It's Monday!

Yes, it's Monday and I worked today, but I have 3 days off! Yay! I did take some transport call tomorrow on night shift, but Thomas is working any way, so I figured I'd make some extra money if I get called in. Last week was a busy week. I worked Wednesday-Friday in the PICU and it was busy every day! Each member of the respiratory department got rewarded for some recent good work with 2 $25 gift cards to Bonefish. Thomas and I had a date night Friday after I got off work and it was very nice.

On Saturday morning, Thomas and I took Scarlett to the Bark for Life at Central City Park. Mama brought Harley, and Karen and Kristen brought Duke and Chip. It was a mile walk to benefit the American Cancer Society. Sort of like the Relay for Life, but much shorter and for dogs. We love showing off our girl and of course, as soon as we got out of the car, people started talking about her. She was so pretty and so well-behaved! And, as no surprise, she won the contest for biggest dog! We sat down at a picnic table with some other people that had a teacup chihuahua and the lady said she thought we had it locked up as the smallest and biggest dogs. Turns out, we did! Her dog, Lena, weighed 2.3 pounds! Definitely a funny picture compared to Scarlett, who weighs 130! Kristen took some pictures of them, so I'll post them when I get them.

When we got home, we were all exhausted, but only Scarlett got to take a nap. We had to clean up the house because Peter, Anja, and Britt (our friends from Belgium visiting Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Tommy) wanted to come by and see our house. They were last here before we got married, so they hadn't seen our house yet. After they came, we went to Scott and Richelle's house for a farewell cook-out and had a good time. They fried some catfish filets and hushpuppies. It was very yummo!

I had planned to just lay on the couch all day Sunday, but the in-laws paid us a visit, so we enjoyed spending some time with them. Chun brought me a Coach bag...I'm so lucky to have a mother-in-law that knows how much I love bags! They went outlet mall shopping in Atlanta on Saturday, so they brought us some goodies. Thomas got a gas-powered hedge trimmer. I'm glad he gets the grown-up presents so I can get the fun ones! Patrick also fixed my XM Radio....I've missed it so! We had a late lunch and they headed home.

I worked today and I was on the floor, but it wasn't that bad. I left around 4:00 on a transport to Houston Medical and got back just in time to go home! I love when they work out that way. It was my first transport since my surgery and I wasn't in too much pain. Speaking of which, I saw Dr. Evans last Monday and he said my wound looks good, but since it's not quite closed yet, he wants to see me again in 6 weeks. Hopefully that will be my last visit! I can't believe how far it's come!

I can already tell that the days are getting shorter. It used to stay pretty bright out after I got home until around 8:30. Now I'm barely needing to wear my sunglasses on the way home. I'm glad it's getting close to fall for more than one reason: 1- Cooler weather!! 2- I love when the leaves change...except for when they fall off the trees and need to be raked. And that's inevitable. 3- I love pumpkins and mums and acorn squash and cinnamon-y smells in the house! 4- My surgery is in October! I find it odd to be excited about a surgery, but I'm excited (and hopeful) about what it might bring. It's a month and a half away!

On that note, it's time to catch up on some "Mad Men" from this week. Night all!

The Latest

Not a whole lot of exciting things to report, but I figured I'd post since I hadn't in several days.

We went to Augusta on Friday and enjoyed getting away for a few days. We went to dinner with Alan and Mindy at The Chop House on Friday night and it was great! We all had a great meal and some great wine. Not to mention the company was great too! We hadn't hung out with them in a long time. It was great to catch up!

We went to see Grandmama on Saturday and enjoyed visiting with her. She wanted to know all about the baby happenings, so we brought her up-to-date. Afterwards, we ran a few errands in the pouring rain! We had dinner at Thomas' parents house and watched some TV and Thomas went to bed around 9, leaving me up to watch TV by myself! Oh well...we both caught up on some sleep, so that was nice. We also updated Chun on the infertility stuff and she told us she wanted me to have 4 babies: 1 for her, 1 for my mom, and 2 for us! Good grief! I'll take whatever the good Lord gives us and I know He won't give us more than we can handle!

Some friends from Belgium are here visiting for 2 weeks and I got to spend some time with them last night at Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Tommy's house. It was nice catching up! It's hard to believe it's been 10 years since I visited them in Belgium! They were here 3 years ago before we got married and well before we bought our house, so I'm looking forward to them visiting our house in a few days.

Well, it's off to bed soon for 2 days of work. This week's work schedule isn't very nice: I worked Monday, on call yesterday, off today, work tomorrow and Friday, off Saturday, and on call Sunday. I have next Monday and Tuesday off, but stuff to do both days. Including a 4 hour inservice at work on Monday about a new ventilator we're getting. Yuck.

I found out tonight that my Aunt Brenda has been reading my blog, so....Hey Aunt Brenda!!

Have a good rest of the week!

Busy at work!

I know it's been awhile since I've posted, but it's been crazy at work and when I get home, all I want to do is go to bed!

I was in PICU over the weekend and on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being crazy busy, it was a 6 or 7. Sunday was definitely an 8 though! I've been in the intensive care nusery the past 2 days and both days have been about 15! Deliveries left and right, unstable babies, it never seemed to end! I don't think my feet will ever recover!

I had to encounter my favorite type of patients/family members. One was a mom giving birth who had been drinking this morning and the other was a dad who didn't want to hold his child and couldn't care less that the child had been born. Do these people know how lucky they are to have brought a child into the world? Apparently not. It really tests my patience and belief that all things happen for a reason. Enough about that.

