Oddballs

Since graduating I have mostly interacted with non-scientists.  Husband is a scientist, of course, and sometimes we go to his work parties, but by and large, nearly everyone I know here is not a scientist.  In talking to these non-scientist friends, I have discovered that not everybody has the same types of conversations that we have.  Two recent examples spring to mind:

1.  Most people, upon setting up an ultrasonic humidifier in their daughter’s room think merely in terms of making the air easier to breathe while their daughter has a cold.  Apparently, they do not have lengthy conversations about how an ultrasonic humidifier actually works, and they certainly don’t discuss the nature of temperature and what you are actually measuring when you measure temperature.

2.  Most people, when giving their daughter a bath, make words with the little foam letter bath toys that you stick to the tile and they probably put away the letters after the bath is done.  They do not keep rearranging the letters each time they use the toilet such that they have a silent argument about which is better:  PV = nRT or PV = NKT.

I’m sure there are more examples, but since I see nothing unusual about these conversations, I don’t realize that non-scientists don’t talk about these things until I tell a non-scientist friend about the conversation (they find these conversations highly amusing).

What if?

What would doing research be like if I didn’t have to worry about whether or not I was ever going to graduate?

What would it be like to be in a lab and know, if it all went pear-shaped, I could quit without losing everything I had worked for the last 8 years?

Would a string of experimental failures be as crushing as it once was if I was actually sane and had a good support system?

—————

Hello?  Anyone out there?  It’s been so long since I’ve posted anything at all here, that I’m not sure anyone is paying attention.  Actually, it’s been so long since I had anything to do with this blog and the email address that is associated with it that I had trouble logging into both accounts and had to prove to Google and WordPress that, yes, indeed, I am the owner of these accounts that have been dormant for so long.

It would be difficult to tell you everything that has happened in the past couple of years in one post and I’m not sure it would be particularly helpful or interesting.  The short answer is that I’ve been staying home with my daughter, Monkey, volunteering in certain places, teaching some at home science classes, and trying to figure out what to do with my life when/if Monkey starts preschool.  I will want/need to re-enter the workforce at that point but the question is, what sort of work will I do?  What do I want to do?

Among other things, I’ve been considering looking for a lab job.  Not a post-doc, some sort of senior technician/lab manager sort of job.  Something 9-5 with benefits.  Does such a thing even exist for people with a PhD?  I dunno.  Do I really want to go back to that life?  I dunno.  Although, I’m starting to realize that, in fact, it wouldn’t be going back to the kind of life I experienced in grad school.  The stakes are different and not nearly as high.  And, frankly, I care less about what people think of me and my intelligence.  I’m not sure when that happened or why.  I suppose graduating helped me with that, in a way.  It’s not like top tier schools hand out PhDs like candy, I must possess a fair amount of intelligence and tenacity or I wouldn’t have graduated.  What I forgot while I was there was that I always had that intelligence and tenacity or I never would have gotten in the program in the first place.

So, what would research be like without the constant pressure to prove myself, the overwhelming loneliness and desire to just finish already so I can get on with my life?  Maybe it would still suck.  But, maybe, it might be interesting or even fun.  It might be worth trying to find out.

What to do, what to do

I have been thinking about this blog lately and trying to figure out what, if anything, I want to do with it.  I haven’t posted in months and it seems to be collecting spam comments which is unpleasant.

I started this blog because I was in grad school and feeling tired, frustrated, unsupported, and in need of an outlet for my feelings.  I got that, plus I became part of an online community of women scientists.  It turns out that there are quite a few “disgruntled female grad student blogs” out there and this blog fit right in with them.  I enjoyed being a part of that community and it really and truly saved my sanity on more than one occasion.

However, I am no longer a disgruntled grad student (thank God) and so I’ve been thinking about closing up shop here.  The funny thing is, because this blog was so important to me for so long, I find myself quite emotionally attached to it.  I really don’t know how to let it go.  And yet, I really strongly feel that anything I might write here, now, just doesn’t fit in with what this blog has been about.  Thus my dilemma.

