Healthcare dollars

The competition begins; baby is trying to out-punk Turing and may be winning.

Last week, we learned that baby is dropping heartbeats occationally. This is actually relatively common and most fetuses outgrow it before birth. And then there are all the really sucky lower probability outcomes. This would be one of those times when having some medical knowledge may be a lot worse than having very little. While Trouble was able to focus on the "probably nothing" part of the outcome flowchart, I spent days and days fixated on the "sucky crap" part. This is mostly because I am genetically predisposed to plan for all contingencies because it maintains my illusion of control. But there is no control in this sort of situation (or fault) and it would have been better to be able to mentally set it aside while waiting to see the Fancy Doctor.

So, I haven't gotten much dissertation work done. My document is now due in three weeks. shit.

The fancy doctor was generally reassuring, though he is still dropping beats. There were also a few other small things she wanted to follow-up on in two weeks. And I am supposed to avoid all possible stimulants. I've only been having a half-cup of coffee once a week or so, so that isn't a big deal. But, chocolate? Life is hard! The combination of concern and no chocolate may mean baby has out-punked Turing's 50 hour delivery already.

But overall reassuring, I got a lot of work done last night.

Then her office called this morning to move up the follow-up because she had reviewed some of the lab stuff last night. Uh?

I have been putting off doing a gestational diabetes screen. I have no risk factors and the last time I went through two false positives (that's three rounds of test which meant three days of my life in headachy blah) over weeks of trying to follow a vegetarian diabetic diet (bean soup anyone?) and it just sucked logistically, though I wasn't particularly anxious. I did a bunch of research on the screening and it isn't recommended for all patients by any of the big groups (AHRQ, NICE) because the false positive rate is so high and there is no real way to quantify the "cost" of false positives. Intellectually, I've known that the cost of anxiety and testing is real, but the past week has made that much more salient.