Plan, wait, J? Are we at J now?

Today, H and I went back to the Riverside Clinic, to see about setting up a Frozen Embryo Transfer for Frosticle.

I felt very calm about this. And sensible. And calm. Right up until I was sitting in the waiting room. All those hopeful people, with their brave blank faces.

(Oh, God, and the woman with the toddler – obviously, there was nowhere else for toddler to be while mama got one with making his sibling. Obviously. No one is so fucking oblivious as to take a toddler to a fertility clinic unless they have to, right? Right. Still. And nevertheless. I actually read The Times therefore. I dislike The Times. I am a raging leftie and I don’t give a TUPPENNY DAMN about celebrity affairs and cellulite. But I read it, because I’d forgotten a book and I didn’t want to look at the toddler).

And then Dr George called us into his office and we discussed the FET at length, while he flicked repeatedly through all the letters from my various haematologists.

Plan, therefore:

1. Start taking prenatal vitamins with folic acid again. Also, take 75mg of aspirin a day for entire duration of shenanigans, starting about now.
2. Even though I am on Cerazette, I am having regular, if extremely light (spotting, basically) bleeds, about once a month or so. Satsuma is definitely refusing to be suppressed. Irrepressible ovary. I’d say bless, but there were all the times I wanted her to ovulate and she sodding well wouldn’t for months. Anyway, as soon as the next bleed starts, stop taking Cerazette, and call the clinic to arrange a scan.
3. Start taking Synarel. (We have a bottle of Buserelin in the fridge, left over. Is this the same thing? Or not? Are the dosages different? Should I just shut up being clever and get a bottle of Synarel?).
4. Between Days 2 and 4, get first of many many scans.
5. Start taking Progynova tablets (this is oestrogen, yes? Yes. I’ve checked. It is). THEREFORE AND IMPORTANTLY, also start taking TWO (2. Two. TWO) needlefuls a day of Fragmin, so the extra oestrogen doesn’t promptly turn my blood to porridge.
6. Steroids again.
7. When Cute Ute’s lining looks good and plumptious, stop taking oestrogen and start ramming progesterone bullets up my various private orifices instead.
8. Hang on, when do I stop taking the Synarel? *scrabbles through notes, to no purpose*.
9. Intralipids.
10. On day seven of the progesterone, thaw out Frosticle and pop it back in.
11. HOPE LIKE HELL.

You will note no mention of Metformin. Dr George thinks it’s mostly for improving egg quality, really, and not necessary for a FET, and while I know the views on this in the States are vastly different, I personally am pleased, because Metformin makes me feel really disgruntled, and every single time I have taken it I have put weight ON. Yes, ON. I am pretty sure I am one of the minority of people who finds it screws their metabolism up even more, rather than sort it out.

You will also notice we are doing the same old same old protocol – intralipids and steroids and Fragmin – with the addition of aspirin. We are not doing IVIG. We all considered it, but my NK cells, while elevated, are not sky-high, and back in July 2012 while we were being Thoroughly Poked by Dr Expensive, we found that Intralipids alone massively reduced their activity (no idea why H is burbling about IVIG in that post – we didn’t have any results indicating IVIG testing had been done (everything about Dr Expensive’s testing and briefing regarding the tests was confusing and off-pissing, by the way. Everything. Which is why we quit him)).

There are no good theories as to why 6AA died. The higher dose of low molecular weight heparin mentioned above is for me, not Frosticle, and Dr George doesn’t think I could’ve clotted 6AA to death. Though the aspirin is for us both, given The Professor’s recommendation years ago that I take aspirin when pregnant. The steroids and intralipids are definitely all Frosticle’s, as are the cooter-bullets, because ew. We had those bases covered. So, 6AA may have had the right number of chromosomes, and yet still have had DNA of gibberish and codswallop. Maybe all my embryos do. H and I have both been karyotyped and we are both normal (no translocations, balanced or otherwise), but that doesn’t guarantee one or both of us doesn’t have a spontaneous fuck up in the gamete-making process that doesn’t show as a miscount in the chromosomes. And I am 38. My eggs are crappier than those of a 28-year-old and that is Mother Nature for you, the stone-hearted bitch. And it could’ve been just ‘one of those things’. We know so very, very little about conception and early embryonic development. So very, very, very little.

H and I snuck off for coffee before heading back to work, and to have a little think. I had actually started another round of spotting and light bleeding a couple of days ago, but we both decided we did not want to start the sniff-swallow-stab-poke regime today. We’d rather have the extra month. In which I shall take prenatals again and make sure I exercise regularly. And eat my greens. And have a couple more counselling sessions, and warn my boss about the scan regime, and cry and panic and flail about, because this is insane, Gentle Readers. It is nuts. Nuts. How can we possibly put us through this again? And yet, if we don’t, we both know we will regret it. And I can’t face abandoning Frosticle. The poor wee thing will probably die in my uterus, but it will certainly die in a petri dish otherwise. At least Cute Ute’s nice and warm.

P.S. – Cute Ute, the psychotic bitch, decided to make some unintelligible point or other very definite to me, by a sudden outbreak of seriously heavy bleeding with clots this evening. What? Why? I am taking Cerazette, damn it. At least I’m not in pain, she said cheerfully, practically begging Fate to smack her in the teeth for that one.

‘Tis the season. Hi.

Gentle Readers, Season’s Greetings. How have you been? How are you all doing? Me? Oh, fine, fine. It’s a long story. Have a cup of tea. Or coffee. Or cocoa. Or wine. I don’t know what you like. I don’t know what I like. Excuse me, I shall just go and stare into a cupboard for a few minutes.

Anyway (I went for tea. I’m British) anyway, (I see you were serious when you asked how I’d been. In that case, I shall tell you. In Items. Because Items are traditional.

Item – Working from the toes up, my left leg, the one that developed the big fat DVT. How is that? Well, I had a final ultrasound scan of it, during which the sonographer kept a poker face to out-poke all poker faces. Then a week later we saw the haematology consultant (a third one. Consistency being a thing that huge NHS hospitals can’t actually do on the budgets they actually get). I had been somewhat bothered by the way my leg is still more likely to cramp, to get tired, to ache, than my right leg. It was weird and I didn’t like it, and I was somewhat concerned that despite all the walking about and trying to get fit again the stupid thing was not cooperating. And, well, of course it isn’t cooperating. Third Haematologist told me that though my popliteal vein was no longer completely blocked (yay?) the clot hadn’t completely dissolved and had now scarred over. So my left leg will get oxygen starvation if I over-do it, and will ache and swell if I stand about for too long, and is at risk of another socking great clot if I push my luck. Fucking A, man.

