Good morning, everyone, and a belated Happy Thanksgiving.
The holidays are a hectic time for my wife and I in a normal year - we both work in retail, have families who care very much about us, and friends who are invaluable. Throwing a baby in the mix increases the pace of the holidays by, oh, I don't know, say 7,000%?
The past two weeks have been very tumultuous for Mrs. J, and I, which has made it difficult for me to maintain this blog - for that, I apologize. Now that another Black Friday is in the books (my 8th with the company I currently work for), hopefully things will normalize a bit, and I can get back on with regularly scheduled updates.
That being said, I have a feeling that this post is going to be quite a wall of text, so if you don't have a few minutes, please come back when you do. I apologize for the long winded post in advance, however there are a few things that I've been itching to share, and I'm going to throw them all into this post.
Another quick note - I'm presently running on about 18 hours without sleep, so I apologize in advance if any part of this is difficult to understand.
So we begin:
Our Dr. Jekyll, and Mr. Hyde:
Mrs. J and I were excited beyond belief when we discovered that she was pregnant. For me, it was both an exciting discovery, and a relieving discovery all at the same time. See, her body has had a tendency in the past to run a few days behind her, erm... "clock," if you will. However, something seemed different about this time. She'd never gone beyond about five days late, give or take a day or two. However, the day she decided to test was a bit different - she was 9 days late and counting. Both of us had been through a pretty rough day at work, so neither of us really wanted to deal with the possibilities at that point in time, but responsibility won out.
Being that we both work in the same place, many of my regular clients know my wife as such, rather than a fellow employee. It happened that I was working with one of my long-time clients, and had to involve Mrs. J in the situation she was dealing with. That very same client turned to Mrs. J and asked, "Oh! How far along are you?" Keep in mind, at this point, we only had suspicions that she may be carrying a child, so Mrs. J was understandably a bit offended by the question, thinking that she had gained noticeable amounts of weight, or looked, er, "pregnant." We both quickly staved off the question, assuring my client that there was no bun in the oven, which prompted a quick flush of the cheeks from my client, and causing her to quickly scurry off once her issue was resolved. At this point, Mrs. J and I simply exchanged some puzzled looks, and both knew that it was time we actually had her take a test. It couldn't just be a coincidence, right?
So, Mrs. J finished her shift several hours before I did, and moseyed over to Wal-Mart to pick up a pack of home pregnancy tests. So, I waited, rather impatiently, for her to get home, and take a test. And let me tell you, that was a fairly agonizing few hours, because I hate talking on the phone, and prefer texts. Partner that with the forgetfulness that Mrs. J is prone to, and it's a recipe for disaster. After about 3 hours, I found myself hammering out text messages, getting shorter and shorter in length, quickly dissolving from "Are you pregnant?" to simply, "Pregnant?" No response came.
Mrs. J and I have been together for almost a decade, so I know that when she doesn't respond to a text, that one of three things has happened:
-She's fallen asleep.
-She doesn't think a text message is suitable for that conversation, or doesn't want to give an answer.
-She's left me to elope with a Colombian drug kingpin. (Only kidding!)
At that point, I pretty much had my answer, but waited until we were together to see it for myself.
That's when the panic set in.
You may be asking yourself, "Panic? But why?!" And truth be told, that's a pretty fair question. Not panic in a negative sense, where we've experience a prior loss, or didn't want it to happen. In fact, quite the opposite: We were absolutely thrilled. However, Mrs. J has had some prior issues with infected calcium-based kidney stones (sorry, I forget the doctor-ese version of the name), and was told that in the event of a positive pregnancy test, she needs to be seen immediately to be placed on the proper prenatal vitamins, and to make sure that the stones don't come back.
Fast forward to the next day, when our holy nightmare began.
Mrs. J spent the following morning calling around to just about every OB/GYN's office in our area. None of which were willing to see her until we were 10 weeks out from her LMP (last menstrual period). This prompted a lot of swearing on my end, and a lot of frustration on her end. She was simply trying to follow her urologists' orders, and none of the offices in the area were willing to hear anything about it.
Queue a panicked phone call to my mother, who has a particular dislike for doctors of any variety. Once we explained the situation to her, I'm assuming she made some rather unpleasant phone calls to our most local office, because they promptly called my wife back, and told her they'd squeezed her in for the following Wednesday. Now, that's better... Or so we thought.
We arrived at our first appointment at the crack of dawn, approximately 0730. Once her paperwork was complete, they rushed her right back to the ultrasound machine, and began probing away. This was the first stop on the nightmarish bus ride. The ultrasound tech had the audacity to say, "You know, this is just stupid. I have no idea why we're seeing you this early." Now, I already do pretty poorly with social situations to begin with, partner that up with an early morning, and already being agitated with this office, and I wanted to scream. I managed to withhold my rage, and respond in kind with, "Well, we're just doing what her doctor told her to. Sorry if that's an inconvenience." This response garnered a pretty targeted look of daggers in my general direction, and silence for the rest of the probing.
After the ultrasound was complete, we were shoo'ed off to the doctor's exam room, where we waited 45 minutes for her to show up to our appointment. I'm fully aware that doctors offices tend to run behind, but this was ridiculous.
The minute that the OB stepped into the room, she started in on Mrs. J.
"When was your LMP?"
-According to the calendar, about 5 weeks, 2 days ago.
"Well, then this pregnancy is most likely ectopic." (WTF?)
-W-what?
"Your uterine lining is thickening up nicely, like it's expecting a yolk sac, but there just isn't one there. So, if your period was really that long ago, this is not going to be a viable pregnancy." (W...T...F....?)
