Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

It is dark here, Very, very, very dark. I am up in Massachusetts, alone with the girls for the night, and I would be lying if I didn’t admit to being slightly terrified. OK, maybe not terrified, but let’s just say I am not exactly comfortable. And I am wired and hyper-alert. So this might be a long post.

First off, it is a personal accomplishment that I am even here. I had the ultrasound today and it was, from start to finish, a pretty miserable experience. The technician was humorless. Her first comment to me, after slathering on that cold, cold gel, was “Your bladder is empty.” And then she pouted. I’m not kidding: An honest-to-goodness pout. She might as well had put her fists on her hips and stomped her foot. I pointed to my Nalgene and said that is my third one in the past hour. Plus four cups of coffee this morning. And just or good measure, I told her I had to pee. “No you don’t,” she said back to me. Which is incredible because no one has ever told me if I really had to pee or not. And I most assuredly had to pee (and did, five minutes later, before the wanding).

Her second comment: “Wow, they really botched you up inside.” She was referring to the placement of my internal organs. I am not accustomed to people talking smack about my internal appearance. Our tense conversation then went something like this:

Me: Really? You can tell that?
Her: Oh yes.
Me: It was a rough C section. Will this have any sort of effect on me in the future?
Her: [silence]
Me: I mean, it’s ok if everything is slightly askew, right?
Her: [scrunches up her mouth and nose]
Me: OK, tell me this: Does this just mean I am not pretty on the inside anymore, but it doesn’t negatively impact me any other way?
Her: Yes.

Of course the screen was turned away from me, but I could catch a reflection of it in a Plexiglas wall covering. I saw her measuring my ovary. And then something else. And then she stepped out for a minute and came back with a doctor. Who did some more measuring and looking and typed some things and left. Mr. Bedside Manner. He was gone again before I could ask him why the hell he was there. That freaked me out, because it is never good when a doctor shows up. Next up, the wanding, which was extra painful, because it seems that my uterus is quite crooked now, so I must be really probed.

I tried to fish out a morsel of info from the tech, but she was tight as a clam. I sighed and asked how long till the results make it to my doctor. She said two to three business days. That meant I would be lucky to get a call on Tuesday.

Imagine my horror/shock when I missed a call to my home number AND cell a mere two hours later (I was in the middle of a toddler fiasco). It was my doctor’s office, calling to discuss the results of the scan. My stomach flipped and my mind started racing. I called the office back but, of course, the doctor was on another call.

All this as I was about to leave for Massachusetts with the girls. I literally sat down and thought, I’m not going. I can’t get on the road and not know why my doctor is calling two hours after then scan. I can’t go anywhere until I speak with my doctor. But I got up (sticker, please) and loaded eight bags and one toddler potty onto my arms (sticker, please) and took the elevator downstairs, where Nicole was meeting me with the car (sticker for Nicole).

I tried to get Nicole to admit that the two-hour turn-around time doesn’t bode well for good results, but she was quite even. Maybe later she will admit that it was alarming, but she didn’t let me drive off thinking that that was anything less than totally routine.

How much longer can I draw this out? To be honest, there is no real answer to my medical woes, and the call was anti climatic in that of course it requires a follow up. When I spoke with my doctor, she said the report indicated what they think is a cyst. I need to follow up with my ob. My doctor asked if I had followed up yet with my ob (she even had my ob’s name) but since we just switched insurances, I said no, I am looking for a new one. I mentioned my difficulty finding one that is accepting patients before Oct/Nov, but told the doctor I would search anew and would make an appointment after the holiday weekend. Why all the details here? Because Nicole tried to assure me that if they were super concerned, they would have told me I need to see a doctor right away. But the way I see it, I said I WOULD see an ob right away, so I can’t tell if my doctor had a sense of urgency or not. Cyst? Tumor? Is it getting bigger? Smaller? Good? Bad? Don’t know.

But it comes down to this: I can’t worry if I don’t know what I am worrying about. I can worry over biopsy results or worry over will a scan show something (it did: Worry justified!) but I just need to make the next appointment and see what to worry about next. So I guess I am pulling down the covers and tucking worry in for the night. Because this week of worry really drained me and I need to get a break from it. I just wish I would stop the bleeding. It is a constant reminder that something is not quite right.

And besides, now I can worry that my transmission light on my car is blinking. What is that all about?

We are up here for the weekend and aaaaaaaaall of next week. The girls and I came up early for two reasons: To beat the holiday traffic and to counter any potential storm traffic. The combination of the two could create a veritable perfect storm of traffic woes. Nicole is taking a train up tomorrow and the girls and I will pick her up. This is my first time alone here, and it has taken me almost a year to work up to this. Yes, staying here, in the woods, alone with the girls, scares me. But I really want to get comfortable with this. I mean, it was a perfectly wonderful evening: Dinner out, followed by rousing rounds of Memory on the carpet for a half hour followed by jammies, playing house and a trip down the street to see the llamas. They went to bed fairly easily and here I sit, on the couch, blogging and reading and waiting for the sun to come up.

Pictured above, Avery in town; the girls at dinner.