Item – Compression socks. I hate them. They have a purpose and their purpose is excellent and my ankle is not swollen on a regular basis with thanks thereunto. They still suck. I still hate them.

Item – Cerazette! Still my bestest friend in the universe. Every few weeks, I spot painlessly for a week. Otherwise, my pelvis is filled with peace, calm, sunshine and dancing rainbow unicorns.

Item – Cerazette! Demon! My hair is falling out. I have a metric fuckton of hair to start with, so it will take a great deal of falling-out-ness before I start to look so much as wispy, let alone Leonardo da Vinci, and yet I am not amused. Not at all. Sodding hormones. On the other hand, I’d rather be spear-bald than spend three weeks out of five in so much pain I can’t really function, so fuck it. I have hats.

Item – Wheat. I ate some. Within 24 hours my oesophagus was so swollen I was having trouble swallowing (and had to go retch a few times when I had not chewed obsessively 27 times before swallowing, as ‘stuck’ is a thing). This is an official food allergy thing, apparently. I also got gut ache and wind and mild runs (trots?). I decided I hate delicious yummy wheat with a passion. Not trying that again. Damn it all to hell.

Item – Trying again. We were waiting for the all clear from the Haematologists (many and varied). The consensus is I will have to be on low molecular weight heparin AND aspirin from conception to six weeks after end-of-pregnancy. Also, I will have to wear stockings on both legs, and will probably be a physical wreck throughout. Hurrah! But, I can try again if I like. So we will go see Riverside Clinic in January, and see what can be done about tucking Frosticle back in me. On the other hand, a fresh IVF cycle? Possibly a really bloody silly idea, as ovarian stimulation/hyperstimulation is in itself a damn fine way of triggering blood-clotting. We shall see. My current feeling is, if Frosticle doesn’t ‘work’, I am getting seven cats and a pet owl and a horse called Horse.

Item – To my fury, Third Haematologist went on about there being no genetic ’cause’ for my thrombophilia, therefore I didn’t technically ‘have’ a thrombophilia, and I rolled my eyes, and what I would like to say is, actually, I don’t have a currently recognised genetic cause that you can test for. I ABSOLUTELY FUCKING DO have a thrombophilia. You fucking idiot.

Item (secondary, diversionary) – I much preferred First Haematologist, who was sympathetic and sensible, and Second Haematologist, who was actually The Doctor slumming it while evading the Family of Blood or somesuch. (I am perfectly serious. He referred to ‘eight of your Earth weeks’ at one point and H got the giggles (yes yes yes, so did I)).

Item – Work. I am back at work full time. It’s fine. I’m coping. Leg is not being so much of an arse as it were to interfere with my day-to-day duties.

Item – Family. Oh my God I have had it up to here with my family. I will no doubt get back to you all on this.

Item – Counselling. My NHS-provided counsellor, who I see once a week, is lovely and wonderful and has made me realise I spend an inordinate amount of time beating the everlovin’ shit out of myself for everything and anything from untidy hair to being a vile antisocial Bitter McTwisted of Doom. If anyone spoke to a friend of mine the way I speak to myself I’d disembowel them. I am practicing being sweet to myself. It is weird and hard. Also, she keeps reminding me, my family’s hang-ups are theirs, not mine, and I don’t need to take them on board at all. Build Team May! If people are not on Team May, skip briskly away into the distance singing ‘la la la’!

Item – Marriage. H and I are not happy. H has dealt with the Summer of You Must Be Fucking Kidding Me, well, badly. I have also dealt with it badly, but H has taken the proverbial biscuit, bless him. Communication has gone to hell. I will let H tell you about it. That is my revenge upon him, ho ho ho. Hi, H! Stage is all yours! So!

Item – Couple-counselling. We tried to find a counsellor. We had an initial visit in which the man would NOT. STOP. TALKING. When I bought up the whole ‘children now seriously unlikely’ thing, he had to stop me there to tell me ‘I didn’t know that’. Which, actually, was the first red flag. A good counsellor does not tell you what you should and should not be thinking about this sort of stuff on the first visit and before he knows any of the medical history apart from ten mother-fucking miscarriages in a row, you absolute 24-carat gold clotheared dickwhistle. And then tried to slut-shame me when I said I had a higher libido than H and the lack of sex and more specifically communication about sex in our marriage was making me sad and angry, by explaining to me as if I was very stupid indeed that in normal marriages, it was normal for both spouses to lose interest and get ‘too’ used to each other. Well then, I’m abnormal, as I haven’t lost interest in H at all, as I just explained, and the issue is the lack of communication, not the lack of sex per se, so sod you very much. And then, he never turned up to our second appointment. He made his excuses the next day via the practice manager. His excuse was not per se stupid, but his not getting in touch himself to grovel just a bit? Was a great fat honking flashing neon sign saying ‘this man is Not The Counsellor For You, Also, Has No Fucking Manners Whatsoever’. So. Start again.

Item – I have a disgusting cold. So there’s that.

Item – Christmas. Every card I write, every Christmas decoration I hang (or get H to hang), every present I buy or plan I make, I drag kicking and screaming from a black, angry, pissy abyss of raging misery. Just so you know. The only thing keeping me going is a) H’s various concerts (it’s a good thing, being married to a musician) and b) the prospect of the Doctor Who Christmas Special.

Hello, hi, well… um. Hi.

There comes a time when chunks of the brain just shut down in the face of Too Much To Process. There’s the part that is ordering you to grieve (‘Go on then, cry. Feel awful. Cry, damn you! You lost a baby, didn’t you?’) and the part that will not go there (‘But it feels awful! I don’t want to! And there are endless CSI reruns to watch instead!’), and the part that is still being struck amidships by the whole ‘and then I nearly died’ thing, and the part that has decided the whole business is ridiculous and we should just get three cats and an Alpha Romeo Spider, and the part that is nevertheless planning a FET in January.

And – how could I forget? – the part that was dealing with H’s looming redundancy, and thereby putting on a cheerful face of unconcern and trust in a)H’s general excellence and b) the benevolence of the future [Based on what, you absolute lunatic? — Bitter McTwisted]. In the event, H was not made redundant. It was only when he came home at the end of last week announcing he was transferring departments merely, and not being slung out on his ear by Christmas, that I realised just how bloody anxious and, frankly, angry I’d been about the whole thing; and how ready I’d been to march in there and punch H’s various bosses in the collective groin for doing this to him all over again (we had a major redundancy scare a couple of years ago as well, you see).

