Me morphing into other people

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This one is creepy:

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My horrible Dr. appointment

Ok, so first of all, everything with the baby is fine and I'm fine and everyone is fine

Now, the reason that the appointment was horrible:

It started before the appointment. To make sure I'd be at my 3:20 appt on time, I was going to leave a half hour early at 2:30. Well I got a call at 2:10 that lasted for an HOUR. Normally my calls are 10 min long or so, but it is tech support so they have been known to last longer. Well by the end of the call, I was starting to worry and I called over to tech 2 since I couldn't figure out what was wrong, and I told the guy who answered, "Hey, I have a dr. appt in 20 min and if I leave right now I'll only be a little late... and I have not been able to figure this out and have been on the call for an hour. Do you think I can just delegate it to your queue and if you can't figure it out then you can leave it as an open ticket?" (this was after he had spent probably 10 min looking at it without saying anything... AND I had already talked to 1 other tech 2 who didn't see anything basic that was wrong) So this guy says, "I just don't know if that's a valid reason". And so I was like... "ok..." and sat there some more while he looked at it. I ended up escalating it to them, and it got fixed about an hour after I left.

Well that guy (who never pays attention to what I'm saying anyway, jerk...) made me cry... b/c I knew I was going to be late after that. I was about 5-10 min late to my appt and then waited in the waiting room for about 20 min. Then they had me go give my urine sample and weight and blood pressure. Everything was fine except it turned out I had a slight UTI (which I didn't even realize, so it can't have been too bad). I then went and waited for the Dr. in the exam room.

Well, he comes in and says, "So you had a bladder infection recently" and I said, "I did?" and I said that I usually drink 2 liters of water a day and no sweet stuff (because it usually makes me feel all bladder-infection-ey.) He looked me up and down and said, "for you... " and looks me up and down again and says, "yeah, for YOU, you need to be drinking 5 liters of water a day". So i was like, "ok, I will" (and I have for the past 2 days) :)

then he wipes the ky on the little heart monitor thing and puts it on my stomach for about 10 seconds and then wipes it off. He then looks at my chart and says, "your weight gain looks good, the baby's heart beat sounds good, blood pressure is good." and closes the chart and starts to move towards the door.

Then I pulled my piece of paper out of my pocket (I only had like 4 or 5 questions, nothing bad and it was on a small sticky note) and said, I have a few questions. He stopped in his tracks and looked at my paper and said, "It's amazing how much writing you can fit on that tiny paper" and I was like... "um..." and said, "ok, the first think is that we're going to florida in a week and a half..." And he immediately looks exasperated and says, "If we had known about this sooner I definitely wouldn't have recommended it" and I told him that they've known about it since I was 10 weeks, at my first appointment, and that the Dr. then said that it would be fine up until a month of my due date. And then he said, "well THIS one will be fine since it's already planned, but we don't usually recommend traveling in the last 12 weeks of pregnancy"

So I said, "ok, well I'm also supposed to be going to Denver to visit my parents for thanksgiving" and he said, "well we don't recommend traveling within the last 8 weeks of pregnancy". And I started to cry (of course, already having a bad day) and he said, "If you're gonna cry, I'm not going to tell you you can't go".

He told me to make sure that I got a "fly letter" from the girls up front before I left in case the airline asked for it. I asked him what it would say, he said that it woudl say that they had discussed the risks of flying in pregnancy with me and that I was ok to go. So I asked him, "what are the risks of flying in pregnancy (still crying...)" and he said, "No, it's risks of TRAVEL in pregnancy. I mean, if you're going to Florida, they're not gonna stop the plane for you in Tulsa". And he left it at that...

I also asked him what the braxton-hicks contractions felt like and how often I'm supposed to have them, b/c sometimes I feel crampy and wanted to know if that was it. and he said, "well I doubt you're having them b/c the baby is still pretty high" and that was it... didn't say anything about the crampiness.. which I'm pretty sure is fine b/c one of the earlier docs told me that as long as there was no spotting, it wasn't something to worry about... but I still wanted to know what to expect...

He asked if I had any more questions, which I did, but I was embarrased and didn't want to talk to him so i said no and he left.

So... Pretty much, I got no answers, and then when I left, I found out I had a bill to pay and had to talk to the billing people about it and just came out feeling like I could NOT afford to have this baby and feeling upset that I can't go visit my family for the holidays... and just feeling upset.

I'm going to call and see if I can talk to a dr. today... to see what they really think about me flying since I got no input from the dr. the other day and he contradicted himself and what the first dr. i saw at my first appt said... (it's a group of drs that are all part of the same practice)...

and that's why I spent the rest of the night upset and then finally Frik and I went out to get something to eat and then wasted time wandering around grocery store, which made me feel better.

Erik loves this comic....

2 posts in 1 week??