I am well aware that this is my blog and I can write anything I damn well please on it, no matter what the original intention of the blog.  But–and I really can’t explain why I feel this way–it seems wrong to suddenly turn it into a mommy blog and, for better or worse, being a mom is pretty much the focus of my life right now.  This isn’t to say I don’t do anything but be a mom 24/7 (I still have other interests and hobbies and friendships with people who are not moms).  It is simply that, for me, blogging is an opportunity to express my feelings about whatever I find challenging in my life and I have to say that being a mom is pretty challenging.  So, that is what I would write about if I were to start blogging again.

For quite some time now I have been considering starting a new blog, one that is more attuned to my current stage in life.  I haven’t done so because 1) I haven’t come up with a catchy name yet (don’t laugh; a good name is important and the inability to come up with a name for the blog reflects my inability to figure out what the focus would be) and 2) I’m trying to decide if I would like to be pseudonymous or blog under my own name.

At first, I thought I had no need/didn’t want to be pseudonymous.  After all, what would be the negative consequences of mommy blogging that could be ameliorated by being pseudonymous?  And, frankly, maintaining a pseudonym can get tiring if you are really trying to guard your identity.  But, the more I thought about it, the more I thought I might like to keep my pseudonym.  First, because I would like to be able to redirect anyone who still reads this blog and is wondering what the hell happened to me to the new blog.  Second, because I’m finding that parenting is way more controversial than being a disgruntled grad student.  Being a mom has somehow turned into a competitive sport.  And not a friendly one, like ultimate frisbee, either.  It’s more like rugby or World Cup soccer.  For instance, I know people who have had perfect strangers in the grocery store tell them that they are bad mothers, that they don’t love their children, that they are scarring their children for life.  Now, I know lots of grad students who have been told the scientific equivalent, but only when they were participating in the scientific process (in lab, at a conference, at a seminar, in a committee meeting, etc.) not when they were picking out produce.  As a grad student, you could be reasonably certain that you were safe from scientific attack if you were, say, at your knitting group or having dinner with your in-laws (unless they were scientists, I suppose), or just walking down the street minding your own business.  As a mom, you don’t have that luxury.  You can be, and often are, judged everywhere you go with your child in every venue by absolutely anyone you see.

Actually, now that I’ve written this post, I see that I would likely be happiest starting a new blog under my current pseudonym.  What, exactly, I would do with this blog is undecided.  I would like to leave it up in case my experiences would be useful to anyone else.  But, the spam commenting is bothersome.  I suppose I will either turn off comments or enable moderation for all comments.

It’s funny, I started this post wondering if I even wanted to keep blogging at all, given I have very little free time these days.  But, as I come to the end of this post, I find I am remembering how useful it is to get my thoughts down on “paper” and how the way forward can become clear if I write about the things that are troubling me.

Once I get the new blog set up, I will provide a link here to redirect anyone who is looking for me.

She’s here!

Introducing our little girl, born Dec. 5, 2011.  She weighed 6 lbs, 4 oz and was 18 in. long.  As you might guess from the last picture, after much drama, she arrived by C-section.  We are all very well.

In which there is “nothing wrong” but they keep me for testing anyway

So, I saw my doctor today.  The amniotic fluid levels had not changed, but I was able to convince her to put off the induction until Monday.  My cervix is actually effacing and dilating now (it hadn’t been before) so I’m hoping I just need a couple more days to go into labor on my own.

