I may as well have had my head in a bucket December 14, 2010

Important first things first: I am not bleeding.

There. Now we can all relax for another 24 hours.

So, this morning I didn’t pee on anything interesting at all. I went straight to The Professor’s clinic, where a very, very gentle nurse took two vials of blood, and still left an absolutely navy-blue bruise, despite endless care taken in putting pressure on the puncture (we are blaming the aspirin). And then I went on to work.

Work was (mostly) nicely distracting, because we had the annual Christmas lunch for my team, and so we all went off to a restaurant and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

And I was the only one not drinking, and the only one who didn’t have coffee, and the only one who couldn’t finish her pudding (chocolate suddenly tastes quite grim. Too sweet and metallic. This… well, I’m distraught, is what. Chocolate not lovely? Chocolate not comforting? WHAT?). I muttered something about medication. Line-manager did Significant Eye-Brows. Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Mid-afternoon, I finished tidying my desk and putting post-it notes on everything on it (just in case… You know. Just in case) and took myself back across town to The Professor’s clinic, where, shortly, H joined me, and very shortly after that, The Professor called us in to her office.

At which point every single synapse in my fore-brain fused into a jellified lump of stupid. My only conscious thought was ‘I bet she’s going to tell me I’m not really pregnant.’

No, she didn’t tell me that.

What she did tell me was that the aspirin alone had normalised my blood-clotting, so I didn’t need heparin. Just stay on the aspirin. She then went on to book me in for a scan next week, just as if this pregnancy was going to last that long. And a scan for January as well. Bitter McTwisted had full control of all conscious thought by this point, so I asked what I was supposed to do when I started bleeding. I’m fairly sure I said ‘when’ and not ‘if’, but The Professor merely gave me a kindly look and the appropriate phone numbers. It’s all very awkward, Christmas cantering about in the middle of all this and shutting offices for days at a time. We have people to phone, and people to phone when the people to phone aren’t there to phone, and the option of just turning up on the obstetrics ward next door and wailing like a banshee. I feel, not reassured, exactly. More of an ‘at least I won’t have to explain everything eight million times to eight million people this time’ feeling. I am grim, but calm.

It’s going to be a long, long week.

And I very much wish my brain hadn’t liquefied in sheer terror in The Professor’s office, and I very much wish H’s hadn’t either. I don’t know if I actually had an HCG blood test. And if I did, I certainly don’t know what it said. The nurse took two vials, but as far as I’m aware a TEG test only needs a little bit of blood. At the time of the stabbing I didn’t question the second vial – I thought it was the HCG. But The Professor didn’t mention it during the visit and I didn’t ask. How much am I paying this woman to forget to ask her these things? What the hell is wrong with me?

On the other hand, The Professor seemed perfectly satisfied that I was, indeed, pregnant and not about to miscarry any second now. She reassured me that while she knew she couldn’t tell me not to worry, I was on the right medication now, and doing the right things. Scan next week, right?

Right. And logically, I know that HCG tests cost money, and are usually used diagnostically to make sure a suspected ectopic isn’t about to tear merry hell through your guts, or to confirm whether a bleed is one of those things or a Royal Fucker of those things. So maybe they didn’t bother doing one and we’re winging this on the strength of one-and-a-half pee-sticks bought cheap on the Internet.

Never mind. I shall email her PA again tomorrow and ask for the numbers. That’s what expensive private clinics are for – to harrass for information.

Whole consultation lasted about five minutes. After which H took his credit-card over to reception and handed it over for a thorough rogering. Walking away from the place, we had a slightly nervous discussion as to financing of Operation Schrödinger Take Six, but we still have a bit of the money my mother gave us for just this sort of thing, plus all the goddamn money I saved up for IVF, and it’s fine. It’s fine. As the Hairy Farmer Wifey said yesterday, “Ah, the proactiveness of private healthcare. Itches a bit around the morals and the wallet, but awfully soothing where it counts!”

And to be honest, I think the NHS and my principles have duked it out between them so long that I think I’m owed some expensive queue-jumping kid-glovery. Bring it on.

Cling to the Plan December 13, 2010

Item – The Plan is working. I emailed The Professor’s clinic, her PA emailed me back within two hours. It is settled that I go to the clinic at the bum-crack of dawn tomorrow and get my blood drawn. Then, I am permitted to go away and play until rather later that afternoon, when The Professor will see me with the results of the blood-tests there on her desk on a silver salver, and we will discuss heparin and other such matters.

