A week or so after we'd seen Blob's heartbeat, SWMBO got her backside into gear and registered with a popular obstetrician in these parts. Although she had a referral from our fertility specialist, this is only valid for 3 months (we were hoping to be pregnant for a bit longer than that!) so SWMBO made an appointment at our local doctor's surgery and got landed with the most incompetent GP there. This wouldn't have been a problem, but the GP decided that SWMBO needed another blood test because the 5 that she'd already had obviously weren't good enough. This was done on a Friday afternoon, so we had to wait until the next day for the results. Then the fun began...
We had a quiet Saturday morning, I went out to get our food for the week and the local newspapers for SWMBO to read in bed (she has me well trained!) then we decided to go into the big, bad city to do a bit of shopping. On our way there, SWMBO called the doctor's to find out what her HCG number was (if you remember from previous posts, it's supposed to double every couple of days).
After playing telephone tennis with the doctor for ages, we finally got a call back. Unfortunately, we were in the world's loudest food court and the background noise made it sound as if the number had gone down by a few thousand. For a couple of people who were already a bit precious about the pregnancy, this wasn't really what we wanted to hear. By the time we started to think things through a bit clearer (i.e. we should phone the doctor back) the surgery was closed.
If we'd just had the bad test result it might not have been too much of a problem, but along with the bleeding that SWMBO was still having we were getting twitchy. Fortunately, yours truly had the brainwave of phoning the local Women's ED from somewhere a bit quieter as they'd be able to get the results. After a bit of sweet talking from SWMBO, we got the results and they weren't any better. The midwife answering the phones said we should probably go down if we were that worried.
So there we were again sitting in a very familiar reception with a very familiar sinking feeling in our stomachs and who should we see walking behind the bulletproof glass at the reception desk? Yes, it was Midwife 'L' again. Who says you don't get continuity of care in the public system! She came out and had a chat with us in reception as we were the only ones there and we were taken into one of the rooms.As it turns out, not only did we have 'L' to look after us, but also the obstetrician who says us on our very first visit. This was turning out to be a right friends gathering. Shame about the location!
After asking SWMBO why on earth she had another HCG test, it was agreed that having another internal ultrasound was the only thing that was going to set our minds at ease. Unfortunately, you might remember form a previous post that the obstetrician was a bit crap where dildocam was concerned. This wasn't particularly helpful today especially as the radiographer had gone home 10 minutes earlier. To her credit, the obstetrician had a go, but other than the sac couldn't see anything interesting like a heartbeat, so we were given the option of hanging around like a couple of spare parts for a more senior obstetrician to come on or going off to do a few things. We decided to wait.
Although we were crapping ourselves during the wait we weren't upset for no reason. I can't remember what we did or talked about. I probably made inane comments about all the medical equipment in the room. I almost offered SWMBO some nitrous to lighten the mood, but thought better of it, there was only one thing that would do that...
After half an hour that felt like a few hours, another obstetrician came in accompanied by 'L' and the one who couldn't work dildocam. She seemed a bit perturbed that we were there for a scan, but went ahead with it and after not very long we got to see a surprise - bub's heartbeat was still going strong.
I say surprise, because we were expecting bad news as SWMBO's HCG number had gone down. We were a bit confused, but 'L' being as helpful as ever explained that HCG tests are only used when there's nothing to see on ultrasound. Once they've seen a heartbeat, there's no point doing any more tests as the results can vary (would've been nice if the bloody GP had said that)!
As much as people complain about public health services, SWMBO had some fantastic treatment. Also, the level of care from 'L' was excellent, we didn't feel rushed or like we were a number. SWMBO was so pleased with the care that she apologised to 'L' for going private with an obstetrician, but that's a post for another day.So there we are, another panic over, except this time they let us keep photos and yes, there definitely is such a thing as too much testing!
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