So, we went over to the hospital for my previously scheduled non-stress test.  This was at around 10:30 in the morning.  We left a little before 2:30.  The test is supposed to take 20-60 minutes.  In a non-stress test, they look for the baby’s heart rate to accelerate twice in a 20 minute period.  If, however, your baby is asleep, she might not move around that much and her heart rate might not accelerate as often as needed to meet the criteria of the test.  They will try to wake the baby up or they can do a contraction stress test in which they give you something to cause minor contractions and watch the baby’s heart rate in response to that (if her heart rate slows down after contractions, then that’s a problem).  Well.  Little Miss Whatsit might move (and her heart rate accelerate) twice in 20 minutes, but the acceleration wouldn’t last the 15 sec. or whatever to meet the criteria to count it.  Or, she might move twice and have a long enough acceleration in, say, 22 minutes which again doesn’t meet the criteria.  In the meantime, I was having contractions on my own and she did not respond negatively to any of them but I wouldn’t have 3 in 10 minutes, I might have 3 in 15 minutes.  So, again, didn’t exactly meet the criteria.  So, as the doctor and nurse repeatedly told me, there was nothing wrong with my baby, she just didn’t technically meet the criteria for “reactive.”  So, they kept monitoring me.

Now, as a scientist, I understand the necessity of creating a set of rigid criteria upon which to judge test results and discarding the ones that don’t meet the criteria.  But.  This was not a clinical study.  I was not part of any sort of experiment.  The purpose of the test(s) is to make sure that there is nothing wrong with the baby.  Therefore, if they can tell there is nothing wrong with the baby, who the hell cares if she doesn’t exactly meet the criteria?  I wasn’t going to lay around all day waiting for the baby to meet these criteria if she was fine.  So, I decided that, at 2:30, I was leaving whether she met the criteria or not.

At 2:25, the nurse came in and said the baby met the criteria and I could go.  She apologized profusely (she had been doing that all day, actually, and had been getting annoyed with my doctor, too) and I appreciated that even though it was my stupid doctor’s fault I was hooked up to a monitor for four hours for no good reason.

Still Pregnant

Not sure if anyone is still checking in on this blog, but I thought I’d drop by and give a little update, just in case someone really wants to know if I’ve had my baby yet.

The answer is no.

I will officially be 41 weeks tomorrow.  Little Miss Whatsit has her own schedule that I am not privy to.  🙂  Unfortunately, my amniotic fluid levels have been low and if they haven’t improved by tomorrow, my doctor wants to induce.  I hear that doctors always want to induce you if you go past due, but at least she has a medical excuse.  So, tomorrow morning I will find out if we are going to speed things along or just keep allowing them to unfold in their own time.  I’m of two minds about it, actually.  I think that, in most cases, women and babies would be better off waiting until they were ready.  But, I’m getting a little tired of being “on call” as it were.  I’m not horribly uncomfortable or anything; I feel like I could stay pregnant a little longer without going out of my mind.  I actually feel better now than I did in the first two trimesters.  It’s just the waiting with no real notion of when things are going to start happening that’s getting on my nerves.  That, and all of the doctor’s appointments.  I see my doctor twice a week and starting this week, I’m supposed to be getting non-stress tests twice a week.  I had one on Monday and everything was great.  If we don’t schedule an induction, I have another one tomorrow after my doctor’s appointment.

In other news, I got an email from a journal today notifying me that I have been listed as a co-author on a paper that was submitted to them.  It appears to be my thesis paper and I am first author.  It would have been nice if Advisor had sent me an email about it.

We don’t need a damn dresser

Phone conversation between Husband and his mother:

DH:  This weekend, we ordered a crib.

MIL:  Oh!  I want to buy you the matching dresser/changing table.

DH:  Actually, we already have a dresser for the baby.  It was Mrs Whatsit’s mom’s when she was a kid.

MIL:  But, what about a changing table?!

DH:  We’re going to put one of those curved changing pads on top of the dresser.

MIL:  But you need something with a lip so the changing pad doesn’t fall off!

DH:  Look, we have a small apartment.  If a new large piece of furniture comes in then we have to get rid of some of the furniture we already have and we’re not getting rid of Whatsit’s mom’s childhood dresser.

MIL:  Okay, don’t get excited, I’m sure the baby will get changed somehow….

