The story, pt 1, doctors

It’s been ten years… and probably at least 7 or 8 since I’ve told the story.

At least 9 since the one time I can remember writing it out completely, on an “open diary” blog that has long since ceased to exist.

Usually I try to deflect it when it comes up… “There were complications… things got messy.. ” is usually enough.

And I especially try to avoid saying anything about it at all to anyone who is pregnant. Because I think it would have been scary had someone told it to me, and not helpful.

But for some reason this year, I’m feeling like rehashing it again.

I really really do not recommending reading past this point while pregnant or planning to be soon.

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I suppose the best place to start the story is explaining the background.

Far from ideal situation… left drug-using ex that was abusive in many ways only to find out I was pregnant… second chance relationship attempt failed.

I’d had some symptoms, but written them off due to the stressful situation I was in, so I was 10 weeks along before I’d found out.

—

College health clinic did an automatic referral to a particular doctor… who was an older guy who looked like he could have retired if he wanted to… very laid back, and didn’t seem to be easily flustered.

However, the first visit started out on a rough note with the nurse, who insisted we worked from the date on my last period on the due date, in spite of my having documented hormonal issues that make my cycles unpredictable, and my knowing that there wasn’t any activity to cause pregnancy until weeks later.

So, initially she had the due date listed as 02/02 (of 02 actually.. lol).
I knew by activity that it couldn’t actually be any earlier than 02/17… a big difference.

Doctor was unfazed… told me “ok, we’ll check”, and proceeded to run an ultrasound on the machine I hadn’t even noticed sitting behind the exam table.

Based on the measurements, he decided to assign 02/11.. still a bit early, but a lot closer, so we went with it from here on… and I didn’t think too much about the issue.

–

For most of the pregnancy, things went smoothly. One brief evening of bleeding that was never really explained, one night of issues related to ligaments being loose from hormones, but not much else.

I hadn’t had morning sickness at all until about the start of the last trimester, and then suddenly it seemed like I couldn’t keep much of anything down. For a while, my diet was consisting mostly of carnation breakfasts.

—

When they ran the first glucose tolerance test, the results came back a bit high, so he had me go into the lab and do the more extensive test… blood being pulled every 15 minutes for several hours after drinking the glucose solution.

I was told that the results had come back borderline… a touch high, but not enough to be really concerned over… especially when the hormonal issues were taken into account… and so just to watch the sugar intake and fasting blood sugar levels.

The fasting levels ended up about the same… a touch higher than ideal range, but not high enough to cause panic. The highest one I had listed was 125, most were a lot lower.

—

I graduated the week before Christmas, and because my job was classified as part time, it didn’t allow time off, and so I ended up moving home, 2 states away, literally the day I was done with classes.. less than a month and a half from when I was due.

Unfortunately, to transfer to the state’s medical program because the insurance would no longer cover me as a non-student, I had to be there in person, so this couldn’t be done before the move… and so it would be a couple of weeks before it would be in effect.

Armed only with a phone book from home, I’d already called literally every OB that was listed in it, and there was only one single practice that would accept a patient that was a transfer at that late stage, and also accept the state medical card as payment. So, my new doctor had basically been selected for me based on those two factors alone.

At the last visit with my original doctor earlier in the week, they had copied my chart, placed it into a manilla envelope, and had me take it to the new office by hand. So it had already been dropped off, we were just waiting for the paperwork to hurry up and go through to start appointments with the new doctor.

—

About a week before the move, my legs started itching at night.

It wasn’t real bad at first, so I didn’t really worry about it with having so much else to worry about.

But shortly after the move, it got bad. Nothing seemed to help… but it only happened after about 8pm or so.

I called the new doc. Same answer about waiting until paperwork went through.

Called the old doc. The nurse gave me suggestions like oatmeal baths etc… most of which I’d already tried, none of which worked.

I finally found one solution… which was to take a bath that was so hot it basically scalded my legs until they were red and sunburnt looking when I got out… and that would buy me about an hour to fall asleep before they started itching again.

After a few more days, I called the old doc’s office again to see if they had any new ideas, and was told to go to the ER and ask them to run tests for liver function… because apparently there was an off chance that it could be something liver related that could turn serious.

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So off to the ER I went, for what was pretty much the worst ER visit that I’ve ever had.

I was told that if my liver were having issues, my eyes would be yellow. Gee, why do they even have the option to run blood tests on it then?

The whole visit had a condescending tone… and I was lectured at for not having proper pre-natal care… even though I had been seeing the doc regularly up until two weeks before, and wouldn’t have even been due for my next regular appointment yet.