Which was not helped by the part that has just been told that the rent is going up 20%. Which is all very well, as it hasn’t gone up for several years and the landlord just noticed that every other comparable property in the area costs many many lots. And not at all very well, as H’s pay has been frozen for the past five years and I earn somewhere between diddly and squat. (OK, yes, as a perk I get to be ill for two months solid and not get fired. So there’s that).

We may be moving house next year.

AAAIIIEEEEE.

So, yes, a lot of Being Very Anxious While Quietly Watching Far Too Much Daytime Television was going on.

And that is why I was not writing. I did not want to sit down and look any of it in the eye. For similar reasons, I was staying away from blogs. I did not want to read another word about loss, or pregnancy, or fertility treatments, or adorable children. It was all anxiety-inducing, good news or bad, happy or sad, reminding me of what I had been through and what I had lost alternately, and I decided that actually I was well within my rights to pull the metaphorical duvet over my head and pretend to be a Scotch Egg for as long as I cared to.

By anxiety-inducing, I don’t suppose I need to explain myself to anyone who has ever suffered badly from an anxiety disorder, but to the rest of you I need to say, no. Worse than that. Much worse. It’s like poisoned.

So. I am now bored of being a Scotch Egg. Hello!

And how am I? Let me count the ways:

Item – I went back to work on a part-time basis last week. It is exhausting. I spend a lot of time, by-and-large, being tired, what with the chronic pain issues and occasional bouts of anaemia, but this is something else. I used to be tired, but I could still trot up three flights of stairs or walk two miles across the centre of town without getting out of breath. Now? Nope. Can’t walk for ten minutes without my stupid DVT-affected leg beginning to ache. I go up three flights of stairs slowly, puffing ‘I… think… I… can… I… think… I… can…’. Work is not the problem – I am on ‘limited’ duties and therefore don’t have to do anything particularly strenuous just yet. Commuting is the problem. Commuting is a fetid pile of dingo’s kidneys.

Item – Speaking of chronic pain issues, let me tell you about my new best friend in the entire Universe: Cerazette. This is a progesterone-only pill which prevents ovulation as well as thinning the uterine lining. Some women don’t care for it at all, but, Gentle Readers, I love this pill. Yes, OK, I started spotting after two weeks, and then near the end of the first packet I started bleeding and carried on doing so for two weeks solid. But it was light bleeding. Bleeding containable with regular tampons. And there were, get this, there were no cramps. I was not in pain. Not. In. Pain. I am not in pain. Cute Ute is perfectly comfortable, my bowels are regular and cheerful, and Satsuma is quiet as a wee mousie. [Ticker-tape parade, marching bands, majorettes, and a 24-gun salute].

Item – Meanwhile, after six weeks, my haematologist lowered the dose of Fragmin (these is a kind of low-weight-molecular-Heparin) I am on. I will be spending six weeks on the lower dose, and then we will double-check the clot behind my left knee has gone, and then I can stop injecting myself every evening. My belly is covered in bruises. I thought for a while there I’d found a way to prevent the bruising (as soon as you remove the needle from your flesh, press down hard on the injection site for 30 seconds with your thumb. Do not rub) but it doesn’t always work, alas. And the worst bruises leave hard lumps under the skin which are showing no inclination to go away at all. Heigh ho, fuck and alas.

Item – I do not like my compression socks. They seem a tad loose in the ankle, and they are frankly gigantic in the foot (‘Oh, just tuck it under!’ said the twatwhistle nurse who fitted them for me. This being the same nurse who wanted to know when I was due, and when I, my eyes filling with tears,said I’d actually lost the baby in August, proceeded seamlessly into her ‘Losing Weight Is Good For You!’ perky lecture). The thing is, I have stocky peasant calves and dainty little princess ankles, and I am not a 70-year-old varicose-vein sufferer. Yet. So. Point of socks, to prevent me becoming a 70-year-old varicose-vein sufferer. Onwards.

Item – Mental state: very anxious, insomniac, and sad. I see a therapist on Thursday, courtesy of the NHS. Our local hospital has a counselling service attached to the gynaecology and obstetrics wards, and I ever so qualify for its attentions, according to my GP, who insisted on referring me. Given that my attempts to find a private counsellor ended in a big fat blank because the people I contacted never got back to me, I’m taking it. Not that that stopped the counsellor having to cancel on me once because of ‘bureaucracy’, but she had warned me she might have to, and then called at once to apologise profusely and have a bit of a chat right there and then just to see how I was. (Note to self: stop being polite and cheerful to counsellors. Not helpful).

So what the futility happened?

The WTF appointment with Dr George was over three weeks ago now, since when I have been Refusing To Think About It. You’ll have to excuse me. I had a lot of ‘Holy fuck I nearly died’ to process, which created massive interference with the ‘Shit shit shit shit SHIT I miscarried 6AA’ data stream. Basically, my hard-drive needed serious de-fragging. I think I cobbled together a parallel-processor out of tinfoil and spit – it may burst into flames mid-post – so onwards! Let me see what I can dredge out of the dark backward and abysm of time.

(From semi-educated computer jokes to Shakespeare in one sentence. I rule).

We had emailed Dr George pre-visit, so as not to waste the entire appointment in a ‘previously, on House‘ montage. The first thing he said was ‘I see you’ve been in the wars!’ with a welcoming grin, which instantly dissolved into gloom and he added, solemnly, that actually what we’d been through was horrific, and he was truly sorry. He’s normally a cheerful upbeat sort of chap. I see I defeated him. I felt a complicated cross between vindicated and miserable about that. It’s nice to be taken seriously but not very reassuring to be The One That Makes Doctors Gloomy.

To address the DVT and dramatic pulmonary embolism problem, Dr George agreed that whatever my test results up until now showed (i.e. absolutely bloody nothing that could predispose one to thrombophilia) (apart from a tendency to sodding well clot anyway, so bloody there), I clearly had a severe, pregnancy-related thrombophilia problem. He wanted to wait and see what the Haematologist had to say about it before we did anything else, in case I needed more aggressive treatment than prophylactic doses of Clexane, for my own safety. And in any case, I needed time to recover and make sure there was no lasting heart or lung damage (jolly conversation, this). On the other hand, the Clexane should have been enough to protect 6AA, especially as my troubles began when I stopped taking the Clexane. Which, incidentally, will never ever never happen again – me suddenly stopping anti-coagulants after the end of a pregnancy. Hell no. Dr George was quite firm about that. The thing is, the lack of diagnosed serious causes of thrombophilia had lead everyone, everyone, to believe the clotting was only a threat to my teeny-tiny embryos, and not in the least to me. Hahahahahahah.