By this point, my blood was boiling, as Mrs J. was already in tears.
"Why are you even here if your period was only 5 weeks ago?"
-Mrs. J explains the whole story over again.
"Well, that's ridiculous. I've never heard of such a thing. In fact, no prenatal vitamins contain dangerous levels of calcium. What's your doctor thinking?"
This was when I felt that I had no choice but to intervene, and redirect the conversation to being just she and I. I began with the typical questions, "Are you sure? Because her urologist felt very strongly about the subject, and insisted that she be seen on her first positive result." She responded with medical gibberish that I can't begin to comprehend, but I was pissed.
To make a long story fairly short, she ordered a blood-draw to measure her hCG levels over a 48 hour period. Research on the internet showed this to be a pretty common procedure, especially when nothing is present on an ultrasound. Those 48 hours were an absolute nightmare. The doctor promised to call Mrs. J back as soon as the blood results were in, and even ordered them "stat" to ensure they'd arrive before close of business.
Big surprise: she didn't call. Mrs. J had to call her, and leave a message, only to receive a call back from the doctor's nurse. "WHAT DID SHE SAY?!" You're probably shouting that to yourself (or at least, my 2:00AM brain hopes you shouted that out loud).
Everything was perfectly fine. The hCG levels grew as necessary, and determined that it was just too early for anything to be visible on the ultrasound. See you in three weeks.
Mrs. J and I were, in my opinion, justifiably angry, distraught, and upset with how blunt, and frankly, downright rude the doctor had been during this appointment. I did, however, appeal to the logical side of my wife: She was being a doctor. She was telling it as she saw it, and not beating around the bush. On the other side of that coin, though, she could've been way more tactful about the delivery.
We went back and forth on whether or not to see her a second time, or to switch doctors. Ultimately, we decided to give her one more chance. And pardon my French, but that was a huge fucking mistake. She was just as bad, if not worse the second time through. At 7 weeks, we saw our little Bean (thus where the nickname arose), and everything looked fine. Only, she was a raging snatch the entire time we had our visit with her.
Mrs. J went through the typical questions with her, "What can I eat? What should I avoid?" and so on. To these questions, the doctor only responded with other questions, and tore apart my wife's current way of living. Here's a sample:
"What do you eat for breakfast?"
-Usually a Pop-Tart, or a bowl of cereal.
"Pop-Tarts? No. There's nothing good about eating a Pop-Tart. You need to eat cereal. Stay away from white bread - wheat only." (Keep in mind, Mrs. J is mildly allergic to wheat bread, you know, causing her throat to close up.)
She then starts firing off a myriad of do's-and-don'ts, and we're both listening fairly intently. But, the good doctor decided it was necessary to stop mid-sentence, glare at me, and tell me, "You need to be writing this stuff down."
Now, if you don't know me, I respond to situations like this (uncomfortable, or confrontational ones) in one of two ways: Yelling/swearing, or sarcasm.
Being that it's a doctor's office, and I didn't want to get my wife blacklisted, I chose sarcasm, "And with what, pray-tell, do you expect me to write with? You've got the only pen in the room, and you're using it to point at nothing." I'm assuming this was the appropriate response, because it got the woman to hand over her pen, and I didn't get Mrs. J blacklisted from the practice.
And I wrote. And wrote. Only to find out that it was pretty much pointless, because after the appointment, when we met with the birth planner, she gave us a big folder outlining basically everything that Dr. Asswad dictated.
You might be thinking to yourself, "But J, this doesn't sound that bad." And thinking in retrospect, it may not have been as bad as I thought, but the big issue was that she wouldn't speak to me directly, other than to be rude. If I'd ask a question, she'd respond to my wife instead. If my wife asked a question, she'd speak down to her, and speak to her like she was five. These are both pretty awful qualities in a doctor.
Then she started in on prenatal trisomy and genetic disorder screening. Which she made a point to tell us repeatedly that insurance didn't cover, was very expensive, but she felt it was necessary. I truthfully suspect that she's getting kickbacks or something, the way she tried to push these tests on Mrs. J and I. Keep in mind, as well, that we'd already decided we would be doing the prenatal trisomy screenings, we just weren't sure what trimester we would do them in until we knew what our insurance would cover.
Now, I'm getting tired, and you're probably getting bored, so I'm going to quit ranting about Hell-Doctor, and move on to our next visit, which I may have even covered in my last update:
Turns out, our insurance does cover 1st trimester screenings. They cover it 100%. And our kick-ass new doctor called in a favor to get us in that very day to have Mrs. J and Bean tested.
If you've taken the time to read through this wall of text, you're probably wondering why I brought all this up.
It's simple: to serve as a cautionary tale to anyone who may be newer to this than we are. It's okay to see multiple doctors. In fact, I encourage it. There is such a thing as not being compatible with your doctor, which is exactly what happened with Mrs. J and I with our first doctor. The woman was just too tactless, and far too matter-of-fact. If there's one thing I've learned in all of the research I've done (and I've done a lot of it), it's that pregnancy is far from an exact science. There are too many what-ifs involved for any OB/GYN to be matter-of-fact about much of anything. There are exceptions, of course, but things like whether or not a pregnancy is ectopic should be determined by more than a cursory glance at a 4/5 week ultrasound.
I hope, that if you've come across this blog by random, that you learn from the missteps that Mrs. J and I have taken through our journey, as short as it's been.
More to come, later. I need to sleep, and you're probably bored.
Good night.
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