I’ve shared so many updates with you all through the last month that I know so many of you are concerned and want to know when all this mess is “over” so I thought I’d share a little update to hopefully reassure you all a bit with how we’re doing.
Today was my weekly appointment for my lab work. I anticipated just going in, having blood drawn, and coming right back home. Before I walked away I was told that my doctor was wanting to see me today too. Instantly I got nervous and at the same time felt reassured. I swear we have feared every doctor appointment these last few weeks, knowing most have landed me right back in the hospital. Thankfully that is NOT the case today!
I think this mess is almost over, but not quite. As I’ve said, I’ve seen most of the doctor’s in the practice that treats me usually visits depends on who is working in the office, on call, or scheduled for surgeries. The doctor who has treated me the most, including two of the surgeries wanted to see me today. She’s given us so much reassurance the last 1 1/2 weeks. Today she met with me for the first time since my appointment with her last week and since my weekend stay in the hospital. I expressed how challenging the weekend was for me and how this bad dream just doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to end. She asked how I’ve been feeling and I made it clear that the estrogen supplements used to heal the uterus from all the surgeries had been making me feel miserable – leaving me feeling at times dizzy, lightheaded, nauseaous, headaches and feverish. I told her of all the side effects and how badly they made me feel and thankfully she said I have taken them long enough now that I can stop. The hopes are that in the next week or so my levels will go down to zero and I will be able to to begin birth control that have a level of estrogen as well, not nearly as much, but enough to help continuing to heal me from the three surgeries.
I’ve come to truly feel reassured by the doctors the last week or two. I’m now officially considered one of their “high risk” patients. Though we’re hopeful that nothing else bad is going to happen before I fully recover, we all are still so paranoid. In the past I began to take a turn for the worse between day 3 and 9 after the surgery so now I just won’t begin to feel like all the recovery from the miscarriage and surgeries is completely over until I hear those levels are down to zero. After the pain I endured for nearly two days last week, the doctor made it very clear to me if I began to feel any worse pain, experienced increased bleeding, or ran a higher fever then during the day they would expect me to call and come straight in and they’d work me in to make sure things were okay. After hours they expect me to go straight to Winnie Palmer. We really hope not to have to take these measures but the doctor reassured me today that they care about my health and don’t want me going through this again. I told the doctor how I had wished Monday that I could have taken the nurses home with me when I began to run a low grade fever that evening and she told me how worried she’d been about me, especially since she heard of the last weekend which happened just two days after I had last seen her. Yes, the doctors have truly come to care about me and my health. Not that they don’t do that normally, but I can tell they’ve all been so involved in really trying to figure out my complicated case that they just want me to return to full health again so that I don’t have to feel so cruddy.
Overall I’ve begun to feel better. Since arriving home since Monday the worst things I’ve struggled with were a result of the estrogen supplements that now I no longer have to take! I still feel pretty fatigued at times and at times slight physical discomfort, but nothing to make me too concerned. I really truly am trying to believe that this is nearly over. I have to…I really don’t know if I can go through too much more of this mess!
So just a little update. I return to see my doctor next week. If my levels aren’t at zero after today’s test then I return again next week for lab work too. We all agreed we were ready to move on past the miscarriage and surgery recovery issue so we can move on to a whole new set of issues that certainly worry me no less. Right now I just have to continue to try to remember to take EVERYTHING…and I mean everything just one day at a time.
by Amanda Kern
no comments