Saturday, October 31, 2009

Last minute Saturday

I know I haven't posted any giveaways lately - so here are a few last minute ones to enter this weekend!

For baby:
For anyone:
  • Win a Clarisonic face brush at Guessing All The Way. Ends today, October 31st.
  • Win a Glade prize pack (candles, reed diffusers, wine and a $25 gift certificate to Chapters) at Feisty, Frugal and Fabulous. Canadians only! Ends today, October 31st.
  • Win the same awesome Glade prize pack at {Natural} Mommie. Canadians only! Ends November 2nd.
  • Win Malcolm Gladwell's new book What the Dog Saw at Wishing Penny. I'm a big fan of Gladwell! Ends November 2nd.
  • One more time for the Glade Prize pack at Country Mouse, City Mouse. Canadians only! Ends November 8th.
more to come!

Thursday, October 29, 2009

The update

So, of course, there was a reason the ob/gyn wanted to see me so quickly. An ultrasound on Monday again showed the ‘mass’ in my left tube that the first ultrasound back on October 8th showed (what happened on the 9th when they didn’t see it in the ultrasound at the hospital is anyone’s guess). It also shows a 3.7cm cyst in my right ovary, but that is not a big concern at this point.

As it turns out, it was an ectopic pregnancy after all. The latest blood test showed that the beta levels are going down, but not fast enough.

The ob/gyn sent me over to the hospital for a methotrexate shot. It’s a chemotherapy drug which will kill any remaining living tissue from the pregnancy. We’ll have to wait three months, until it’s out of my system, to try again.

I spent five hours at ER, they took 6 vials of blood, I got an IV put in then taken out again three hours later and two shots in the bum. And a prescription for Lorazepam to help with the stress of it all.
It sucked at the hospital; people kept staring at me because I was crying. My husband couldn’t be there because he’s got the flu again.

I’ve got two more blood tests and another appointment with the ob/gyn next week as follow-up.

I’m pretty upset about it. I never thought I'd be terminating a pregnancy. Even though this is the only thing that could be done, I still feel upset. I have all the useless, childish reactions of it's not fair, why me... and even anger at the fetus for not just waiting until it was in the right place to implant... Yes, I know exactly how ridiculous that is!

Logically I can process all this stuff, but emotionally I'm frustrated, sad, and I feel betrayed. And I can't believe we have to wait three to six months for this crappy drug to leave my system before we can try again to conceive.

I have about a zillion giveaways (on other blogs) lined up to post about, but I'm just not up to it today. Maybe tomorrow.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Spice Up Your Life Winner!

Thank you all for entering, and thanks to Bindu for generously sponsoring this giveaway!
And the winner of this great flexitarian cookbook is....

Eve

Who will certainly enjoy the Shrimp Curry and the many other delicious recipes inside! Congratulations!

I am emailing her, and if I don't hear back within 48 hours I will redraw.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Newsflash

It is the LAST DAY to enter my giveaway for the Spice Up Your Life cookbook. Go on and enter, if you haven't yet - I know you will love the easy and delicious recipes!

The ultrasound I had yesterday was strange. You know how some u/s techs will tell you what they see, and some are really vague and want to leave it to the radiologist to figure out what the pictures show? This time I had the second kind. So I kept asking direct questions and she kept giving vague answers. One answer I did wrangle out of her was that she could not see a gestational sac. This is honestly a mystery wrapped in a riddle, wearing an invisibility cloak.

So I got them to forward the results to the ob/gyn that I have finally been referred to, and his office called me this morning to bump my appointment up to tomorrow, and they want me to go for more blood work today. I guess finally someone gets the urgency of all this. I've only been bleeding for 50 freaking days now.

I'm off to the blood lab.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Airport exposure

I had a great time this weekend traveling. We drove down to Buffalo, and then flew from there out to Baltimore. We did some shopping in Baltimore, spent two days sight-seeing in Washington, and then flew back to Buffalo and drove home again. All in all a fun trip.

But at the Baltimore-Washington airport, something weird happened to me. I was randomly selected to step into this big grey booth. I was directed to step in, put my feet on the yellow footprints and raise my arms. A few seconds and it was over with. The security agent spoke into a radio, and then told me I was cleared. I figured it was some sort of scan but really didn't know what had just happened to me.

When I was cleared moments later, my husband told me it was a whole-body imaging (aka millimeter wave scanning) booth. What's that? "It scans your body like an x-ray, just under your clothes," he told me, "It's very controversial."

Yeah. No kidding. At first I thought it was funny, and overall less invasive than a physical pat-down. But I just read up on it and it basically uses ultra high frequency radio waves to send an image of your body to a computer in a closed room apart from the security screening area. Just your body. Clothes are rendered translucent. The technician viewing the image never sees the subject in person, and the security personnel with the subject never sees the image. They say images are not recorded in any way (who really knows if that's true?). It boils down to - some stranger just saw me naked. The picture you see at left is an example of what these images look like. The faces are blurred, apparently (are they? There is no way for the traveler to be sure of this), but as you can see it gives a very clear image of everything else.

There were no warnings about health risks (or privacy invasion) at all, that I could see. Nor was I told verbally about any risks, or given the option for a pat-down instead. I honestly had no idea what was happening to me. In previous travels I have gone through one of those machines that puffs air at you, captures the particulate, and analyzes that for threats. On first glance I kind of thought this machine did the same thing - until I went through it.

Now if you've been reading what's going on with me lately you will know that I am pregnant. And although this pregnancy is sure to end in miscarriage for me, I am still concerned, until that happens, about what happens with my body. So are there risks to fetuses from ultra high frequency radio waves? Are there risks to me? I couldn't find a definitive answer.

All in all I feel a little violated. If given the choice to make an informed decision about going into that booth, I would have opted for a physical pat-down. I don't like the idea that an image of my naked body was just searched visually. It gives me the creeps.

So thanks a lot, Baltimore Washington International Airport, for an icky end to an otherwise great vacation.