Lot's to Talk About...

Lot’s to talk about today. Since my mastectomy is scheduled for Monday and there is the possibility that the tadpole may need to be delivered my emergency C-section (though not at all likely) my hubby and I got prepared. What do I mean by got prepared? We had a marathon of doctor appointments. My regular OB is at a different hospital than the one I where I get treated for my cancer so I had to meet with an OB at that hospital. My initial telephone conversation with him really eased my mind and gave me reassurance that everything was going to be okay, but meeting him in person blew that all to crap. Not that he is a bad doctor or anything, quite the contrary. He is just very straight forward and very high strung. He gave so many options on how to monitor the baby during surgery but no real opinion so we were left with a decision that felt like we were trying to decide when it was acceptable to let our son die. We were, needless to say, pretty screw up until today when we met with his cohort and mentor who works with the neonatal department. He gave us virtually the same information; he was just much more laid back about it. He also gave us examples of his experiences in the past 18 years he’d been practicing medicine and let us know what he thought was the best way to go. There are 3 options really, you can take a heart beat reading before and after surgery, you can intermittently monitor the baby’s heart beat throughout the surgery or you can have constant fetal monitoring. The latter of the 3 is what sounded good to me however if he baby’s heart beat drops a doctor is much more likely to overreact to the information on the monitor and end up doing an unnecessary C-section causing more danger to mom and baby, so we decided against that. The 2nd option sounded good to the hubby, but if anything is going to happen it is going to happen very quickly and often times the C-section is started to late and the baby is lost anyway and the mother is put at much higher risk than was necessary. So we opted for the 1st option which at first sounded like a little too little to me but when the doc told me that in 18 years he has never had to do an emergency C-section on a woman during scheduled surgery and then considering the risks of the other 2 options that seemed the way to go. He did a very thorough ultrasound and we have discovered that out little tadpole is not so little at 6 months the li’l bugger is like 3 and a half pounds, putting him 4 weeks ahead on the growth-o-meter, which is a very good thing if we do end up delivering on Monday. But I thing I’m going to have to seriously cut back on the ice cream and other crap I’ve been eating lately. Oh well, small price to pay. Then we went across town to see my OB and she gave us the same warm and fuzzies, letting us know that there is no reason to think that Caleb will need to be delivered during surgery and that made us feel even more comfortable with our decision. She also let me know that if I end up having to have chemo and it becomes a hassle to go back and forth between hospitals she would not be offended if I switched to doc at the other hospital, which I think we’re going to do anyway. I think we like the two OBs we met at the other hospital better and the facilities are better. After that appointment we went back to the 1st hospital to take a “just in case tour of the NICU and look at the labor and delivery floor. NICU was a little scary, all those little, tiny babies hooked up to all those machines, but it was a great unit. We spoke to another doctor while we were there, worst case scenario stuff, just in case you need to know stuff, but she was of the same opinion as doctor 1 and 2 of the day, that all that information was just formality and not going to be necessary.

So that’s where we are at. It is still a little bit more than I am prepared to handle but I feel better. I think I am also starting to feel better about having the mastectomy, but not much. But I know it has to be done, otherwise my Caleb won’t have a mommy at all so so what if I only have one breast.