doctor or insurance carrier for performing or paying for them, but I had to ask for them, even though they were clearly part of the diagnostic chain for my symptoms.

Note there are several different thyroid tests that indicate very different things. Same for testosterone (and a proper testosterone test includes estradiol). And for all three test, there’s no generally-accepted “normal”, or rather “there are so many standards, choose the one you like.”

Also, if you have ever had kidney stones, or are on a diet with foods that are high in oxalates (a lot of “healthy” and low-carb diets are; look up “oxalate charts”), you need to ask for an oxalate test. Normally you don’t get that test until *after* you’ve had an experience like yanking a wire brush through your urethra. And if you get a stone up in a ureter (the passage between a kidney and the bladder) all oxycodone does it take the edge off.