I decided that I'm a pretty good nurse practitioner ...and a piss poor patient. I'm going to have to force myself to go get my labs done that were ordered well over 2 weeks ago. I'm forcing myself to make it happen tomorrow. If I thought there was a way for me to fake it ...I totally wouldn't go. I can't even tell you how much I'm dreading the 1 hour gestational screen glucose tolerance test. I *hate* insulin resistance and pcos. *hate* *hate* *hate* it. I have every intention of testing my blood sugar on my own before I go in and when I leave so that I know what the results are right away. I've been secretly plotting how to "fix" the results so they come out the right way. Umm..you got it. Crazy girl is back. My ideas for fixing the results? Running up and down the stairs for the entire full hour. Hiding in the bathroom and doing an hour worth of squats, lunges, and running in place...sneaking in insulin and taking some just in case ..umm...yeah. That might be taking things too far. Okay seriously. WTF is wrong with me? Obviously the rational part of my brain knows that if I'm diabetic I need to take care of it and want to know about it at the earliest possible time. I also know that chances are more than likely that I will be since I'm starting out with insulin resistance and have been on massive doses of progesterone which makes insulin resistance worse. I limit and count carbs. Sort of. Seriously??? Sort of??!?Unless the 2nd piece of pizza at lunch today is calling my name or something. It's pathetic. I think I'll go lick Monk's chocolate ice cream cone to make myself feel better about the whole thing.The health care provider in me? Teaches diabetic education a full 10 hours per week. To umm...gestational diabetics. I'm not even kidding. I have a certification in advanced diabetic management at a master's level that took me a very long time to get. It was a bitch of a test. You kind of have to be pretty smart about all things diabetic to get it. Wanna schedule an appointment with me?The wife in me? Would probably be murdered and stuffed into a random crawlspace if Monk ever read this. Because umm... Monk? Is a Type 1 diabetic. On an insulin pump. And checks his blood a bare minimum of 10 times per day. And gets harassed by his wife probably 2 hours a day because I want him to wear a continuous glucose monitor in addition to his pump. So I'm sensing I wouldn't get a lot of support about being a pansy about the 1 hour GTT. Just guessing. In truth? I'm embarrassed to even tell him that I have to have the stupid test. And I'm pretty sure that he doesn't even know that I'm taking Metformin. Or what Metformin is for.
I've gotta go. I need to go find a phone book to look up "Treatments for crazy girls". Think I'll have any luck?
Happy to report that my psychosis seems to have taken a vacation now that I've ingested all sorts of progesterone through various different orifices of my body. Seriously ...I feel like I had a bottle of Merlot or something I'm so chill. It was touchy for a while, though. I swear to God I drove to 4 different pharmacies only to be told at each one that the prescription had not been called in. At one of them? I almost went postal because *I* called the prescription in, dammit. Kind of hard to admit that to the pharmacy tech. I felt vaguely like a crack addict that couldn't find the goods for a good few hours. I finally called the friendly OB and explained my plight. She yelled at me ...which I apparently needed. Told me to relax or I was dooming myself to a colicky crabby stressed out baby. Laughed at me when I told her that if I thought it would help I would crush progesterone tabs and snort the powder like it was cocaine. I laughed and pretended I wasn't serious. The whole day I had Paul Simon singing "Save the life of my child ...cried the desperate mother..." in my head. Rather traumatizing when I realized that ALL of my symptoms including my aversion to meat were disappearing by the hour and there wasn't a progesterone suppository or prometrium capsule to be found. Rather silly now that I'm cuddled on the couch with all of the wretched nausea and sore boobies coming back. I agreed to not test either my hcg or progesterone levels for a week. You know. For sanity's sake. The friendly OB had me get progesterone suppositories from a compounding pharmacy at a dose of 100 mg twice daily. She claims that it's enough because it's absorbed better than prometrium. She didn't argue when I told her that I needed to add a couple of prometrium caps in for good measure and my sanity. The weird thing? The super special suppositories are $100 for a month's supply and insurance doesn't pay for them. I don't mind paying but when I asked how some women could afford it? The OB said, "They can't. This is kind of an uptown problem." Ummm...that makes me sad. :(I made a probably bad decision to tell the golden child today that she may or may not be having a sibling. I put myself on bedrest today as a precautionary measure and she couldn't figure out what the heck was going on. She has never known about any of the other pregnancies or losses ...and I cautioned her that this one might not make it. She's ecstatic at the possibility of a sibling ....her innocence is reassuring to me and I need to think all the good thoughts I possibly can. I hope it doesn't end in devastation for us both.
Every time I'm pregnant I think about previous pregnancies. When I got my beta and progesterone back today...I almost immediately flashed to the night of the golden child's delivery. Hindsight being what it is, I went through all of the things that went wrong or were missed and how I ended up sitting in Labor & Delivery 3 weeks early with a monster sized child. At the ultrasound earlier in the day, the OB said, "Congratulations! You have a moose!" and estimated her weight at 10 pounds with give or take a pound either way. No warning ...no ..umm..she's on the big side ..maybe we should check your labs. I had passed my glucose tolerance test with flying colors and *never* missed an appointment. Ever. They sent me over to be induced immediately. I know now there is no way that child got that huge without me having gestational diabetes. Undiagnosed. Untreated. Unless you count the milkshakes I was downing on a nearly daily basis ...because yumm. Anyway. I sat there as a barely 20 year old, alone with my mom, when the midwife came in to consent me for the induction. She was 2 weeks behind me in pregnancy. During the consent, she asked if the MD had talked to me about shoulder dystocia, the baby getting stuck, risks of vaginally delivering a monster child. And I was like ..umm..no. He said to come here. So she talked to me about the risks and benefits. The options. Do I want to have a section with no labor? I had dreams of an all natural birth. That's why I saw a certified nurse midwife the whole way through ..but the more she talked, the more scared I got. I eventually said, "What would you do?" And her response seriously angered me. She said, "I'm not the right person to ask. I know EVERYTHING that can go wrong. I can't really give you an unbiased opinion." I ended up having a c-section with no labor and no trials about 2 hours later. The baby was 9 pounds 11 ounces. The C-section was the worst experience of my life. The baby's glucose plummeted into the 20's immediately after birth which got her whisked away to the nursery and away from me. I very nearly bled out. I was on pitocin for 2 days after the birth and miserable. I was livid for years ...felt like the person I was supposed to trust led me astray and robbed me of my ideal birthing experience. But now? I understand. I get it. I don't know that if I were in the same position that I could have said anything different than what she told me. If I had known of stillbirth, and birth trauma, and all of the possibilities that seemed like they happened to other people? I don't think I would have been able to say, "Hey ..let's give this birth plan a try!" Knowledge is scary and awful. With that first pregnancy? When I was young and in college and no where near ready? I was never, not for a minute scared. I didn't worry about betas or ultrasounds or a touch of spotting here and there. The pregnancy, for all the stress surrounding it, was my safe place. It was blissful. That's not something that I will ever get back.Every moment of this and the past 2 pregnancies has been terrifying. I stood up today and felt a ripping pain in my low abdomen. Lasted about 10 seconds but I'm still mostly convinced it was something awful.My beta yesterday doubled. JUST doubled at 239. Progesterone dropped a little to 26.6 but still well within normal ...and I got tested at a different time of the day so the variability is somewhat expected. The 239?? Terrifies me. Grow baby. Please grow. Please don't be growing in a tube.More blood tomorrow ...ultrasound on Monday.Seems strange to be happily married ...with a gorgeous family ..in a beautiful house ...surrounded by a white picket fence ...and longing for the days when I was young and alone. And blissfully ignorant.