And then we turned to the sad demise of 6AA. Who had a perfect set of matched chromosomes, and no business failing to develop at all. Dr George declared that waiting to day 5 and having CGH performed on the survivors had been the right thing to do. To recap, back in July:

• Thirteen eggs were retrieved during, uh, retrieval. Dr George was pleased about this. It promises well for future IVF, apparently.
• Nine of those eggs fertilised on being placed in the company of H’s sperm – this is also good, given my age.
• On day three, we had six embryos that looked worth culturing to day five. So we cultured them to day five.
• On day five, we had four embryos left to biopsy, one excellent-looking, one reasonable, one a little slow, and one shabby little creature they could only get one cell from to test.
• Twenty-four hours later, we had the results. Normal 46-chromosomes-in-pairs 6AA and 6BA, one wildly abnormal one (still alive, still growing strongly) which had three trisomies and a monosomy, and the shabby little creature couldn’t yield a result and anyway had conked out overnight. So we transferred 6AA and froze 6BA.
• Consider, if we’d done a day three transfer as per standard, we’d’ve had a one in three chance of transferring a normal embryo, a one in two chance of transferring a non-implanting dud (and a possible chemical pregnancy, if it’s true embryos do slightly better inside one, as shabby little creature was hatching and looking to implant), and a one in six chance of transferring a badly damaged future miscarriage (best scenario) or stillbirth (horrific worst scenario).
• Nevertheless, 6AA died anyway.

So why did I miscarry, given the Clexane for clotting and inflammation, the Metformin for wonky blood-sugar, the Prednisolone for my psycho immune system, the Intralipids ditto, the Progesterone pessaries to keep my uterus from shedding? What had prevented a normal embryo from developing normally?

It is possible the clotting issue was the problem, and prevented 6AA from creating a decent placenta. A human embryo spends its first week or so, once it has implanted, house-building rather than developing itself, so the gestational sac and yolk sac grow first, to nourish the embryo while it works on tapping maternal resources via a tiny little proto-placenta, and then and only then gets to work on itself. If placental development had been botched by micro-clots in my uterine capillaries, 6AA would’ve stalled. And in fact, we had a lovely gestational sac and yolk sac and no bloody visible foetal pole.

It is possible my psycho immune system was not sufficiently suppressed after all (I seem to be Queen of borderline or inconclusive test-results and nevertheless violent symptoms) and there were enough NK cells roaming my uterus to attack 6AA’s placental intrusions, with results as above. There’s a further test (expensive, natch) they can do, testing my NK cells against various combinations of Prednisolone, Intralipids and IVIG, to see which mix suppresses the NK cells best, and then use that. We are thinking about that.

A very very unlikely possibility (and Dr George was adamant this was unlikely) was that I simply wasn’t absorbing the progesterone from the pessaries very well. You apparently can’t really test for this as blood levels of progesterone don’t match the uterine levels of progesterone, as the stuff in the pessaries is absorbed by the uterine area primarily. Or should be. My uterus is abnormal, however, what with the adenomyosis. ‘Next time,’ said Dr George, ‘we could use progesterone-in-oil injections instead, just to be sure. They’re a bit of a pain, though.’

And it is possible, if apparently also very unlikely (H and I have both been karyotyped and genetic issues do not seem to run in our typically-non-miscarrying families) 6AA, despite the 46 chromosomes and healthy go-getting attitude, was genetically non-viable on a more subtle level. I don’t know. Nobody knows. There was nothing to test.

We then discussed trying again. Should we ‘bank’ 6BA, our frosticle, and do another fresh cycle to gather up a couple more healthy embryos before I get all perimenopausal? Or transfer the frosticle first and bother with more IVF only if ‘necessary’? H has been rather pro the first option, not least because he always wanted two children, and therefore having a few spare healthy embryos in store and ‘only’ 38 years old, for when I am, oh, 41 say and ‘ready for seconds’, would be sensible. I had been all ‘two kids would be splendid’ up until a couple of years ago, whereupon a combination of ‘I’m too old for this shit’ and ‘I’m too ill for this shit’ and ‘I can’t go through all this that many more times’ put me squarely in ‘one. One would be perfect. One would be a fucking miracle‘ camp. With the proviso that Lord knows how I’d feel about it once I had the Precious One, because I am not stupid.

Dr George was of the opinion that given my clotting issues, we’d want to avoid the oestrogen stimulation of fresh IVF cycles if it wasn’t necessary. He would transfer 6BA first, and then rethink if that ‘doesn’t work out’. This does rather mean H too would have to become more reconciled with the idea of an only child, because if the FET did work, it’d be maybe two years before we’d be up for another IVF, and I’d be 41 and mouldier. Even though the women in my family have late late menopauses and both grandmothers had naturally conceived healthy children in their forties. And would I want to take Cute Ute the Despoiler back into cycling? With a very small child to care for? Remember I call her The Despoiler for more reasons than the recurrent miscarriages.

Anyway, if I am behind any plan, I am behind the FET plan, and see how I feel about a fresh IVF after that. But I am very skeeved about trying again.

Plan, such as it is: Wait and see what Haematologist says. Contingent on her opinion, consider further NK cell testing. Do a FET using recommended anti-coagulants, immuno-suppressants as revealed by test, and progesterone-in-oil rather than pessaries. And see what happens.

To which plans I would only say, why the fuck is everyone being so gung-ho about this? What about me? What about all those miscarriages, including one of a sodding perfect embryo? Why are you all so keen to do this to me again? The hell is wrong with you all, you heartless arseholes?

I’m going back to my bat-cave, and walling myself in.

Frozen over

Hello, Gentle Readers. How are you all? I’m a lot better. Really, much much better. My leg only aches now when I stand or walk for more than five or ten minutes. I even baked a cake today, standing to do all the whisking and mixing, without needing a sit-down in the middle (though I did need a sit-down once the stupid thing was in the oven (it – the cake – looks very untidy indeed. Mary Berry would be ashamed of me)). I am easily tired, but on the plus side, I sleep like I’ve been drugged, for eight to ten hours straight every night. As a life-long insomniac, this is a treat. Ish. When I’m not having complicated and unpleasant anxiety dreams.