Placenta Previa, or Why This Baby Will Be an Only Child

So, on Sat. I started having some spotting (I’m at 25 weeks now, btw) and possibly contractions.  So, I stopped moving bookshelves,* drank two glasses of water,** and laid down.  The bleeding stopped, the contractions went away and Husband left for his business trip as scheduled on Sunday.  I already had an OB appt. on Monday and at that appt., the OB checked the location of my placenta and guess what!  It’s right up against the cervix.  The OB couldn’t tell if it was going around part of the cervix or covering it.  The transvaginal ultrasound would tell her more, but she doesn’t want to do it for fear of causing more bleeding.  So–bonus!–no more internal exams either.

This condition is known as placenta previa and I am now at a much, much higher risk of bleeding uncontrollably and dying.  The fun never ends.  Because I only had that one incident of spotting after I had obviously been overdoing it, my doctor put me on restricted movement instead of bed rest.  No exercise!  No sex!  No lifting!  Take it easy at work!  (Not a problem there.)

If the placenta is just very near the cervix, as the uterus expands and pulls the placenta away from the cervix it might pull the placenta far enough away to allow for a vaginal birth.***  If the placenta is covering the cervix it is unlikely uterine expansion will pull the placenta far enough away from the cervix and a c-section will be necessary.  I’m imagining they would do it somewhat early as well considering that there is a huge risk that you will bleed out and die if you go into labor.  It probably depends on how much of the cervix is blocked.

So, I’m pretty much sitting at home and knitting for most of the rest of my pregnancy.  I’m not particularly concerned that I will start bleeding uncontrollably any time soon because I’m pretty sure my OB would have stuck me on bed rest if that were the case.  But, I really don’t want to do anything that might cause spotting because then I will be on bed rest until mid to late November.  And dudes, it’s only August!  Can you imagine laying in bed for the next several months????  And, what about my restless legs?  They will drive me insane if I get put on bed rest.  So.  Sitting at home.  Knitting.  Sewing.  Embroidering.

 

*I have heard there are men who will not allow their pregnant wives do anything remotely strenuous.  Husband is not one of them.

**The advice given on my “preterm labor” sheet from the OB.  I guess dehydration can cause contractions.

***Or, according to my OB, my placenta might not move at all.

Even more drama

So, when I had the amnio done, I had been experiencing cramping (much like menstrual cramps, only not quite as severe as mine can be) all morning long.  Which I told the doctors.  What I didn’t say (because I didn’t think it was significant) was that I was having to go to the bathroom A LOT.*  And most of the time when I did, there was very little or no pee.  In my defense, they didn’t seem concerned or much interested in the cramping other than the fact that it might interfere with the amnio so I figured it was nothing to worry about.

Yesterday, I woke up with more cramping and nausea.  I looked in my pregnancy book about contractions and, guess what?  Cramping + frequent (but often ineffective) urination = Go to the doctor because you probably have a bladder infection (UTIs can cause uterine contractions due to the bladder’s proximity to the uterus).  So, I called the ob and made an appt. for that morning.  Since they were squeezing me in, I wouldn’t see my OB but another one.  The doctor was lovely and she checked everything out to make sure everything was as it should be (pelvic exam and vaginal probe ultrasound + regular ultrasound), had me pee in a cup and did a quick test for UTI (negative) and sent the urine sample out for cultures.  She was kind and respectful and the whole thing was in every way the antithesis of the damn amnio office.

The result is that if the culture comes back positive or if my symptoms get more severe in the next day or so I will be put on antibiotics.  In the meantime, I should take it easy and continue to follow the post-amnio instructions:  no lifting anything over 20 lbs, no air travel, no exercise and no sex (considering how painful the insertion of the probe was, that will definitely not be a problem).  But, I didn’t need to continue bed rest and I could use a heating pad and acetaminophen for the cramps if I wanted.  So, I’ve been taking it easy and trying to drink a lot of fluids to flush this thing out.

