Friday, September 07, 2007

Addendum to earlier post (UPDATE)

An anonymous poster (it's odd that I can actually tell the difference between several distinct anonymous posters... I wish I had something else to call you... I'll call you A1, for Anonymous the First)... ANYWAY... A1 asked a couple good questions:

1. Why wouldn't the labs from Wed. be back? That's again my failure to explain properly. I'm so tired I can't speak (write) English anymore. Since Dr. P. ordered a 24-hour urine (standard with suspected pre-eclampsia), all the labs were put on one order, including the 24-hour collection. I couldn't start that until Thursday morning, so it was taken to the lab this morning and the rest of the blood labs were drawn while I was there. The rest of the labs he ordered were urine-based labs which will be run from the 24-hour collection. Had my BP been a lot higher on Wed, he probably would have put them on two orders so that the rest could be run immediately. However, he didn't think I was pre-eclamptic YET. He just thought I was creeping that direction, so I don't imagine there was any serious urgency in any of the labs. The important thing was that everything looked okay, my cervix was stable, and that things were put in place to get more answers about the labs.

UPDATE: A1 was surprised they didn't do at least a urine strip test to test for protein in my urine on Wednesday. They did. They do every week (or more often if I'm there more often). Honestly, I have no idea what the result of that was. I never thought to ask, because they did it at the end of my visit on Wednesday, not the beginning, which isn't the order they usually do it, so I wasn't around when they looked at it, and by Friday it didn't occur to me to ask. END OF UPDATE

2. Did I have an ultrasound Wed or Today? Yep. I forget to mention such things because I have them at EVERY appointment. Every appointment has a transvaginal ultrasound to check cervical length (and I thought I was done with the cooter cam after the fertility clinic... drat!) and an abdominal ultrasound to at least check the heart rates and amniotic fluid levels. Every 3 weeks they do a "growth" ultrasound with more specific fetal measurements. On Wednesday and today they did a BioPhysical Profile (BPP), which all three babies passed, though two of them were uncooperative at first today (they were sleeping, the little rats). They are doing fine as far as I know, though the real question is what's going on with the baby whose growth curve slowed down, but they won't know that until the next growth ultrasound. I don't remember if that's next week or the week after. I think it's the 19th.

For the moment, Dr. P. is pretty pleased with how I'm doing, so I'm happy. He's pretty conservative, so I know if he were really worried right now, he'd be telling me. So far, so good. All I can do is keep waking up each morning, grateful for another day.

3 comments:

Erin said...

I'm glad to hear that you're doing OK for now and don't have to be hospitalized yet. It's not at all surprising that growing THREE NEW HUMAN BEINGS is exhausting--I remember how tough one was, so I can't even imagine three of them at once. Your pajama-gram is such a great idea that I'm going to mention it to all of my Bradley students as a way to treat themselves nicely. And to the dads as a nice surprise for the moms.

I hope that you're not actually pre-eclamptic and that the babies continue to grow and get bigger and healthier by the day.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this post!
I guess I am still surprised by the lack of a rush on labs that could have been done on Wednesday, but that perhaps has to do with my own experiences with doctors who, certain of their incorrect assessments, passed on taking labs, to my detriment. I mean, I understand about the 24-hour collection, but I would think they would have done a urine strip test for protein on the spot on Wednesday to get an informal idea.
I'm relieved that the babies seem to be doing well. I've been thinking about little Baby C; I hope he (gender-neutral pronoun, though I have a hunch C is a boy) and his siblings are all shown to be growing well.
It's great that you have a doctor you can trust.

Anonymous said...

Oh, good, they should be doing that every week. It was probably okay and was one of the things that helped your doctor decide that your situation was "creeping" not urgent.
It's so good that you went in on Wednesday! I'm glad it turned out not to be urgent and that you've gotten all these labs done before the problems "creep" any further.