Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Nine weeks (well, tomorrow anyway)


So I tried the Zofran last night, as I started to get really nauseated around 9 PM.  Guess what?  It didn’t work AT ALL.  Was still extremely nauseated when I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion at 3 AM.  Which now has me nearly in a panic about how I’m going to handle this trans-continental trip coming up Friday…ugh.  Isn’t there any relief from this???

I’m having a new series of symptoms, too, which I have self-diagnosed as “too much progesterone”.  What research I’ve done shows that right around now the placenta should be taking over proper progesterone production, so between now and week 11 or so I shouldn’t need the progesterone suppositories anymore.  The last two-three days I have had terrible night sweats (the bed is positively soaked when I wake up now), and I have such extreme fatigue that I am just stumbling around the house, foggy brained and off kilter, which isn’t like me at all.  Yesterday when I got back from Kaiser I literally could not peel myself off the couch – and this is different from my usual “I’m just going to enjoy being lazy” thing; this was a real, I literally cannot get up kind of tired.  Is it possible I’m od’ing on progesterone?  Should I stop the suppositories now?  The screwed up thing is, nobody will answer this question.

Since I forgot to ask at my ultrasound appointment Monday, I e-mailed this question, and they told me they can’t tell me, I have to ask my RE (I don’t have an RE).  The “clinic” tells me to ask Kaiser, they can’t tell me.  You know what I think is going on here?  I think nobody wants to tell me when to stop the progesterone because they don’t want me to miscarry and sue them.  So here I am with a real medical problem, and nobody will help me because of litigation fears.  Doesn’t that sum up one of the main problems of healthcare in the US!

I’m not really sure what to do now.  The funny thing with Kaiser is I don’t have a doctor – I haven’t been assigned to anyone; the visits so far have consisted of random nurses who I will never see again.  I’m kind of adrift.  There is that RE I saw once for the Femara – and I’ll see him again if I absolutely have to – but to see him costs $350, and he may just randomly tell me, “uh….stop around ten weeks” which is sort of what I know anyway, so is it really worth $350 just to be told what Google can tell me?  Or do they monitor me first, take a level, to make sure it’s ok to stop?  I may call the clinic just to ask them this, even though they won’t tell me when to stop.  Maybe they can at least tell me if I’m supposed to be checked out first or if I should just stop when the prescription runs out.  Or do I wean off slowly instead of stopping abruptly…so many questions.  It sure would be nice if all along I had an RE that was my guy who would walk me through my whole pregnancy and hold my hand…but unfortunately it hasn’t gone that way for me.

In other news, I wrote my mother today.  She wrote back in a few minutes, very excited and happy.  There’s a part of me, and it’s not a small part, that thinks having a baby will heal our relationship.  But I am so afraid of her – she’s let me down so many times – that trust is going to be hard.  The good news is she’s in Brazil and isn’t coming to the US any time soon, so having a polite e-mail relationship is something I think I can handle. 

I can’t tell you how grateful I am that (other than this trip this weekend) I don’t have any obligations right now, and that it’s been a very mild summer here in SoCal.  If I were broiling with the heat and having to get up and get dressed and be out in the world, it would be SO hard.  Again, kudos to all the women who survived this kind of illness with far more on their plates than me, I don’t know how you do it!

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