The worst of all of this is that, before all this drama, I was getting to a place that I didn’t mind being pregnant.  I didn’t feel as bad as in the first trimester, I wasn’t sleeping all of the time, and I didn’t have a nasty cold.  Things were looking pretty good.  Now I’m back to the feeling that pregnancy sucks.  I told Husband today, “The only way we are having a second child is if you get pregnant because I’m not ever doing this again.”

 

*Really, bladder infection didn’t even occur to me because 1) no burning when I peed and 2) pregnant women are supposed to have to pee a lot.

Amniocentesis, or Why I Sometimes Hate Medical Doctors

I have passed the mystical age of 35 (by 2 years) which puts me into a “higher risk” group for just about everything pregnancy related.  Particularly, doctors are concerned about increased risk of genetic abnormalities.  Apparently, at 35 years old, you cross a threshold in which the risk of having a baby with a genetic abnormality is greater than the risk of miscarriage from amniocentesis.

Husband and I talked a long time about whether we wanted to do amnio or not.  Pretty much, it came down to the question of, “Were there any circumstances in which we would terminate the pregnancy?”  I originally thought there weren’t, but then I read a little on some of the nastier trisomies (fortunately quite rare).  Husband and I decided that if our baby had a genetic condition that caused 50% of babies to be stillborn, 80% of the ones who lived to die in the first month, and 90% of those survivors to die in the first year, well, frankly it would be a mercy to the poor little tyke to terminate now rather than have it go through all of that suffering and damn the Pope and the Church for thinking otherwise.

So, we scheduled an appt. for my 16th week.  My ob doesn’t do amnio herself, she refers her patients to a specialist, Dr. M,  with whom she has been associated with for at least 15 years.  So, Husband and I went to Dr. M’s office and talked to the genetic counselor* who recommended blood screening for cystic fibrosis for me and Tay-Sachs for Husband (who is of French Canadian descent; apparently, being French Canadian increases your risk for being a carrier of Tay-Sachs to 1 in 30).  Then, it was time to do the amnio.

In case you are unfamiliar with amniocentesis, the procedure is done by doing an ultrasound to determine the position of the baby so the doctor knows where to insert the needle.  A pretty comprehensive set of sonograms were taken and Dr. Assistant I  (perhaps a resident or a fellow?) took all kinds of measurements on the baby (bone lengths and such).  He also measured my ginormous fibroids.  Then, Dr. M (a white-haired man who conceivably could have been doing amnio since it was first offered) came in to do the procedure.  Well, he moved that ultrasound do-hickey around for a long time but between the position of the baby and the apparent minefield of little fibroids I have (not to mention the big ones), he was having trouble finding a good spot to poke me with the needle.  So, Dr. M recommended I come back in two weeks to allow my uterus to grow more (evidently, fibroids do not grow as much in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters as they do in the first) to give him more surface area to work with.  So, I scheduled another appt.

That appt. was today.  In contrast to the previous appt. when we had a very good experience with the staff and doctors, this appt. was fairly disastrous.  First, I had been having menstrual-type cramps most of the morning, so I wasn’t in the best state going into the appt. (though glad I coincidentally had a doctor’s appt. that day so I didn’t have to call up my ob).  Second, the office was running an hour behind and the waiting room was so small that there were not enough chairs and husbands were all standing.  Then, I was taken into a much smaller and less attractive exam room than my previous appt. (seriously, it looked like something you might find in an ancient, abandoned clinic somewhere) and Dr. Assistant II did all kinds of measurements AGAIN.  I told her about the cramps.  She seemed completely unconcerned, which was fine except that she kept asking me if I had been having contractions (yes, I think that’s what the cramps are!) and then proceeded to push the ultrasound do-hickey hard on one spot and ask if it hurt.  Yes, thank you, it hurt quite a bit!  So, she tells me I’m having a contraction there, but her primary concern about that seemed to be that it would interfere with the amnio.  Okay, fine, I know you can have contractions pre-labor, though I didn’t think would start so early.  However, I was starting to get very irritated and was about to say the following:

1.  Stop asking me whether I had a contraction the last time I came in.  I have already told you three times that nobody mentioned anything about it and I sure as hell didn’t feel anything.  My answer is not going to change.

