WTF?

So, after a brief break to get knocked up, here I am back again for the edification of my..um...no breathless readers!

I realized today that my poor OB has to contend not only with a patient who is, ahem, a wee bit on the high-maintenance side but is also genuinely high-risk! I don't think they cover this in med school, but he is rising to the challenge admirably. At least he still returns my phone calls.

So, let's have a brief reminisce of the last time I was tied to the pregnancy wheel:

Um, bed rest. Bed rest sounds like fun, especially when you're in college, completely sleep-deprived (or at least as sleep deprived as you think you are until you have a child and realize you haven't slept a full night in four years) and hung over. In fact, then bed rest sounds vaguely Victorian and soothing, a rest cure, the kind of thing a heroine might take to protect her fragile sensibilities from the invasion of the Cruel World. Then you get put on bed rest, and you realize you're living in The Yellow Wallpaper. My room's walls got smaller day by day, 82 of them to be exact, that I spent trudging from the bed (left side!) to the bathroom to the bed (right side!). There are entire books written on how to survive bed rest without losing your mind. Sadly, I never read any of them.

Severe pre-eclampsia with HELLP syndrome. You know how you get your blood pressure taken at a doctor's visit, and it's a benign or even mildly competitive event where you are once again pronounced healthy? Scratch all that when you get pre-eclampsia. Not only does your blood pressure rise to science-fiction levels, but you become -- I shit you not -- a "hostile uterine environment". Yeah, I'm an environment, but one whose fetus and/or placenta (yeah, that's the funny thing -- no one really knows what causes pre-eclampsia, despite the fact that 8% of pregnant women, or 80,000 women a year, develop it) have managed to make my liver, kidneys and nervous system work like a 1982 Volvo with dirt in the engine. Very "Steel Magnolias", except my hair is fucked and I'm nowhere near as thin as Julia Roberts.

So, let's add into the distinct possibility of a repeat appearance by the ever-popular Pre-Eclampsia Fairy isoimmunization to the Kell antigen. Um, yeah. I didn't know what it was either, but apparently you can have really bad things happen and still not know what they are. You know how they're always talking about a "type and cross" on "ER", and it sounds all studly and technical? Well, apparently they only screen for ABO and Rh types, not any of the dozen or so minor antigens. This is proving to be a big pain in my keister.

I'm sure there will be more. I'm like a frigging episode of "House" here, and not one of the good ones with the hot guy from "Dead Poets Society" playing a major role while House is bitter and funny. More like one of the "Disease of the Week" ones where the docs are doing a nurse's job. And where are the nurses in that hospital anyway? Are they having coffee with the non-existent ones on "ER"?

Okay, I'll close with a picture of my bubby, who reminds me every day of why I'm doing this shit all over again.