Item – Meanwhile, I went to work, I did a full day’s work and more so, as many many lots of colleagues are off lurgified, and half the remainder are sneaking in their Christmas holidays early.

Item – Nevertheless, my line manager is On Board with The Plan, and kept reminding me to take it easy whenever we were in the same room together. I did not tell her I was p-word, but I am fairly sure she guessed, on account of not being stupid at all.

Item – After work, I went to the Staff Christmas Party (w00t) and drank several glasses of fruit-juice and tried not to eat more than my body-weight in tinky sandwiches. A group of us ended up in a corner talking animatedly about office politics *ahem* right up until we realised the Boss of Bosses was standing right behind us, smiling benevolently. Oy vey. And I was stone-cold-sober.

Item – Yes, well. What with the resolute alcohol avoidance and line-manager’s behaviour all day, no doubt the moment I collected my coat and left, the Gossip, it exploded.

Item – Symptoms: Mildly upset stomach this morning (no, no, the other end. Yes. Ick. Common with me the day my period starts (*twitch*)). Occasional mild cramps. Occasional achey breasts. Occasional desire to date-stamp the person infront of me right between the eyes and then lie down on the floor and kick things. No sign of spotting or any other disconcertment. No nausea. No heartburn. No beep-beep boobie buttons.

Item – Schrödinger’s uterus again, eh?

Now set the teeth

Thank you thank you thank you all for the out-pouring of support on yesterday’s post. It meant so much to me. You’re all wonderful.

This morning’s pee-stick (of course I peed on another stick. What do you take me for?) was much fainter. There, and there before the magic ten minutes were up, but fainter.

I also peed on a First Response Early Response test that has been hanging about in the bathroom for over a year, and it came up negative. I staved off a full-blown freak-out by the POAS website, which has FRER’s sensitivity cut-off as 25 mIU (new, oval window version). If I was barely triggering a 10 mIU stick yesterday morning, and HCG doubles every 48 hours, then, well, I’ve just wasted a FRER, as it wouldn’t have shown anything until Wednesday even in the best case scenario.

Bugger. They’re not cheap.

(On the ‘be brave, little Piglet!’ front, it’s 11dpo, and my temperature has not dropped. I feel sick, but that could be nerves (is certainly nerves)).

Anyway, as H pointed out, this doesn’t change The Plan. The Plan is, email (and, if I start to hyperventilate, telephone) The Professor’s clinic, letting them know what has happened and asking them when they’d like me to go in. Go to work. Tell trusted and thoughtful office manager who deals with everyone’s sick leave and trusted and kindly line-manager that I am negotiating a medical… issue… and may have to disappear at short notice to visit the clinic. Go to the office Christmas party this evening and drink a lot of grapefruit juice.

Adopt brave and insouciant demeanor, stiffen upper lip, sinews, and spine, imitate the action of the tiger, summon up the… NO! NO! We categorically DO NOT summon up the blood!

Once more unto the breach December 12, 2010

I found an Internet Pee-stick of Over-Sensitive Doom that hadn’t expired this morning. Again, I was up at seven because my bladder had woken up and wanted walkies (harrumph). Having duly anointed said stick, I sat in the living room watching the light of the sunrise on the white birch trees outside, trying to think deep and poetical thoughts. At 8:30 I thought the hell with it, and went and woke H up. H loves being woken up by a twitching wife holding a urine-soaked bit of plastic under his nose.

Can you see that? How about now?

H put his arms around me, and said, kindly but sternly, ‘and now you must relax.’

I said, ‘you must be fucking kidding me.’ And then I laughed quite loudly in a slightly worrying way. So H stroked my hair and then made me a cup of tea, because he is beautifully trained, like all the best butlers.

This will either make or break Christmas forever.

(Yes, yes, I am taking the aspirin. I have been for a couple of days now. You can all relax about the aspirin).

The jury are deliberating January 11, 2010

I actually dreamt I was having a mad passionate affair with a Depp-alike last night. It was highly enjoyable. Truly, my subconscious is a peverse and inappropriate place to linger.

Meanwhile H was sleeping poorly and has woken up with an entire set of Lous Vuitton under each eye. Life is not fair.

