Hello Dragonfly. Where I get my blood work done is a sub lab to life labs so I can't get my results on line, but if I could I would.
As Buddy Mack sez there are many reasons why a blood sample could be outside of a given range. However I do like to see my results so I bug my doctor(s) for them. The reason why I like to see my results are two fold. Take a kidney function test. I may be at the high end of the acceptable range and one year later be at the low end of the acceptable range. ( labs generally uses three ranges , over, acceptable and under or some variation thereof, plus an actual number. ). If I go from being great to just barely acceptable I want to know why or I may want to ask for a retest to see if their was some reason for the difference. My G.P. , who sees thousands of test results in a year has a tendency to say everything is fine as long as it's in the acceptable range.
Plus, while I have every confidence in my G.P., he is human and human make mistakes. I'm sure that every morning dozens of those tests pour out of his fax machine and are under stuck under his nose for his review and I'm sure it's possible for him to miss something.
In regards to the actual numbers I don't always understand them either, but I can understand the ranges that they usually give. For example if 1-10 is unacceptable and 11-20 is ok, but 21-30 is poor and my reading is 24 then I know I might have a problem. The same goes if my reading is 18 on one test and 6 mths later its 12 I might want to know why the big decrease. Whereas my G.P. probably doesn't pull out my last blood test and compare the two. As long as it's in the acceptable range it's ok.
Sorry for the long winded explanation. Take Care. paul m