544

That's my HCG from today's blood draw.

I'm not ready to call this a home run and throw away my unused HPTs yet, but I would definitely like to give a shout-out to Nurse nbu and tell her to suck it.

Hope against hope

I have the tiniest shred of hope. It's probably just me burying my head in the sand, but here's what I figured out.

Last time I thought I should ovulate on a Wednesday, I didn't get a positive OPK until Saturday.

Hypothetically speaking, if I ovulated even three days late, I might have been only on DPO 15. According to a couple of charts I looked at, the average hcg for day 15 is 59. My hcg yesterday was 58. That could explain why the HPTs came back negative for so long.

Then I looked back at my calendar to see the beginning of my pregnancy with D. According to my LMP, he should have been due on July 4th. When I went for my first doctor's appointment, they told me he wasn't due until TWO WEEKS LATER. (If they told me that now, it would have completely freaked me out, but back then it just rolled off my back because I wasn't expecting bad news, and I didn't know what was normal.) He was indeed born a day after the due date that they predicted.

I'm still going to have a hard time enjoying the long weekend, but I'm not ready to completely give up hope until I hear the numbers on Tuesday - no matter what Nurse nbu thinks "in her medical opinion"...

Not so fast

What? You were excited (just a little) about a positive pregnancy test?

Not if Nurse nice-but-useless has anything to say about it.

A snippet of our phone call with blood test results:

Nurse nbu: Soooo... you decided to get a blood test today after all.

Me: Yes, because Dr. N. told me to. Remember I was telling you how my last m/c was at 6 weeks and he wants me to start on progesterone a.s.a.p.?

Nurse nbu starts talking over the end of my sentence...

Nurse nbu: Well, it's a positive result, but the hcg number is low. It's only 58. It should be around 500. We'll retest on Tuesday to see where it goes.

Me: Okay. Well, not that this necessarily means anything, but my positive pregnancy test with my son was several days after I expected my period.

Nurse nbu: (with HUGE amounts of doubt in her voice) Well... yes, It could be possible that you got pregnant later than you think you did.

(More talk about prenatals and baby aspirin and proges.terone.)

Me: Okay, well have a nice weekend.

Nurse nbu: (with "sympathetic head tilt" voice) Yooou toooooo.

Now, I know that she doesn't want to give us tragic infertiles false hope, but REALLY now... Could she at LEAST have said "we'll hope for the best" or something like that?

On being my own advocate

Last month, I expressed my frustration over the lack of guidance, (or lack of good judgment) of the nurse at the fertility doc's office. (You can see that post here if you're interested.) I stated that I have discovered that I need to insist (in a nice way) that I talk to the people I need to talk to and see the people I need to see.

Today was my test case.

I called Dr. N's office to ask for the results of my anticardio.lipin retest. They had Nurse nice-but-useless call me back. After going back and forth about the fact that the high risk doc ordered the blood test so I should call the high risk doc's office, oh yes, she did have the results after all.

This time the numbers she tols me sounded totally normal. Of course, when I said, "so that's normal, right?" she said, "I can't interpret the results for you." Previously, this would have been a conversation ender, with me meekly saying, okay, no problem, but this time with my "advocate" hat on, I said, "Dr. N told me that I should talk with him to review the results of the test."

Nurse nice-but-useless: He did?

Me: Yes. And by the way, I was supposed to get my period either yesterday or today and I've had no spotting, yada, yada, strange for me, yada, yada, three negative HPTs, yada, yada. Should I come in for a blood test?

Nurse nbu: (very nicely) If you haven't gotten your period by day 40, call us.

Me: Really? Well, the thing is that Dr. N wants me to start on the Progest.erone as soon as I find out I'm pregnant, and my last loss was at six weeks. (40 days would be like five and a half weeks...) So anyway, how does it work? Is it possible for him to call me?

Nurse nbu: (cheerily) Okay then, so I'll have him call you!

_______________________________________
Insert time lapse
_______________________________________

Dr. N. calls.

He starts to go over things we've already talked about and I kind of interrupt him to say that I really was calling about the test results. He confirms that they are totally normal. High risk doc had said that the levels can fluctuate, so (in my opinion) there's no way of knowing if the high numbers are right, or the normal ones. Anyway... He starts talking about the Clo.mid for next cycle. I interrupt him again and tell him that it might not be necessary. I tell him I'm planning on taking another HPT on Friday. He says to go in to the lab Friday morning to get blood drawn if I still haven't gotten my period. He'll put a rush on it.

Here's the kicker.

If the blood test is positive, he wants me to start taking the Progest.erone immediately. Nurse nbu was content to have me wait until I was teetering on the brink of when I had my last loss, and Dr. N. wants me to take Progest.erone a.s.a.p.

Last time I was content to think that I just need to be more assertive, and so I was. This time I'm thinking, how many other people out there are getting the wrong advice from her?

Why is this nurse allowed to give out ANY medical advice????

Quite honestly, I'm not that thrilled with Dr. N at this point either. If I get pregnant, I'm looking forward to the day when I get passed back to the "normal" OB from the specialist.