The only test they ran at all was for blood glucose… a decision that I’m pretty sure was probably made only because I’m overweight, as the topic hadn’t been mentioned to them at all.. and lectured me that it was too high and how awful it was how I was treating this baby by not having proper prenatal care for it.

They never would tell me exactly how high it was, but given that this hadn’t been a fasting reading… I’m not sure that it would have been very reliable even if they had. (Of course, my luck, I hadn’t checked it that morning on my own to know an exact number to throw at them either)

They write me an appointment card for the clinic that’s run by the hospital, in spite of my explanations, and essentially make threats of reports that can be made if I don’t have proper care.

—

Another week or so goes by, and finally the first appointment with the new doctor happens.

I tell her about the ER visit, and she seems more freaked out by their concern about the glucose level than she cares about the liver test they didn’t run… and she never did do anything to address the itching that had started that whole mess.

And so, without having seen their paperwork or either of us even knowing what the number was that they were lecturing about… and looking at the exact same test results that my old doctor had been looking out… and without running any tests of current condition… she suddenly decides that I’m gestational diabetic and high risk.

She has her nurse schedule an appointment with an endocrinologist for that afternoon….

and appointments for non-stress tests to check movement three times a week from that point on, in spite of the baby’s kicks being frequent and strong enough to be easily felt with someone else’s hand…

and appointments with a high risk maternal fetal medicine doctor…

and appointments to have higher definition sonograms done at various points…

and appointments with her twice a week.

I literally had 21 appointments in one particular 7 day period…. and only 3 or 4 week days that didn’t have at least 1.

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And so I went to the endocrinologist.

Which was another less than stellar appointment that left me shaking my head and wondering whether I was crazy or the whole medical world was.

She ran a glucose test using a standard home meter in the office, which again was not while I was fasting… it was right after lunch.

And though the number seemed a bit high but moderate for after a meal to me, she decided based on that one number alone to put me on insulin.

In the discussion, it came out that she didn’t even have the information in front of her from the earlier glucose tolerance tests… let alone the ER paperwork… all that my new doctor had called over was that I was gestational diabetic and the ER was upset over the numbers.

She did have lab tests run… but only after the appointment… and I never did hear what the results of those were.

—

Now, insulin after each meal is enough of a pain as it is. Try it when you have no clue whether or not that meal is actually going to stay down long enough to be digested as a meal.

My fasting blood sugars went to being a bit high but stable within about a 10 point range, to being absolutely all over the place! There were a few mornings that it would be over 300. There were mornings that would be just a day or two later that would be 54, or be in the 70’s.

As the few weeks went on, she never seemed to be able to explain exactly why they seemed to generally be a lot worse than they had been before insulin was added… and every concern I had was basically brushed off.

—

The high risk doctor really didn’t have much to say at all. Just basically that things seemed to be going ok at that point.

The repeated non-stress tests were equally as boring. Only once was there any question on whether or not she was moving enough, and that one seemed to just be a sleeping spell, as after a bit, the movement picked right back up with no problems.

—

The higher definition sonograms were interesting at least, as they were fancy 3d style pictures..
but were sort of weird, as all of the other sonograms the technicians had been talkative, telling me what part was where, that sort of random thing… where these were treated like top secret, and anything I asked, even just to verify earlier gender, I was told needed to be asked to my doctor.

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And my new doctor continued freaking out.

I started getting told horror stories about big babies being too big to be born normally and getting stuck and having injured arms for life and even dying.

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So all of this chaos lasted for about 3 weeks.

—

On friday afternoon, the 25th of January, she comes into the room and starts the appointment with the statement “If you are still insisting on actually wanting to try laboring, I have you scheduled to be induced Sunday night at 6pm… otherwise, we’ll just do the C-section on Monday morning.”

Sunday was the 27th of January. I wasn’t due for another 3 weeks by the guess made back on the first appointment… 4 weeks by the date that I knew was the earliest it could actually be.

My protests were met with informing me that the sonogram that monday had said that the baby was already 11 and a half pounds, which meant she was probably over 12 by now, and needed to be born now before she got any bigger.

She told me where to check in…. at which point I realized she had me scheduled at the hospital where the ER visit had taken place, not the other hospital in town where I had wanted to be and where she had earlier agreed on using. She informed me that I was too high risk to go there (even though their NICU is rated just as highly), and that we would be up on the hospital floor near the operating rooms, not down in the connected birthing center where women in labor usually were, for the same reason.