As for my emotional state, I am frankly a bit weird at the moment. I am pretty calm, sanguine, cheerful even, if somewhat subdued and untalkative (what do you mean you’d noticed?). I – not consciously – won’t let myself think about miscarriages or trying again or almighty fucking huge pulmonary embolisms. I can feel my thoughts skittering across the surface, like ducks on a frozen pond. I talk about these things, as and when, in a matter-of-fact way with an upper lip stiffer than boiled leather. As evidenced above by the fucking annoying anxiety dreams, there is a whole deep quagmire of grief and fright and rage under there somewhere. No doubt I will thaw and Go Mental at some point. My GP thinks so, and is rather concerned I will try to go back to work too soon and Officially Lose My Shit. I don’t know. Do you know?

Anyway, we spent a few days with my mother, and we visited Hairy Farmers, and then there was the consultation with the Haematologist, and I need to tell you all about the WTF appointment with Dr George at Riverside. I will be back. Meanwhile, I leave you with bullet points:

• My heart, according to the echocardiogram I had in the last post, is just fine. So yay!
• I am now on Cerazette, with the approval of Dr George, Doc Tashless the GP, and the Haematologist. Because on blood thinners and not allowed Diclofenac, Menstruating Mays Are Very Very Very Unwelcome.
• We are benched until Christmas at the earliest. We must make sure I won’t fucking die next time I get pregnant. To which end I gave the hospital another four vials of blood to test for… things. Like Lupus. And shit like that.
• Holy shitwhistles, the bruising from the Fragmin. My belly looks, as I mentioned on Twitter, like a bowl of stewed prunes and not much custard.
• My family are bloody mad (and there’s a post in that too!).

My art… keeps me sane.

Hiya, Gentle Readers. How have you been? I have been tired. Unbelievably tired. You know when you have ‘flu, and the first day after the fever breaks, you feel so much better, so you get out of bed and have a shower, and by the time you’re rinsing your hair you’re weeping with exhaustion? Like that.

Truthfully, I have been better than that for the past couple of days, but was busy feeling numb and reading fantasy novels.

State-of-May: Apart from The Tired? My leg has been getting noticeably better day by day. I can stand and walk for longer, and the pain is less hellacious and more of a dull ache. My pulse is still too fast for a resting pulse, and coffee makes it so much worse, but I no longer get completely breathless just climbing a flight of stairs. Cute Ute the Despoiler has finally stopped bleeding scarlet and is just spotting in a grouchy sort of way. She is also doing her trademark aching thing she always does for two Goddamn weeks after a period. I hate her and want a hysterectomy, but that’s our basic standard relationship. My belly is covered with vivid 50 pence-sized bruises from the Fragmin jabs, and I may have to violate the innocent virgin flesh of my outer thighs soon, as it is recommended one does not inject too close to an existing bruise. I have finally had a Dead Baby dream, of unprecedented David Lynch-style unpleasantness, so thanks for that, Subconscious.

Scanners!

I meant to tell you about the CT scan I had on the 28th of August, back when we were hanging around the emergency departments of the local hospital, waiting to find out why in heck I couldn’t breathe and talk at the same time. So! At about 9pm the doctor finished fucking with my veins and sent H and I down the corridor to the CT department to sit in the corridor there for a bit. It being summer, I had bare legs and was wearing sandals, so by now my feet were freezing cold. As well as being two different sizes. A technician appeared after a few minutes and sent me off to change into a hospital gown in a cubicle in a corridor full of men of all ages talking earnestly and loudlyabout testicular cancer. I shuffled painfully back past them clutching the back of my gown shut, colder than ever.

The technician then led me into a positively Arctic room, containing a narrow bed on a set of rails poked through a gigantic metal and white plastic doughnut of a thing. He briskly went through the ‘who are you, what is your date of birth?’ rigmarole and ended with ‘is there any chance you might be pregnant?’

‘No, none at all,’ I said.
‘Are you sure? Because this machine uses X-rays and we inject you with radioactive contrast dye and we need you to sign this disclaimer.’
‘I’m absolutely sure.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ he asked, briskly.
‘Because I had a miscarriage last week.’

The technician went a little pale, and became, suddenly, much less brisk and more tender.

I lay down on the bed, and the technician injected something, saline I suppose, into my hard-won cannula to check it was working. It stung, and I winced, and he said something about that being good, as it showed it was working. Then he got me to put my arms over my head, so they poked out the other end of the doughnut. I could not see what he was doing, but there was Fiddling With Cannula Again. He came back round to pat my elbow and tell me that the bed would move in and out of the machine a few times. There would be two injections of dye. I might feel odd hot sensations in my face and abdomen, and taste a metallic taste. Oh, and I might feel as if I’d wet myself. It was only a sensation, and I wasn’t to worry. And then he went off to the little booth. What the fuck?

The great metal and plastic torus over my head began to whirr and click, and you could see a conglomeration of machine parts through the transparent ring start spinning. A very loud voice told me the first injection was about to start. What they didn’t warn me of was that it would HURT LIKE FUCK. I managed to lie still and hold my breath when told to but tears sprang to my eyes. I mean seriously, technician dude, with all the other warnings, a ‘this will hurt like fuck’ would’ve been appreciated. And yes, I did indeed feel a sudden hot rush exactly as if someone had tipped a cup of hot tea onto my crotch. And yea verily, it was weird. And metal in my mouth, and warm flushes in my belly. And the machine roared and whirred and I was motored deeper into it and was beginning to expect the Universe to suddenly blur and tilt and vanish as I shot through a wormhole or something. Just as the pain in my hand was beginning to fade, they warned me the second injection was about to happen, and again the savage burn, and the hot tea in the groin and the swimming sensation.

I have no idea how long it all lasted, but I doubt it was longer than ten minutes. The technician came out to gently liberate me from the dye pump – I saw the size of the syringes and crikey they were big. No wonder that hurt. My hand veins are small and irritable at the best of times, and did I mention I was cold? – and help me sit up. I was despite warnings still slightly surprised to find that I had not in fact pissed myself. He told me to go back to the Clinical Decisions Unit and they’d send the scans along when they’d processed them. These were the scans that showed a large pulmonary embolism, straddling the pulmonary artery just where it splits into two branches, one for each lung.

And when we got back to the CDU my cannula leaked bloodily all over the floor. Hurrah!

To return to yesterday. Yesterday I had been booked in to have an echocardiogram, to check whether last week’s shenanigans had done any damage to my heart. The chances of permanent damage are not high, before you all panic, but, you know, best to check.

H and I ambitiously took the bus, as my leg was so much better. From the bus-stop to the correct part of the enormous hospital is about a 500 yard walk, and I managed it with only one stop to sit for a few minutes. Admittedly, my leg spasmed at the last yard and I needed another urgent sit-down, but I managed it, and I did not get too breathless to talk or so tachycardic I noticed, so yay!

