More stuff I don't really want to talk about

Seriously - if you're in a good mood, don't bother reading this and ruining it. And if you're in an unhappy mood, don't read this to add to it. Really you should only read this if you feel like the day is already shot and what the heck or maybe if you're a bad person. Yeah, if you're a bad person who deserves to be brought down you should totally read this.

I know I've been a bit quiet recently. This is largely due to severe work stress / levels of busy-ness; in part due to even larger degrees of work stress / limited timeframes for my husband that I am trying to mitigate by making the rest of life run; and also in part having more stuff I don't want to talk about.

A few weeks ago I posted that I'd miscarried. It sucked and going for the D&C was scary (as my husband put it while we waited - they do a good job making this process as scary as possible) and just so weird. I was overwhelmed with emotions. But also working on repressing them - partially because I couldn't process them yet and partially because I'm not good with any public displays of that type of emotion.

I moved through the weeks following - repressing away, but I guess it was always close to the surface.

We went back to the OB for my post op follow up last week. She told us that there were some results in the pathology. I'd had a molar pregnancy (or actually a partial mole). * She explained a bit about this and I hit the computer with crazy research later, but basically it seems that two sperm fertilized the egg, but something went wrong. Instead of twins, a molar pregnancy developed. Either there was one twin which was overcome by the abnormal cells (a possibility that makes me sadder) or the fetus was never viable because of abnormalities. (I've read both options. I don't know if both are a possibility or if one of the sources was wrong.)

Well, at least we had a reason? Wasn't that what we wanted in the prior miscarriages? Something to point to and say - here it is. A secure knowledge that it wasn't because I hadn't started my prenatals earlier or because I'd gotten a bad sunburn at 6 weeks? And it wasn't something that was likely to recur, so that was good.

She went on to explain that a molar pregnancy puts me at a heightened risk for GTD (gestational tropoblastic disease - not sure if I spelled that right)*. Basically this means that though they "evacuated my uterus" the growth (the abnormal cells that were not a baby) could come back. And, if it did, it wouldn't necessarily be limited to my uterus (most reading I did suggested the lungs were a likely site).

The only way to test for GTD is by monitoring your hcg (pregnancy hormone) levels - which means you can't try to get pregnant for at least 6 months after they reach zero (as of last week they hadn't yet). This is done by a weekly blood test until you hit 0 and then a monthly blood test to make sure you're still at 0. (Is now a good time to mention how much I HATE having blood taken?)

Though it's probably not very likely, if the tests did come back positive, I think I'd have to have a CT scan to find the growths. They are generally benign, but treated with chemo. In 1% of cases they do turn out to be cancerous, but overall the prognosis is good.

Now I know all those things are worst case scenarios, but it's so hard for my head not to swim with all that. It's so much to take in.

Also, even though I'm not really consciously worried about cancer - or at least I'm telling myself not to be - the thought is lingering there. I start thinking about my Dad's cancer and how many people in his family had cancer. Then I pull myself back in and say - it's not a real possibility.


And.. I don't know... maybe I'm not actually even worried about that. Maybe it's easier to focus on that - on the big C which we all know is scary and horrible than all these other things I don't want to think about yet. Like tumors growing all over from GTD. Like all these blood tests when I can't even think about veins without feeling weak flutterings in my stomach. Blood tests when I was pregnant / trying to get pregnant all seemed doable because they were all for a good cause. But I sat in the lab last week waiting for the needle and got entirely focused on how much I HATED that. Didn't want to be here. Because it's NOT for a good cause. It's because of this bad thing that happened. And maybe that's really what I don't want to think about.

I'm leaving comments open this time because I need more information and am open to anything anyone knows on the subject. Also, I got the nicest email from a wonderful fellow blogger after my last post on this and realized I was probably dumb to close comments - even if I didn't want to talk about it.


*Note - I know I should post links to wikipedia here. Honestly at least part of what's held up this post is I'm feeling too tired (or emotionally tired) to go through getting together all the links I should have. So here it is without any supporting Google's revenue stream if you decide to do a search. Sorry.