Blood, blood...

...glorious blood. (with apologies to Flanders & Swann)

Today was appointment day to see the consultant at New Cross about my miscarriages. Unfortunately we didn't get to see him this time, but it wasn't as bad as last time.

We got a lovely nursing sister who talked me right through my entire history and picked out a few things to focus on. Then she took another armful of blood (note to self, right arm has better veins) for testing.

I will get to see the actual consultant in "probably August but possibly July, he's running some extra clinics". But "if you get an appointment in the next 10 days, well done but the blood tests won't be back by then".

Meh.

But I have enquired about progesterone and oestrogen testing and she has flagged this up in my notes for the consultant to review when I see him "as he knows more about that than I do".

Essentially no answers again, but when I do get to see him I will get a PLAN that will be passed on to my GP and will also be for me to keep and will potentially include things in it like no lifting of any sort, daily aspirin, etc etc.

Fingers very much crossed that I get an appointment in...oooh, 12 days maybe!

Plus much much love to all my darling darling twitter-folk for their support, hugs, kisses and virtual cake this morning, just what the doctor ordered ;-)

This week I was supposed to have...

...four days at work before then having nine days off.

Then I got a letter from the hospital informing me that my appointment time had been changed AGAIN!

So I phoned them up and ranted a bit (and cried quite a lot) and the end result was that I could either take the new appointment time or wait until July for a new one.

So I then had long confabs with Anthony and with RichieFingers (who is a Rota God, seriously) and the end result is that Anthony and I will be at the hospital for our appointment time of 10.55.

I am stupidly scared and nervous. Although I know that it is very unlikely, my mind is already running through all of the worst-case scenarios that it can think of. The stupid thing is, even if one of them happens it won't have prepared me for it.

But we are prepared.

Anthony has Series 6 of Pokemon, I have Ashes to Ashes, Numb3rs, CSI:NY and Eleventh Hour (which I haven't seen any of yet, but it's got Rufus Sewell in it!) on the V+ box. Of course, we both have WoW for when the other one is watching TV.

I also have this:


It was in the Thornton's sale for £10 (from £30) and I couldn't just leave it sitting there...

Update: Home now. Got to see consultant a mere hour and 15 minutes after appointment time. Then she made me cry when she demanded to know why I wasn't currently taking folic acid.
Her - "But if you're trying to get pregnant you need to be taking it."
Me - "I'm not trying bloody anything til I know what went wrong last time, and that's what this appointment is for!"

The blood tests were all fine, the chromosome tests were also all fine. The only one that was slightly iffy was the blood protein one and so off I trooped to have some blood taken.

So basically, no idea what went wrong. But at the same time it's not a case of "give up, there's no chance".

Now I am going for chocolate egg and beer (the sun's past the yardarm) and since it's sunny I shall probably sit in the garden too.

Blood...

...I still didn't have enough of it yesterday.



The doc went for my right wrist first and managed to fill four sample tubes with what he got. Then it was "a bit of blind poking about" in order to find the nice vein in my left elbow that the nurse had found before. It turned up first try and provided enough blood to fill the other nine sample tubes. Unlike the nurse before, he didn't fill each tube up straight from me. Instead he had this giant syringe and then decanted it.

Anthony was ever so sympathetic...sitting there and telling me my veins were crap while showing off the fact that his aren't.

Got my revenge when the doc decided to take some from Anthony too as part of the screening process that now kicks in as that was my third strike.

The big patch on my hand is where the catheter went for my nice general anaesthetic. That one (of course) bled like a bugger when they took it out.

------

So I'm here, and I'm ok. Not great, but ok. Thank you for all of your love and best wishes, hugs back at the lot of you.

Now I'm back to the sofa to watch more curling (love that sport) and be purred at by a possessive pussycat.

There was blood...

...lots of it.

In fact I filled up the 70 million or so tubes that they wanted filling in about 20 seconds and got a compliment on my "nice veins".

Obviously those "nice veins" had just gone on holiday two weeks ago.

I'm still here...

...just mostly asleep.

Seriously.

I'm tired all the time at the moment and I've gone from sleeping 2-3 hours a night (as I have been for the past year) to conking out at 8pm.

Last weekend I went to bed at 10.30pm on the Saturday night (having forced myself to stay up so that I actually got to spend some time with Anthony), and I woke up at 1pm...

More blood tests tomorrow, assuming I actually BLEED this time!

In other news I have been recording Silent Witness using my lovely shiny V+ box, and today I got a bit of a shock. I was watching it when all of a sudden I recognised the guy on screen.

I couldn't remember his name at first but eventually my poor tired brain realised that it was the brother of a guy I house-shared with at uni. It was very strange to see him on tv, last time was about 10 years ago when he was starring in Hollyoaks. (Although his character Sash isn't mentioned on there at all...strange)

Good news...

...I'm not dead. Although, I don't feel fine.

I went and had a blood test today.

At least I was supposed to have a blood test.

But I failed to bleed a single drop.

Nothing.

Nada.

Nowt.

And that was with two different people trying to get blood from me. Both arms tried, couple of different needles too.

So, I am here still, and a bad blogger. And I also appear to have turned into a vampire while I wasn't looking.

Sorry.