Of course, when we got there, they’d cancelled my appointment. Because when it was made I was an inpatient and the twat who did the discharging on the computer was a twat. I can say this with impunity because the extremely sweet receptionist in cardiology leapt to his feet and rushed into the back offices to sort it out, and came back overflowing with apologies because obviously the appointment should not have been cancelled and he’d see at once what he could do and off he rushed again and five minutes later my appointment had been reinstated and the poor chap,was apologising to me all over again because there’d be a wait and did we want to go get a tea or coffee? I thanked him and said I could see they were busy (waiting room quite full) and we didn’t mind the wait at all, at which point he looked so relieved he nearly popped and pressing his palms together, bowed to me right there in the waiting room. From which I can only assume people had been being dicks to him all morning. And then H went and got me a (decaff, obvs.) cappuccino and I settled down happily with my book for an hour.

The echocardiogram itself was no biggy. I stripped to the waist (tits ahoy!) and lay down on a couch next to that familiar creature, an ultrasound machine. The sonographer lady, poker-faced but perfectly pleasant, attached electrodes to my collarbones and right side, and then had me roll onto my left side ‘for a better view of the heart’. She then jellied up a probe and pressed it to my breast-bone, leaning comfortably over my waist. She also scanned my heart from just under my left breast, which was less comfortable, as she kept digging the probe into breast-flesh to get a better view, and this went on for some time. I got to hear my own heart beating from various angles. From some, it sounded weirdly sloshy and gloingy, like someone playing in a tin bath. It also sounded a little fast to me. I’d never really considered what my resting pulse actually is before. I know I am not very fit, so it won’t be particularly slow, but constantly in the 90s? Reaching the 100s? Me no like. Poker-face said nothing, beyond asking me to roll onto my back again so she could probe around under my ribs for a while and then explore matters via my supra-sternal notch. I did get to see my heart on the monitor, and I can assure you it is a busy little organ and has four chambers and it goes woosha woosha and/or thuddity thuddity and/or slosh-gloing slosh-gloing depending on the angle, but more I cannot tell you. Poker-face handed me lots of paper towels to de-slime my torso with, informed me my consultant would be in touch about results, and once I’d dressed, ushered me firmly out of her domain.

I don’t see the consultant for another week. Ho hum.

I can see why technicians don’t want to discuss tests with patients. The technician doesn’t have the full picture and can’t know if they’re seeing anything clinically significant or not, and it’s rotten to make them responsible for dealing with bad news situations, and anyway, the patient may well get hold of the wrong end of the stick and without all the other information the consultant has it may well be the wrong stick altogether. But it’s fucking frustrating for us. ‘Not knowing’ is a thing I have enormo-huge issues with at the best of times. The whole ‘it’s probably fine’ thing does nothing for me. It never did, and given the quite dramatically inventive ways I manage to fall off the Medical Norm charts, it never bloody will, because in my case ‘probably’ so often means ‘muahahahaha’.

And H! H has actually gone to work today. He has been getting by on a mixture of compassionate leave and working-from-home, and luckily there haven’t been any big or urgent projects to deal with, so he has actually been at my side since the miscarriage proper. We have both been very subdued and not very talkative, H mostly sublimating his feelings in making me tea and buying me all my favourite chocolate bars. It occurs to me that at this rate I am going to turn into crated veal, and the Chocolate Needs To Stop, heart-rending sentence that that is. Poor H. He looks so sad and tired, all the time.

Indignity

I should never have remarked on the behaviour of Cute Ute the Despoiler. Last night, at about three in the bloody Goddamned morning, she woke me with ferocious cramps and a gush of blood and clots. Oh, hurrah.

I eventually woke the (exhausted, half-dead-with-stress) H while fumbling helplessly about for the co-codamol (I was in the wrong room altogether). H found the pills, fetched me a glass of water, and made me up a hot-water-bottle to ease the pain in my lower back, and I fell asleep with his hand resting comfortably on my shoulder. H did not fall asleep again, not for a while. I really need to stop doing that to him.

Anyway, I was rather better this morning (though we have ordered a great many more sanitary pads in our next supermarket delivery (we live in a big big city. We are spoilt)). So I wrestled my way into my anti-embolism compression socks and H took me for a little walk around the local park, where all the conveniently-placed benches are. My leg still hurts like a bastard’s bastard son-of-a-camel, so some of the sitdownathons were about me trying to get my leg up and cussing under my breath as my knee spasmed. I was also surprisingly (no. Not surprisingly. You have a pulmonary embolism, you dumb bitch) weak and out of breath. But H took my blood-pressure and pulse when we got home (he has had a machine for years for his own purposes) and my blood-pressure was ‘excellent’ and pulse only 90, which after the sitting-the-fuck-down somersaults of Tuesday and Wednesday we have decided is acceptable.

But, Gentle Readers, compression socks oh my horsey God. I have to wear these for two fucking years. Every day. All day. Compression socks. You know the devil-octopus socks they stick you in if you’re immobilised by surgery? More so. These are not prevention devices, they are medical devices to treat existing DVT. And by ‘eck, but they are devices. The Haematology Nurse warned me I wouldn’t be able to tolerate them right away when she first handed them to me on Wednesday, because of the emming-effing pain I was already in. I managed to get them on for a few hours yesterday, and my poor leg felt like a boa-constrictor was slowly squeezing it to mince. They’re not so bad today, but oh, the pressure. I am under such pressure. Ugh.

I am only grateful this pair are green, and not dead-leg-beige.

To do –

• GP Monday, to say thank you for taking my whiny leg-cramps seriously, please can I have a spare pair or two of compression socks, and now I need a new improved sick-note for work.
• Contact work. Explain. Holy crap on a cracker, explain.
• WTF appointment with Dr George on Tuesday.
• Make appointment with Riverside’s counsellors. Because sheesh.
• Echocardiogram Wednesday.
• Haematology consult on the 12th.
• Have nervous breakdown.

At length, or, Clot me Amadeus.

Gentle Readers, I have no idea where to begin. I am at an utter loss. Because, my dears, what in the name of fuck just happened?

H, poor bewildered stressed-out lamb, gave you all an account of How We Spent Tuesday in the last post. So we left matters with me tucked into a hospital bed on the Clinical Decisions Unit, some time after midnight, and H shuffling off home to try and get some sleep.

I was woken at three in the morning by a doctor on call from Haematology. We discussed the recent miscarriage, the Clexane, the coming off Clexane, and the fact this was my tenth miscarriage, and she patted my hand, and then, apologetically, told me she needed to get an arterial blood-sample, which would mean sticking this rather large needle into that handy artery on my inner wrist. OW THE FUCK. After which, going back to sleep was kinda not happening or a while.