2.  Stop telling me to relax.  It’s very hard to relax when you have someone constantly admonishing you, “You must relax!  You have to relax.  Relax.  Relax the muscle.”

3.  If you don’t stop pushing that damn ultrasound thingy on the spot that I am apparently having a contraction I am going to take it from you and choke you with the cord.  The contraction doesn’t hurt, you pushing on it does.

So, then Dr. M comes in with Dr. Assistant I.  Now, there are three doctors, me, and Husband in this tiny little room in which I am supposed to be relaxing.  Dr. M starts scanning my belly and looking for a good spot to do the amnio in between my field of fibroids.  He says I have low fluid volume.  I ask if it’s still safe to do the amnio in that case and he says, that it makes it more “technically challenging” is all and low fluid volume has “nothing to do with the amnio.”  Um, excuse me, if I’m not mistaken, you are about to remove some of the fluid which you have just pronounced to be at sub-optimal volume.  How can that not be related to whether the amnio can be done?  So, he’s looking, looking, looking and he says that the contraction is making it difficult to find a good spot to do the amnio so he’s sending me out to the waiting room to “relax” and to sign a consent form for the use of terbutaline which they will give me to relax the uterus to make it easier to do the amnio.  And he leaves the room.

Dr. Assistant II left some time ago.  Dr. Assistant I is rushing us out of the room.  “What are the risks of taking the medication?” I ask him.  “What?” he says.  “Are there risks associated with taking the medication?” I ask.  “Yes, yes, of course there are risks, that’s why there is the form for you to read.”  And he ushers us out into the waiting room and hands us a clipboard with a form on it.

It is now 1.75 hours since we entered the clinic.  The amnio is not done.  The doctors are not talking to me.  I’ve been given a consent form (with several typos in it, not the most reassuring thing in the world) that explains what the medication is, what it’s supposed to do, what the side effects are, and the risks to the baby but I have no time or internet access to research the drug myself.  I’m feeling rather overwhelmed.  That’s when Husband asks if it’s okay if he goes outside to do a teleconference (!) until the doctor calls me back.  I say no.  He tries to persuade me it will be okay, he’ll come right back in when the doctor comes.  We argue.  In the waiting room.  Where I’m supposed to be “relaxing.”  Suddenly, it’s all too much and I start crying silently.  Another woman in the waiting room disappears back behind The Door to the examining area and comes back with a box of tissues to give to me.

At that point, I go to the desk and say, “Look, I’m freaking out here and the longer I wait, it’s only going to get worse, so I want to speak to the doctor right now or I’m going to leave.”  But, instead of the doctor, I am taken into the back (blessedly out of sight of the rest of the people in the waiting room) to talk to the genetic counselor.  So, I explain what’s going on, that the doctor hasn’t talked to me about this AT ALL, that I want to know what the risks are of doing the amnio under these conditions, that I’m being made to make a decision about a medication I know nothing about and nobody has asked me if I’m currently taking other medications in case they interact badly, and frankly, I’m no longer sure that I’m willing to take the risk of doing the amnio under these conditions.  The genetic counselor (who looks to be too young to need amniocentesis, and therefore I don’t believe she can understand where I’m coming from) is trying to tell me that the risks haven’t changed.  This makes no sense to me whatsoever (and I tell her so) because the doctor has already stated that the amnio will be “technically challenging” that it will be difficult to not nick either the fibroids or the baby and that I’m having to take some medication for this to even work at all so this should put me into a different category than the one in which the original risk was calculated.  My cost-benefit analysis has changed and I’m not sure how and I’m not being given enough time to decide if it’s what I want and I’ve not been given privacy to discuss this with Husband and the damn doctor won’t talk to me!**  Nevertheless, the genetic counselor tells me that the worries about the drug are that it can cause increased heart rate and dizziness in me, that taking it will make the procedure easier and that if there still isn’t a good spot, the procedure won’t be done.  Husband is okay with all of this and as I calm down, I’m starting to be more okay with it.  But, as I told Husband, if there was any hemming and hawing on the part of the doctor, we were outta there.

