Tuesday, October 11, 2011

I hate waiting......

I hate waiting.  I have 13 weeks left in this pregnancy, and I hate waiting to hold my sweet little baby girl in my arms and kiss her whole face.  I hate waiting to see if Marshall will really be able to get any sleep sharing a room with the baby.  I hate waiting to see if the clothes I've bought will fit her longer than 10 minutes.

Most of all, I hate waiting for my next doctor's appointment.

Baby Girl - we think she looks like a kitty!
I had my ultrasound in August.  Everything was fine, until the tech got to the part where she checks out my liver, kidneys, and gallbladder.  Kidneys were fine, luckily, but apparently I had "a good sized stone that you may or may not pass in the foreseeable future" and some "sludge".  Okay, I can deal with that.  Will it be painful?  Sure. But the pain will pass.  No big.  The main problem was with my liver.  I believe the reaction she had was somewhere between "Holy crap your liver should have it's own zip code!" and "Huh, wonder why it's a little enlarged?" 

My favorite part of the ultrasound visit was that I then had to wait 40 minutes to see the PA-C before I could leave.  Okay, so again with the waiting, and you all know how much I love doing that, right? *wink*  And of course, the PA-C's first words to me when she FINALLY comes in are "Now don't panic."  Um, yeah, I've been in this tiny little room for 40 minutes by myself freaking out because the ultrasound tech was freaking out over my liver and gallbladder and you tell me not to panic?!  It's a little too late for that, honey!

We run LFTs (liver function tests) and a few days later I call for the results.  They come back normal, so I don't worry.  In fact, I almost completely forget about the stress I had.  Until I get a phone call from the doctor's office.

"Hi, yes, we'd like to remind you that you need to discuss the results of your ultrasound with Dr. S because there were some abnormalities. . . " no kidding?!  " . . . and you can do that at your appointment on _____."

Gee, thanks.  So now I'm freaking out again.  I go to my appointment where my doctor tells me that she isn't worried.  My liver functions are normal, according to my blood work.  She says it's perfectly normal for a liver in a woman to not be the same consistency (such a weird term, I know, but like on the ultrasound it wasn't all the same color of grey) because sometimes fatty penetration happens, and that's fine.  Really, she tells me, it's the radiologist that's concerned because he can't tell for certain.  He wants me to do an MRI.  Yeah, so not comfy doing one of those right now.  That's fine, I can do a series of ultrasounds.

From ultrasound #2 - kind of freaky cuz you can see her spine!
So today I went in for my second ultrasound.  It was inconclusive, which means that I now have to wait for who-knows-how-many-weeks for the radiologist to read it.  The good news?  I didn't have to schedule another one.  That makes me feel a little better, like maybe my doctor isn't too worried about it.  The bad news?  I have another stone in my gallbladder.  It's small, so I must've passed the first one (not sure when that happened), AND the sludge has diminished.  YAY!  Small victories, right?

But seriously, I won't be completely satisfied until the stupid man reads the ultrasound and tells me what I want to hear.  I would totally love to hear "Oh, I'm sorry, it's totally normally.  Didn't mean to completely freak you out for months on end.  My apologies.  Here's some money to make up for it."  Okay, the money part will NEVER (probably) happen.  But I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the rest of it!

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