When we got to the EPU at Mothership, the nurse was terribly apologetic for the queue, there was a long queue, because the computer wasn’t working (oy vey but the Mothership’s new system is doing my head in). There were quite a few people sitting about in the waiting room, but by no means anything I’d call a proper NHS queue. It’s things like this that endear Mothership to me so. The staff are so flustered if you have to wait for more than 10 minutes, even when it couldn’t possibly be their fault.

We waited for about 40 minutes.

I was quite pleased it wasn’t for three or four hours. Ooh, look at me in my big dusty Veteran Boots.

And then, bless the nurse all over again, she was terribly apologetic for having to stick me in my tender pallid flesh. And to think I had just been about to compliment her on her technique – it was one of the least uncomfortable blood-draws I’ve had in months. And then we both had a look at my file to see where we’d got to in all the testing, and I felt my usual mind-bending surge of adrenalin on seeing that, holy crap, the NHS actually thinks I might be pregnant rather than delusional, and then I was allowed to go home and wait for the results.

Whereapon we’ll find out whether I have, after all, spent the past week being completely delusional.

The nurse warned the results could take all day. Bah. Bah bah bah arse bah damn and bollocks.

Mood: Trip to and back from hospital, on verge of tears, sure Zombryo had died, sure entire thing was miserable waste of time, deeply freaked out and upset by mild cramping I’d been having since the night before (no bleeding at all. Mild cramping is normal in early pregnancy. Jaysus, May, you are such a big girl’s blouse). Currently, have had some toast and a cup of tea, Universe suddenly seems less bleak, desire to cry has receded (low blood sugar always turns me into Pissy, Goddess of Anxst. H knows this. My Mum knows this. The entirety of sentient creation knows this. I don’t know this, because, clearly, I am not sentient).

What to do to pass the time? I would knit, but such was the ferocity of my tension last night, I snapped the yarn. So much for the soothing needle arts.

I cannot concentrate. Have some randomness. January 10, 2010

Item – Look at all my lovely delurkers! Aren’t they amazing and wonderful? Aren’t they the greatest? And, to my delight, such a varied bunch of people, posting fascinating snippets of their own stories (not all of which were tales of TTC woebollockydreariness. I have cross-community appeal, people! Humbled and awed, humbled and awed. Oh yes). Also, the praise? Am pink. Nay, fuchsia. And all giggly and half-in-tears. And I want to throw a party and buy you all Harvey Wallbangers (what? I just like the name. You can have Margaritas if you prefer (or Mojitos. Mojitos are good)).

Item – Meanwhile, in the seemingly endless saga of Zombryo! The Indeterminate Embryo! absolutely nothing is happening. Except the semi-constant mild nausea and near-bludgeoning unconscious of H when he failed to take absolutely seriously my bellow of ‘shut up about the mayonnaise already!’ yesterday lunch-time.

Item – Mayonnaise, at the moment, seems like the most revolting substance on God’s bright earth. And to think a few short weeks ago I would have happily eaten underlay as long as someone spread enough mayonnaise on it.

Item – I am well aware the nausea thing looks like a chirpily positive sign of excellent hormonal progress within. It could just as easily be a hysterical sign of how I keep talking myself first into and then out of feeling sick by winding myself up to fever-pitch over presence/absence of viable embryo in uterus/fallopian tube. I. Have. No. Fingernails. At. All.

Item – I defied the Universe yesterday and went to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with my good friend E (we’ve had the tickets for months. I do not allow my recalcitrant spawn to keep me from my first love, theatre). Oh, it was brilliant. Brilliant! So glad I went. James Earl Jones! Adrian Lester! Squeeee! And, OMFG, did you know it had an infertility sub-plot? And isn’t Mae of the five no-neck monsters (sixth on the way) the mostest prize bitch? E gave me the odd nervous sideways look, but seriously, I was laughing my fool head off. Good times, good times.

Item – I have decided that with the honourable exception of E, who doesn’t even know this blog exists but looked after me like a Lalique figurine yesterday, I met all my best friends on the internet. Exemplum: I declare to various friends I may be having a third (fourth if we’re counting the possible-chemical in September) miscarriage. Internet friends send a myriad texts (hi, HFF!) and emails, and phone me (hi, Sol!) and send me flowers (hi, Ben and Z! They’re beautiful!) and virtual hugs and check up on me constantly and, you know, show they care. Real-life friends? One ‘oh dear’ message in an email concerned, among other things, with how they will probably turn down our invitation to visit and go to the opera in April because they, and I am serious, want to finish putting together their new built-in wardrobes. They know this in January. Why not just add ‘and we’ll be washing our hair,’ and have done with it?

