Sunny Days Are Here Again

Finally, some good news!

I had my 11 week prenatal appointment, and everything is looking good. Heartbeat, measurements, etc. All wonderful. Whew! The baby looked more active than I remember LL being at this stage. Isn't it a bit early for in-utero gymnastics? Also, the baby kind of looked like a frog, but it was probably the weird angle. Expect "Frog" to be the baby's blog nickname for a while. NT exam is in less than two weeks, when we'll get an even more detailed look, but I'm finally breathing easy for now.

Dr. M's assistant asked how the GD stuff was going, and I let everything out. The uncertainty over the diagnosis, the miserableness of the nurse appointment, the inability to get questions answered. If possible, she was even more angry about it than me, and insisted that I repeat everything for Dr. M. And then of course Dr. M reminded me why I love him so much. He's going to speak to the head of the department about an "anonymous patient," and file a complaint himself. And he agreed that the diagnosis was a little iffy, but said that he wasn't actually able to do anything about it, because once GD is diagnosed, all care related to the GD becomes the responsibility of the endocrinology department. Then he expressed outrage that they weren't actually doing their job, as far as answering my questions and treating me with respect. I repeated all of my unanswered questions to him, and he gave me a referral to have a consult with an actual endocrinologist, instead of one of the nurses, so that I can get some answers. And I really really appreciate that he admitted that he didn't know the answers to my questions instead of just blowing me off like the nurse did.

The number one question is going to be whether it makes sense for me to retake the three hour glucose test. I mentioned the GD diagnosis to my physical therapist, who had some interesting things to say on the matter. She asked if my back was bothering me on the day that I took the test. My back was fine initially, but I had to sit in uncomfortable waiting room chairs for three hours without moving, and at that point I couldn't sit for more than an hour without feeling pain. By the end of the test, my back was killing me. Here's some biochemistry that I never knew: when you're in pain, your body releases extra cortisol, which blocks insulin and artificially elevates blood sugar levels. Which goes pretty far in explaining my weird test results, in which my fasting sugar levels were normal, my one hour results were normal, my two hour results were normal, and my three hour results (the one for which my back was killing me) showed that my sugar levels had stopped dropping, causing me to fail this last test. Interesting.... Dr. M agreed that I should probably retake the test and see if the results are different, but unfortunately, he's not allowed to make that call -- I need the endocrinologist to do it. We'll see what she says.

And in a final bit of good news, I have "graduated" from twice weekly physical therapy to just once a week. My back is definitely getting better, and I often go days without feeling any pain. My back definitely gets fatigued faster than it used to, and there are still some things that I can't do very well (like crouching over a tub to give LL a bath) but it's getting there.

Ah, the feeling that things are finally falling into place!