Allow me to digress, back-track, bitch, and discuss needles for a bit. My veins are quite small and deeply tucked into my flesh, so barely show at skin-level. That said, I have one splendidly cooperative vein in the crook of my left elbow that even an amateur can get first stab, and a fairly cooperative one in my right elbow crook. So, the first blood test, taken in A&E at 14:45, was taken from the Good Vein, and left a small bruise, oops. When I was admitted to the CDU with a definite DVT and suspected Pulmonary Embolism, they needed to take more blood, and set up a cannula for the CT scan. Because Good Vein was bruised, they tried Second Best Vein, which promptly collapsed flat and refused to release a drop. The darling sweet nurse apologised and stuck Good Vein, who promptly screamed ‘fuck you!’ and not only collapsed shut after half a vial, but then blew and left me with a bruise of shudder-inducing luridness and a blood-blister. The poor nurse patted and rubbed both my hands for minutes on end, but they insisted I had no veins at all and the blood only circulated by osmosis. So they paged for The Vein Whisperer. I kid you not, they referred to this dude as The Vein Whisperer.

He arrived very quickly, a soft-spoken shy-seeming young man, who mumbled politely at my hands and forearms for a minute, then poked a cannula into a seemingly absolutely random part of my right hand, and hit a decent vein at once, and got the two vials of blood for tests, and it didn’t really hurt. And then he sidled back into the bowels of the hospital and to my great sorrow I never saw him again.

After a vey long while, the CT scanner stopped having massive life-or-death emergencies to deal with and had time for me. The doctor now on duty needed more blood (this is standard with a DVT) and was also concerned that the little vein in my hand wouldn’t ‘take’ the dye shots for the CT scan. So she tried to find another vein. Oh, but that was unpleasant. She managed, eventually, and what a tale of ow is in that ‘eventually’, to get a needle into a vein in my right inner wrist, and get just enough out for the tests before it collapsed, and in the attempt to reposition the needle she tore the vein, and the bruise from that looks like a peacock feather. So she flushed the existing cannula and said, basically, sod it, it’ll have to do. Oh, thanks.

I’ll tell you about CT scans another time, but believe me, they are weird.

So! At 4am, all the completely demented little old ladies on the ward with me woke up confused, upset, and utterly disorientated, and started yelling, weeping, cursing (I thought I had a potty-mouth) and in one case wandering into other people’s cubicles and haranguing them. I merely got ordered to get up and take her to the shops, but she was happily telling the lady with back trauma to go hang her fucking useless self before one of the nurses corralled her. Oy. Vey. The nurses, by the way, were saints. And no more sleep for May.

And after breakfast, another nurse tried, and to everyone’s delight, succeeded in getting blood out of Second Best Vein.

H turned up at ten am, with bags under his eyes almost down to his beard, with some toiletries for me stashed in them, so I was able to have a sort of cat-bath, apply deodorant and brush my teeth and therefore feel a tad more civilised. Demented Wandering Lady promptly mistook him for her own son and alternately begged and emotionally blackmailed him to take her home, which was Awkward as Fuck, and then pulled the ‘you have fun with your bride, I’ll just wait here alone and forgotten in the dark’ card before being led away and fed tea by the nurses. Her actual son turned up later and did in fact look somewhat like H, but we decided not to harass the poor chap with the incident.

A doctor surrounded by students marched in, gave them my potted medical history (always a freaky ‘who is that poor unfortunate mortal… Oh’ moment), and told me I’d been referred to Haematology and their specialist consultant nurse would be coming to evaluate me. She also revealed, to my bewilderment and H’s total fucking horror, that the clot in my lung was not, as we thought, small, but actually really rather large, and cuntily (she did not say ‘cuntily’) positioned in the ‘saddle’ where the pulmonary artery splits into two branches, one for each lung. Which explains the constant tachycardia and breathlessness. But I’d already been given a huge shot of Fragmin the previous afternoon, and would be kept on that, so not to worry! Not unless I developed chest pain or collapsed! In which case, maybe worry! And off she went.

And then I had lunch. Which contrary to popular myth, was not inedible, though I don’t think you’re supposed to boil carrots until they dissolve.

The Haematology Nurse was lovely, and during the course of our conversation leaned forward, took my hand, and whispered that she too had no children and was trying hard. We get everywhere, we Infertiles. I hope she succeeds, because we need more nice kind clever people about the place. Anyway, she checked my pulse, BP and oxygenation rates, and then took me for a little walk (Holy crap, having a DVT can hurt. *limp limp hop ow limp*) along a few corridors and up and down a flight of stairs, and then checked again and found that though I’d stopped with that breathless nonsense from the day before (yay!) and my oxygenation was still good at 97%, my pulse was racing at 120 beats a minute, which was a bit of an overreaction. So I got another electrocardiogram. And another blood test. Buggeration. (Useful vein discovered in back of left hand, though a syringe was needed to get anything much out, which hurts *whine*).

Haematology Nurse also brought me a handful of leaflets on thrombophilia and on pregnancy with thrombophilia. The fact we were trying so hard to conceive rather concerned everyone, and so they decided not to put me on Warfarin, which is the standard treatment, but very toxic to embryos, unless Fragmin alone wasn’t helping enough. I did book myself a six-month course of Fragmin injections, however, and a set of compression stockings which I will have to wear for a large part of every day for two sodding years.

(Fragmin, like Clexane, is a low molecular weight heparin, but I am now on about four times the dose of the ‘prophylactic’ Clexane, and why yes, Virginia, it does sting and bruise about four times as much).

I was then moved to another ward, as I’d been in the CDU for the regulation 24 hours and was going to ‘breach’ any minute. I got transferred in a wheelchair, pulled backwards through the corridors, which gives a lass an unrivalled chance to stare back at the people walking along behind you in a brazen ‘well, you looked at me first’ sort of way. At the new ward, I got swabbed for MRSA, and had the usual BP/pulse/oxygenation tests, and my pulse being way high, I spent half an hour on a continuous monitor, which no one except H bothered to check. My pulse rate was rising and falling like the waves on the sea, with no particular logic, and my oxygenation rates would occasionally drop a little, just to keep H good and nervous, but I didn’t trip the alarms, so after a while I got unhitched so I could go to the loo and change into a fresh and more dignified gown, and they didn’t bother to rehitch me.

And drank a million cups of tea, because the one thing the NHS believes in fervidly is the importance of tea.