Item – I did make a New Year’s Resolution to be more open and honest about the woebollockydreariness. I have ‘shared’ more in more situations. I must remember that this has been mostly a good positive thing, and that most people have reacted with courtesy and kindness. I will remember this. I must remember this.

Schrödinger’s Uterus January 8, 2010

[It's Delurking Week! You can still delurk! Oh, go on, you know you want to.]

At the beginning of the week, I announced we had six pee-sticks left in the house. Any takers on how many we have left?

Anyone?

Six. Yes. I have not peed on a single stick.

Every time I have felt tempted to go forth and anoint the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, I have panicked. ‘May,’ I say to myself, firmly, ‘Seriously. What would you do if it was negative?’

And the answer is, invariably, tear all my hair out. And lie, snatched bald and sobbing hysterically, on the bathroom floor for at least 37 hours. And then go for my repeat beta on Monday anyway, and cry in the hospital waiting-room before, during and after. And the whole thing will ruin my stomach lining forever. Not to mention H’s stomach lining.

My hair’s quite pretty, you know. I can’t possibly risk it.

Meanwhile, for those of you playing symptom Black Box* (why, yes, I am a raging geek, thank you for noticing), we have the following ‘rays’ :

• Nausea. Faint, sporadic nausea, which tends to be worse when hungry or thinking about mayonnaise or sardines. Could just as easily be put down to hunger-pangs or nerves.
• Heart-burn. Yes, but I’m a bit of a martyr to heart-burn when stressed.
• Burping. Getting ridiculously frequent. Horrible when coinciding with nausea, as it feels like stomach contents are making a dash for freedom only just thwarted by length of oesophagus.
• No bleeding. No fresh blood at all since the last beta. I can’t, therefore, logically argue it’s all over, as, you know, rising beta as bleeding stopped. But this line of thought makes me fretful, so I shall abandon it right here.
• No cramping. Monday and Tuesday I was afflicted with dull ‘ha-ha I am your period-in-waiting’ twinges, but they’ve been coming less and less frequently, and really aren’t very painful when I do get them. More a ‘hello! This is where your uterus is!’ signal.
• My breasts are declining to get involved at this stage. They look and feel much the same as ever. Once in a while, one or other will say ‘ouch!’ and then disclaim all knowledge and insist I imagined it and could I please stop jabbing and fondling them like that?
• Headaches. Lots and lots of headaches. Probably due to sudden and complete cessation of coffee-drinking. Argh.

On Monday, we shall collapse Zombryo’s wave function by taking yet another beta (I think the veins in my right hand and arm have healed quite well). If said beta is over 1000, we shall know Zombryo lives, and will need an urgent name change to something rather less sardonic. If it is under 1000, but over 64, we shall freak and tear our hair. And if it has gone down, we shall, well. We shall just have to get over it and start all over again. So, so much easier typed than done. Ach. I’d rather not think about that at the moment. Wimpy, but there it is.

I don’t know if they’ll bother with a scan in the third scenario.

The only way out is through. So. Onwards.

* What do you mean, you’ve never heard of Black Box? I spent at least nine hundred afternoons playing this as a kid. Nearly as good as Mastermind for starting all-in family rows.

(Anyone here need to look up the reference to Schrödinger? Or, for that matter, black boxes?)

Waiting for the snow January 5, 2010

I, idle little super-special snow-flake that I am, am still in bed. I know it’s lunch-time.

Things achieved today:

1. Called work and left rambling out-burst of apologies on the answer-phone for someone else to deal with. I think I said I’d email them at some point today. I have not done that yet.
2. Eaten two slices of toast. This took me three hours. Why did it take me three hours? Because I feel sick, that’s why. Don’t get me started on the mthrfcking irony of getting morning sickness at 14 dpo while on exploding-tube-watch.
3. Taken my lap-top back to bed with me and played Sims. Because, goddamnit, if my life’s not perfect, their lives will be. Make it so.
4. Knitted about two rows of a brand new project I had no business casting on for when there’s so many unfinished things lying about the flat weeping in neglected despair.
5. Umm… That’s it.

H is in the study, actually working, so I feel I can’t go and pester him just because I’m bored and slightly nauseous. I’m supposed to be saving him for distraught and in terrible agony.

