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.