My Friend Who Knows Who She Is (hi Sol!), who actually lives near me and had offered to come over and keep me company, managed by a splendid bit of detective work to track me down and called the hospital and offered to visit me, which was jolly splendid and I said yes please. She turned up just after the Haematology Nurse turned up to drag me out for another little wander (I noticed my gown was not quite arranged at the back about five minutes into this walk. Hello everyone! I wear black knickers!). I don’t know if my heart and lungs were cheering up anyway or whether it was the pleasure of seeing my friend (who bought me BOOKS, proper good old detective and SF&F to lose oneself mindlessly in) but my pulse and oxygenation levels were more satisfactory. Didn’t stop Haematology Nurse doing another electrocardiogram, and frankly I am so utterly devoid of dignity and modesty at this point that I was happily yanking up my gown In front of everyone in a ‘hi! We’ve all got tits, right?’ sort of way without batting an eyelid. Sorry, Sol.

However, Haematology Nurse was pleased enough with the results to declare I could go home now. ‘Now’ means ‘When we can hunt down the pharmacist and sort out your bazillion Fragmin jabs and an epicly large sharps bin to take home with you’. So we had a nice chat with my friend until the end of visiting hours, and the dinner lady forced me to eat a yogurt (couldn’t face the Irish Stew and anyway I was going home soon). H, who had been in regular communication with my Mum announced she was driving up to see me so she could give us a lift home. The pharmacist turned up and I was given a carrier bag full of syringes and a sharps bucket. I changed back into actual clothes, and then they wanted the bed back, so we were sent to the ‘discharge lounge’ (bad name. Very bad name. Reconsider that name, for the love of God) to wait.

The discharge lounge was a cupboard containing six massively uncomfortable chairs, nowhere for me to put my leg up, and a gang of teenagers eating their way through the entire stock of the snack section of quite a sizeable supermarket. And H called my Mum again and discovered, as I had lovingly and from long experience predicted, that she was going to be at least another hour, hour-and-a-half, because she always bloody is, and I demanded a taxi in lordly tones. Like hell was I going to sit there aching bitterly surrounded by Doritos and clouds of Charlie Red.

Home! Home at last! And when Mum turned up, we had Chinese takeaway and a quiet chat, mostly me trying to explain that DVT and Pulmonary Embolism was not the same as the stroke my beloved grandmama died of, so could Mum stop fretting about that (I didn’t mention the possibility of heart failure bit. I thought it mightn’t help, as such). Oh, and discussing family history of various illnesses (upshot, I am a freaking freak, which we knew).

And then I went to bed and slept for ten hours straight.

And now I am going to go and do that again, with any luck. Golly, this has been a long and rambling and badly written post. I do apologise. I don’t have the energy to give it a good old edit and a bit more snap and narrative arc.

Very quick update (unlike hospital waiting times endured today)

As seems an unfortunate tradition I get to do the WTF o’clock updates having left May in hospital.

A brief factual timeline of our day since May’s post:

11:50 – I ordered taxi, thinking it would take about 20-30 minutes – it took 4 minutes catching us completely off-guard. Alas the last efficiently timed encounter we had.

12:10 – arrive at A&E

14:35 – seen by triage handed over referral letter, they took details ordered a blood test with some skepticism saying that it was probably just a baker’s cyst.

14:45 – blood taken and we were told we could go and get ourselves some lunch as blood result would take about an hour, so we did at the fairly pleasant M&S café on site.

15:45 – back for results and there was elevated fibrous material, so told to go and get a scan, meaning a painful walk back across to the other side of the hospital, feeling too British to ask for a wheelchair when there were people in various states of decrepitude being wheeled past in chairs and trolleys.

16:15 – scan showed there was a clot behind May’s left knee

16:30 – transferred to Clinical Decision Unit (CDU), which we had endless and repeated opportunity to observe as the A&E dumping ground for anyone threatening to take over the 4 hour ‘breach’ time before being admitted properly or patched up and sent on their way.

16:45 – on admission vitals were taken and some concern expressed about May’s high tapping rate, so an ECG plugged in that showed some strain on the heart… oxygen SATs were still good though, so no panic. By the time the Dr had reviewed the  DVT diagnoses and ECG and seen us May was getting quite breathless giving her potted version of recent shenanigans for about the fifth time that day. Dr suggested chest X-Ray and CT scan to check for clots elsewhere.

17:30ish – chest X-Ray, not told the result so returned to CDU

Then we waited – and waited  – and waited… CT had huge rush of emergencies apparently.

About 21:00 May finally got to go in the CT scanner – a very strange experience, which she will have to relay personally.

Then we waited – and waited – and waited…

I think we finally got confirmation that CT scan showed a (couple of?) small clot(s?) on the lungs too at about 23:00 – we were told therefore despite the acute lack of beds – endless shuffling, hassling and shifting of beds we witnessed being discussed – that May would be kept in overnight.

At 00:30 a CDU bed slot became available so that was made up for a temporary spot for May to get some sleep… yes, we had been in a ‘chair’ slot up until that point.

I made my way home to grab a bite to eat, email work, and post this… and now to bed for me too, perchance to sleep.

You’ll never guess what now

Item – Pain and bleeding still very unsatisfactory.

Item – Weeping with exhaustion is totally a thing that I am embracing with every fibre of my tortured being.

Item – Leg cramps still awful, crippling, etc.

Item – So we went to GP, who was disgruntled by leg cramps and insisted I go to Local Hospital for Doppler and ultrasound to rule out DVT. Oh, what the actual FUCK, Universe? Risk factors: pregnancy, immobility, sticky blood syndromes, coming OFF Clexane, fat arse. Shoot me now.

Item – On plus side, GP will deal with maternity services cancelling. And gave me a prescription for Co-Codamol, just to mix things up a little.

Item – Re: previous whine about people ignoring me and my piteous plight, if you’ve texted, commented, emailed, twittered, DM’d, phoned, written or FB’d me in the past fortnight, I did not, do not, mean you. At all. I am thinking of a couple of friends and specific family members in absolute particular, and both honour and honesty compel me to admit that I am not handling the situation fairly or gracefully and a Rethink Is In Order. I’d delete that paragraph in that last post if you-all hadn’t read it already. Onwards!

Item – I am writing this while H sorts things out at work so he can take the afternoon off and manhandle his limping, wilting, sagging, wailing, snivelling wife down to the Local Hospital so she can Alarm and Distress him with greater convenience to all parties.

Item – I fucking hate my life right now. Hate hate hate. Hate hate. Hate.