Poor H. He is taking all this drama rather hard. I think he has had a non-stop stomach ache since I woke him with my thrashing and flailing at dawn last Wednesday and told him that he would now have to put his trousers on and find me a) sanitary towels and b) a pregnancy test and c) two paracetamol. At two weeks into the cycle. Even he knew this was weird and stupid and possibly delusional, but because he is a Good Husband, he did as he was asked.

And then the whole business of this happening in his parents’ wee hoosie. The In-Laws were angelic about letting me lie down out of everyone’s way on their bed (the hoosie is so wee H and I sleep in the living-room on the World’s Most Uncomfortable Sofa-Bed when we visit), and angelic about driving me to hospital when the pregnancy test came up positive and the kind person on the NHS Direct phoneline basically peed her pants a little and told me to go to the A&E NOW NOW NOW. And we all thought I was miscarrying and possibly rupturing something important into the bargain and I was in a lot of pain (grey, taciturn, scowling miserably) and I was bleeding and it was all a little, you know, personal, and they were both so sad and anxious for me, and God it was a miserable day.

Since when H has been chauffeur, hand-holder-in-chief and general dogs-body, and has watched complete strangers shove phallic things into what he has every right to regard as his private play-ground, and his wife wince when they do it, and he hates needles and yet there they are sticking endless needles into said wife and leaving socking great bruises behind, and then there’s constant waiting for the other shoe to drop and even more medical horrors to ensue.

And all the while, this is a man who longs to be a father, and who loves his wife, and he can’t protect her from all this, and he’s been through it all twice before, and I think he’s having trouble with the elasticity of his tether.

But he’s being very brave about it, and has just brought me lunch. In bed. So I can carry on being a super-special snow-flake.

And so we wait for the promised snow to start falling.

Whoa, what happened to the optimism? January 4, 2010

Item – I managed to get a GP appointment for this morning. Yay!

Item – The GP was, naturally, one I’d never seen before in my entire life (oh, the joys of belonging to a large urban practice). But she was sweet, and sweet is good.

Item – We explained the Saga and showed her all the letters from Mothership Hospital’s EPU. She did a visible double-take when reading the date of my last period. Yes, quite, that’s what we all thought.

Item – She then asked me the very same thing quite a few nurses and doctors and consultants have asked me now. What on earth made me take a pregnancy test at a mere two weeks into the cycle? What, apart from the violent stabbing cramping pain in my right iliac fossa and sudden freaky bleeding? Surely if anything gynaecologically weird happens, you reach for the HPT? No? Oh. Well, I decided explaining about calm, sardonic little voices in the back of my head was open to misinterpretation. So I waffled something about feeling a bit sicky and weird and having a hyper-sensitive sense of smell, as in all previous pregnancies (and most previous luteal phases, but hell no I’m not mentioning that).

Item – Dear Internets, this was actually untrue. The nausea and tracker-hound smellorama only started a couple of days ago. At the time I took the test, I only had that little voice, sounding wryly amused at the very suggestion it was making.

Item – Anyway, the GP seemed a little non-plussed by the original diagnosis of non-viable and/or ectopic, so I reminded her of the weird dates and weird bleeding and weird cramps. She went through a delicate routine of trying to be optimistic about the rising beta (but not a doubling beta, as H keeps pointing out, I think because the sight of people being chirpy about this causes him actual physical pain he’s so anxious), while expressing due acknowledgement of the all-tits-up nature of the Saga so far. She even, Gottenyu, went on to suggest I make another appointment at the GPs if the beta next Monday goes well, so they can book me into the ante-natal clinic. At which point the tiny, shrivelled gland I use to generate hope exploded in a little puff of dry dust.

Item – So I asked if, in that case, I should go back to work tomorrow? She instantly switched to a serious face and said that really, under the circumstances, it would be better if I stayed at home for a few days and relaxed as much as possible. WTF? I mean, I know the heavy-lifting, front-desk-staffing parts of my job should probably be avoided, and I had planned on asking her for a note ordering my bosses to let me stay in the inner office and catalogue books with a distracted expression on my face. But stay home altogether? Did I say WTF?

Item – H then asked if I would be OK on my own all day, and she very promptly said, err, no, actually, it would be better if someone was with me for at least most of the time.

