Week 25: Doctor Update

I'm officially 25 weeks today! It's been a week of doctor appointments for me. On Tuesday I saw my pulmonologist, who said everything continues to look good. However, she did mention that my last sputum culture grew MAC (along with the usual Pseudomonas aeruginosa), which I've heard is pretty hard to eradicate once it takes hold. She confirmed this when she said that treatment usually involves three different oral antibiotics taken for a year. Given the low number of bacteria in the culture and my lack of symptoms, she did not think I needed treatment just yet. However, she did say I should continue to monitor its progress with frequent cultures and had me leave another sputum sample with the lab before I left.

She also checked my ears out of curiosity (even though that's not really her domain) and said she could see the two tubes in the left ear, and that one definitely looked open, but that she couldn't tell what was going on with the right ear. So far, it hasn't been bothering me, so I'm hoping it's still open, although I haven't been able to blow air through it recently as I have with the left ear. She was also quite surprised that I'm still able to use the vest with my expanding tummy. I told her that I've just been pushing it up out of the way of the bump. She suggested that I switch to the Acapella device once I can no longer fit into the vest, but since I don't really know how to use it, she scheduled an appointment for me with a respiratory therapist to show me the ropes.

Other than that, I had my weight checked, and I was up a shocking 12.5 pounds since my last appointment with Dr. W 5 weeks ago! She said something about how I appeared to be gaining an appropriate amount of weight, and I said something along the lines of "It seems like a lot." Later I noticed in my chart that she had typed something like, "Worried about weight." You have to be careful about what you say around doctors I guess! Not that it was wrong of her to put it in, but it surprised me because I had thought of it as just an offhand comment, nothing to be taken seriously.

Anyway, today I had my glucose screen. I had already decided I was going to fast beforehand even though I didn't receive any specific instructions to do so. Unfortunately I woke up around 4:30 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep, which meant I had to fast for 5 hours before my appointment! It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be actually. Around 8:30 I was pretty tempted to eat something, but I managed to hold out.

When I arrived at Dr. W's office, the receptionist sent me down to the lab to drink the glucola, the sickeningly sweet orange soda flavored glucose drink they make you consume. At the the first sip, I thought it wasn't too bad, but by the end it was getting pretty disgusting. Luckily it didn't make me nauseous or feel sick. I did feel slightly light-headed, but that could have just been from the sleep deprivation. The lab tech instructed me to return in exactly an hour, so I headed back to Dr. W's office for my appointment, except that it turned out Dr. W had unexpectedly gone on vacation, so another doctor in the practice was covering for him. I had the option of seeing her, but they were so backed up because of his absence that I opted not to--seeing her would have meant going back to the lab for the blood draw and then returning to the office again to wait for who knows how long. So I was just seen by the nurses.

There was the usual drill with collecting the urine sample, measuring weight, blood pressure, and fundal height, and checking Ziggy's heart rate with the doppler (it was 155 bpm). I am pleased to say my weight was only up 3.5 pounds from my last visit, which means I somehow lost 9 pounds since Tuesday! No, not really. I'm sure the discrepancy was just due to different scales, different times of day (my pulmonology appointment was in the late afternoon), normal fluctuations in water retention, and the fact that I had fasted before my appointment and had already had two bowel movements that morning (sorry, TMI, I know!), so I was pretty dang empty. Still, a 9 pound difference seems like a lot. I'm sure if I hadn't fasted, the difference wouldn't have been so extreme. I'm just kind of relieved that I haven't actually gained such a ridiculous amount of weight in a mere 5 weeks!

Other than that, I briefly discussed my heel pain and sleep trouble (some nights it's fine, and then others I wake up to go pee and can't fall back asleep). The nurse said that the foot pain was probably due to my weight increase and added something along the lines of how I'm so small that this must be the heaviest I've ever weighed in my life. Ha! Yeah right! I told her that as a teen I had weighed more, and she said something like, well, teens never have any aches and pains. I just think it's funny that people think of me as small or thin now, since for so much of my childhood and adolescence I was seen as large, heavy, big-boned, and even at times fat!

Anyway, she said for the time being to try stretching and massaging the bottom of my feet with something like a soda can (I already normally do this with golf balls, but I must admit I've been a little lax lately, so I'll have to be more diligent from now on), but if the pain continues to worsen to let them know so they can take care of it before it turns into a serious problem. As for sleep, she said it was fine for me to take Tylenol PM or Benadryl at night if I have trouble sleeping and, if those don't work or the insomnia continues to worsen, to let them know so they can prescribe me something for sleep. Personally I'd prefer to not take anything, but if I get desperate enough, I may just have to. It would probably be worse for Ziggy if I developed a respiratory or sinus infection due to sleep deprivation than if I took some over the counter sleep aids.

My next appointment is set for 29 weeks on August 20 at 10 am. Before I left, I had my blood drawn (they're also checking my thyroid hormone), and they'll call tomorrow only if I didn't pass the glucose screen (if my blood sugar went above 140) and they need to schedule the fasting 3 hour glucose tolerance test. So, in this case, no news is good news. By the way, it turns out I didn't need to fast for this test, but I'm glad I did anyway. Now if I don't end up passing, at least I'll know I did everything I could!