Crazy! I have to tell you though, we found a good vet and I was soo excited about it. I'll tell you first about our last experience with the vet:

So duke had an ear infection in both of his ears. This was about... 6 months ago or so, maybe a little longer. Erik took him to the vet, who before he even touched the dog, called in 2 of his assistants to come restrain him. They put Duke in a choke hold (or so erik says) and then the vet poked his little ear looker thing into dukes ear and saw that it was indeed red and that there was nothing inside of it.

He then asked erik if he ever scratches. Erik said, "Well he is a dog." and the vet said it was probably allergies, then. He gave Duke an allergy shot and told erik there would be some prescriptions for him at the front to give to the dog. The whole experience cost $90, and the worst thing is that the Dr. tells you what you need and then sells it to you, so he could sell you all kinds of stuff and you wouldn't even know you didn't need it.

so then about a month ago, it looks like duke is getting another ear infection. Just on 1 ear this time, but it's starting to get nasty and he's scratching at it all the time. Erik doesn't want to take him to the vet b/c it was expensive and the vet was really ridiculous. I started cleaning out Duke's ear every night to hopefully make the infection go down and it looked like it was getting better, but then it started to bother him more and he just kept itching it, so I finally convinced Erik to let me take him to the vet, as long as it was a different vet.

I called around to a few different places yesterday since I had the day off. The first place couldn't get me in until wednesday. The second place couldn't get me in until 4 in the afternoon, after erik would have already taken the car and gone to work. Then I called this place that was "Johnsons veterinary hospital" or something like that. I was asking the girl if there was any chance she could fit us in today, and she said that she didn't think so but she'd go check with Dr. Johnson (so the actual guy the practice was named after). She came back and said that they could see him at 1.

I showed up 15 min. early so that it would be more convenient for them to be able to take me whenever their schedule opened. I waited for about 10 min and then this guy in a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt opened the door and said, "why don't you bring duke back and we'll take a look at him". This guy is probably about 60 years old, and he told me that in his 35 years of practicing he'd seen lots of ear infections. He started talking to me about what might be causing it while he picks up the dog in his arms and steps onto a regular bathroom scale, then sets the dog down and again steps on a scale and punches the numbers into his calculator to see how much duke weighs. (71 lbs, by the way. This guy was a lot stronger than he looked, haha).

He then takes a long qtip and swabs some gunk out of duke's ear. He wiped that on a microscope slide and put some red stuff onto it and started looking at it under the microscope and tells me that he doesn't see any bacteria, just yeast and fungus. Much more scientific of a diagnosis than, "Does he ever scratch?"

He gave me some ointment, cleaned out duke's ear really good and showed me how to put the ointment in his ear. He also gave me some solution that he said to use once a week after the ear infection clears up just to keep it away. he said that if i wanted to, when it was gone, i could bring it back and they'd fill it up for a couple of dollars, or i could just go get a vinegar douche from the drug store and use that (sick, i'm douching my dog... my male dog...)

He also said that since duke's been scratching it so much (hi sear was all red on the back) he'd give him a shot to make it feel better which should last about 10 days. He said he wouldn't charge me for the shot. He also said that if I had any problems, they don't charge for rechecks, so just call them and bring him back in.

The total cost of the visit was $55: $35 for the check, $12 for the prescription, and $8 for the douche. Needless to say, I was really impressed by him and how much he seems to actually care about the animals and not so much about the money. Even if you buy the prescription online, it costs the same amount, so they can't be making too much of a profit on that.

so now duke is feeling better and I'm glad. If anyone is in UT valley and needs to know the name of a good vet, just ask me b/c i found one! :)

The past month... and a half...

Well it seems like the only person who hasn't updated more recently than me is Wudan, so here it is :)

My mom just came to town again and we had fun. we got to see the grandparents a few times, went to my cousin's wedding reception where there was a lot of dessert, and watched conference. The parts of conference that I stayed awake for were good. I am sick :( and so took a nap through probably about half of conference... a little less than that, I guess.

Lately I've been really hot all the time. Everyone else can be shivering and I'm just starting to not sweat. It's annoying, but I could be putting up with worse stuff I guess. :)

Everything is good as far as the baby goes. We had our ultrasound about 2 weeks ago, and for those of you who I was too much of a bum to contact (which doesnt' mean I don't like you, haha) I am having a girl. Everything looks normal. i have a few pictures, but don't have a scanner so I'll have to get those posted later on. Hopefully Frik will take them to campus one of these days and scan them at the library.

Other than that, work is going well. I'm feeling more comfortable with the products we support and starting to feel like I'm at least as smart as most of the people who are calling in for help :)

Oh, we bought a new laptop. well, a used laptop. i like it. It's a little slower than our other one (it's 3 years old) but the keyboard and touchpad are 100% better than our old computer. They actually work, haha.

Well... that's about all for my update. I'm feeling sick... I got a cold and it's not gone yet, so that's frustrating, and hopefully it gets better soon. :) Ok, that's really it now.