Item – Umm, so, is the GP being ridiculously cautious? Or was her optimistic act the ridiculous part? Should I be reassured? Should I be scared shitless? Anyway, H has got an office lap-top now and will be hanging about looking as bored and frustrated as I am, so no-one else need be anxious about me. Just, WTF?

Item – This is going to be a very long week.

Item – Also, there are six pee-sticks left in the house. Any bets on how many will survive until the weekend?

Limbo (I think I’m going to be sick)

It’s only ten o’clock in the morning. I’ve had time to get back from the Mothership Hospital and eat breakfast. We drove down there just as the sun was rising over a city transformed into a silvered, sugared version of its usual self (it’s below freezing down here). Such beautiful days we’ve had so far this year. The irony.

Instead of the usual sonographer (I’ve just found out the NHS calls them sonographers, not ‘ultrasound technicians’ or ‘wand-monkeys’), we actually got the actual consultant (do you call them consultants in the States/Down Under? The doctors in charge of the clinic?). She got off to a good start by completely blanking us as the nurse showed us into the room, being busy on the computer. H and I went behind the curtain, I undressed and lay down, and we waited while she talked scheduling and such with the nurse as if she had no concept whatsoever that someone had just taken her knickers off ten feet from her desk.

I was a little tetchy at this point, and entertained myself by composing sarcastic remarks I probably wouldn’t dream of using to her face.

However, when she came through the curtain she did say hello and introduce herself civilly, and from then on acted like a good doctor. Brisk, matter-of-fact, treating us as if we were perfectly intelligent, not unsympathetic (I even got a pat on the knee when she had finished reaming me out with the dildo-cam). I think we simply didn’t exist for her until she’d switched her patient-mode on.

Anyway, my insides were thoroughly explored, and while Cute Ute didn’t seem to mind it much, I think my pancreas felt she was getting a little over-zealous in there. Especially when she started pressing down on my abdomen to jostle my organs into more photogenic configurations. At least she said ‘sorry, I know it’s uncomfortable’.

Findings:

1. So far, nothing pregnancy-ish visible anywhere. Given that they don’t expect anything to be visible on a scan until your beta hits about 1000, this is exactly as expected and possibly even vaguely reassuring.
2. Fallopian tube still thread-like and near-invisible.
3. Satsuma had gone for a little meander into the recesses of my abdomen and had to be coaxed into view with a hard prod on the belly from outside, but looked much as usual when excavated.
4. Now this was interesting. She became quite fascinated by a something in the muscle of the womb. She asked if I’d ever been told I had fibroids. I explained all about Cute Ute’s cute heart-shape, and that that had been nearly diagnosed as a fibroid at one point, but she didn’t seem convinced. This was something else. This was, in fact, probably a fibroid. But, she explained, it had nothing to do with the possible pregnancy.

Upshot, I am not in imminent danger of rupturing an internal organ. But we can’t be sure this pregnancy is viable. We can’t even see the pregnancy. As, at best guess, I am 13 dpo, or, possibly, seven weeks into a prolonged miscarriage with multiple bleeding episodes (no one seems to be taking the ‘left over from October’ scenario very seriously – I don’t know if this reassures or annoys me), the only thing to do is wait until my beta SHOULD be over 1000, and check it again.

So I have been booked in for another beta in a week. A week! I mean, yes, that makes perfect sense, my intellect and logical faculties grasp this absolutely, but a week? We have to hang about in limbo for a week?

[May takes short break in which to beat head against stair-way newel-post]

Meanwhile, my body is now taking this all very seriously indeed, and is doing nausea, hyperactive sense of smell and occasional aching breasts. You know, as I am, against all odds, however temporarily, and in the teeth of much melodrama, pregnant.

Next steps, visit GP. Decide if I need to stay off work, or actually go to work. As I am on exploding-tube-watch, and have been told over and over again to come yea verily most swiftly back to hospital if I get pain or bleeding or fainting or dizziness or cold clammy shivers or low blood pressure or anything at all that bothers me in any way, is it better for me to be in an office surrounded by persons who all nominally know how to use a telephone, or will I be so flustered and of so little use it’s better for me to stay at home? Will work, who do know something of the situation, even want me there at all in my role of Possible Medical Liability? Is it, however, safe for me to spend hours and hours on me tod? Things to bother the GP about.

I will no doubt be back to update this later today.

And maybe post about other stuff, like family, New Year’s Resolutions, how H is doing, OMFG FIBROIDS, and so on.