So, we go back down to where the exam rooms are and Dr. Assistant II is trying to rush me into the third-world exam room because the good one is taken again.  I insist upon going to the bathroom first and when I come out, husband says they are now talking about sending us to another one of their clinic locations.  That is so not happening.  So we’re in the waiting room, AGAIN, and I tell Husband I am waiting exactly five minutes and then I’m leaving.  Nobody else is in the waiting room, I am now the last patient of the day, even though it’s only around 12:30  (it seems they go to another clinic location in the afternoon, this is why they were talking about sending me over there).

Finally, I’m back in the rinky-dink exam room.  Dr. Assistant I tells me they are going to look with ultrasound to see if there’s a good spot.  When I remind him this has already been done (did he forget me already??) he tells me that the baby moves sometimes after you walk around a bit and so the situation may have changed!  Why the hell didn’t they mention this before?  Why wasn’t that the first suggestion?  Dr. M does his scanning thing again and, lo and behold, the contraction is gone, the baby has moved, there’s a good spot for doing the amnio and the thing is done without any medication whatsoever.***

So, now I am at home, on bed rest for the rest of the day as is routine post-amnio, complications or not, and I am supposed to take it easy the rest of the week (no exercise, no lifting over 20 pounds, no air travel, no sex).  The results are supposed to be back in 10 days (they need to grow the cells, first, this is the longest part of the wait).  If I wanted FISH done, I could have results back on trisomies in 2-3 days but it’s an extra $350 and we have some time yet if the results are bad.

So, that was my experience.  I have to say, from a patient-friendly point of view, it was appalling.  The clinic only does ultrasounds and amniocentesis and they seem to do them in a rather drive-thru-like manner.  They had clearly overbooked for the day.  There is no time or opportunity to sit and talk with the doctor doing the procedure.  If the doctor had taken five minutes to tell me exactly what was going on and to address my concerns, everything would have gone much more smoothly.  The fact that they send you back out into the waiting room to make a fairly important decision instead of giving you privacy and the fact that they expect you to sign a consent form without speaking to a doctor is inexcusable.  Really, as soon as this all started happening, we should have just left.  Left and rescheduled or left and decided against doing the procedure.  It was not a life and death decision.  There was no need to make the decision right now other than not wanting to have to go through this all over again.

What this whole experience has done (aside from convinced me that I never want to step foot in that clinic again) is reinforce my conviction about having a birth doula (which, it turns out, my insurance will pay for so there’s no reason not to).  There really needs to be someone who is not emotionally involved to make sure that my rights as a patient are being respected.  I still would like to have an ob do the delivery (although, if I wasn’t taking so many medications, I’d look into switching to a nurse midwife just to avoid ridiculous doctor and hospital mentalities that are so pervasive in the United States).  But, I’m bringing along my own advocate.

 

 

*In which the following exchange happened:

Counselor:  How familiar are you with genes and chromosomes?

Me:  I have a PhD in cell biology.

Counselor:  Ah, well, I guess I’ll just skip this next part, then.

**I should mention that mixed in with this mess was the fact that I’m currently taking a master’s class at a local university that meets 8 hours a day for three weeks and that I was already missing one day of class and I didn’t want to miss another.

***It was fairly uncomfortable and nerve-wracking to have the needle shoved into me, but not especially painful, though Dr. M did warn me that if the needle touched a nerve ending I could have pain in, “all kinds of unexpected places,” whatever the hell that was supposed to mean?