We're headed to Augusta tomorrow to see Thomas' parents and hang out with his friends. We haven't been over there since The Masters in April, so it'll be nice to get away if only for a few days. Hopefully we'll have a nice weekend away!

Here are some of my recently discovered favorite things:


Aloe-infused socks


Banana Cream Pie Blizzard


Bang Bang Shrimp at Bonefish Grill


Good times!

The Plan

We went to see Dr. Butler this morning to discuss our lab results and what our next step would be. As soon as we sat down, he told us that everything had come back completely normal. Including my glucose/insulin tests. Since we've ruled out any endocrine issues with me and Thomas is normal, that means surgery. He will perform a laparoscopy on October 15th (the earliest available!) which will involve putting me under general anesthesia (again) and making a small incision in my belly button. He'll then insert a scope into my abdominal cavity to look at my reproductive organs to look for any abnormalities. He'll also inject dye to look at my fallopian tubes like we had planned to do at a different time, so 2 birds, 1 stone. If he finds anything abnormal, he'll fix it if he can (meaning endometriosis, blocked tube, etc.). If there's other stuff involved, like bowel, then I'll have to go see someone else about that. Oh wait...I already have a general surgeon! He said 90% of what he may find he can fix. Hopefully there won't be anything to find! After the surgery, I'll go home the same day and take it easy for a few days. Definitely not the month off work like my past two surgeries. We'll then meet back with him a few days later and discuss what he found. If everything's okay, we'll start the injectable drugs, which Dr. Butler refers to as "the big guns."

I give these to myself for several days (they come in a pen like an Epi-pen) and we monitor when I will ovulate. Once I'm ready to ovulate, I will go to the doctor's office and take a specimen from Thomas with me. They'll take his specimen, wash it, select the best-looking sperm, and then they'll insert it close to my fallopian tubes. I know that's kind of graphic, but that's the gist. Depending on what they find during the surgery, I'll do between 3-6 cycles of the injectable drugs before we move on to in-vitro fertilization. We didn't start with that because Thomas is normal. For people who mainly have a problem ovulating, they usually get pregnant within 1-3 cycles of using the drugs. For those that have another issue, such as endometriosis, it may take 3-5 cycles.

I asked about the rates of miscarriage with these drugs and he said the rates are the same as any other infertility treatment. It's the underlying cause of the infertility that causes the miscarriages. We also talked about the possibility of multiple births because that's a major risk with doing these drugs. He said 80-85% are single births. ~15% are twins, and less than 5% are triplets. He said in his career of 7000 cycles, he's only had 2 instances of quadruplets.

I really like this doctor because he's very knowledgeable and he's got his crap together. He goes over my stuff before we get there, so he knows the plan before talking to us. He also sounds very optimistic about our outcome, so that makes me feel better. Thomas likes him too and he doesn't like any doctors! I wish the surgery wasn't all the way in October, but at least we don't have to worry about anything until then...we can just relax for the next 2 months. He said his feelings wouldn't be hurt if we got pregnant between now and then, but he would take credit for it because he scared us into it by scheduling the surgery. Ha!

So that's all for now. If I remember anything I forgot, I'll post it later. Thomas is still asleep since he didn't go to bed until around 2 this afternoon. He stayed up this morning for the appointment and we ran some errands after that. Ah...the joys of night shift! I miss the atmosphere of it myself, but not enough to give up sleeping like a normal person!

More later...

Good Day

Today has been a good day...even though I had to work! I was worried it would be a rough day since I didn't get very much sleep last night (thanks to my 3 PM-5 PM nap!), but it actually went well. I was in the EC, but wasn't too horribly busy. It kinda got that way after lunch, but it wasn't anything unmanageable. We also had a surprise lunch for our department educator who just graduated from nursing school and is leaving to go work in CVICU. Traitor!! Just kidding. We had lots of great food and I made my world-famous rice krispie treats. Yummo!

I also got some exciting news about some people I know, but I'll leave the details to them. That's all.

I talked to Justin when I got home for awhile and that's always a good time! I love that he is loving where he works and where he's living. It's always nice to get a nice big dose of Justin humor!

Karen and Kristen came by this evening to introduce their new chocolate lab puppies to Scarlett. They were all really well-behaved...even if Scarlett is like...um...8 times their size?? Maybe not that big, but you get the picture! I think they'll be great friends once they get a little bigger. Here are some cute pictures I took while they were here...and while we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes!

And here's one of my big girl Scarlett....

Well, it's 10:15 and I still haven't had dinner yet. I wonder what I can find in the kitchen. It's off to see Dr. Butler in the morning to discuss our plan of action! I'm nervous and excited! I'll post more tomorrow afternoon. Night!

Confused

One of the nurses from Dr. Butler's office called on Friday to say that all my labs have come back and to see if we could move up my appointment to next week (it was originally scheduled for August 10th). She said we would be discussing the lab results and what would be the next step. I mentioned how the other nurse had said when she called earlier in the week that we would schedule the hysterogram. She said I shouldn't worry about that just yet. So that's got me wondering what my lab results showed. I was under the impression that everything had come back normal, including my glucose from earlier in the week. My mom told me that a friend of hers had the same tests done and her glucose was normal, but her insulin level wasn't. So maybe when the nurse called, they had just gotten the glucose back and not the insulin. Either way, we'll find out Wednesday morning.

We had an exhausting day yesterday. My cousin Kristen is moving into my grandmother's old house that we used to live in. My dad's been working on it whenever he can, but there's still a lot to be done. A lot of us spent the day up there doing various things. Thomas laid linoleum tile in the kitchen and I painted a lot. It doesn't sound like strenuous work, but we're both really sore today! I'm glad I have the next two days off to recover!