RBWH birth, maternity, complaint response whinge

Speaking of bad customer service, I just wanted to give a big middle finger to the RBWH for their handling of our complaint over mine and Setri's treatment there following Setri's birth. I haven't finished responding to all of the points made in their reply, but they managed to 'forget' to reply to every single important point, and pretty much call us liars too. I am actually shocked that they thought they could leave this stuff out and not have us notice. But they are extremely sorry that we *felt* distressed, even though they essentially say there was nothing to be distressed about. When I'm done, I'll be posting it here and everywhere else I bloody well can. I don't want to forget that the majority of nurses and midwives we dealt with there were wonderful, but the people and institution I'm complaining about need their noses rubbed in their own mess in a big way. I am so insulted and angered by their response that words can't really suffice to express how I feel.

Home of the hamburger, home of ammonia-treated beef waste

'Food' product made from ammonia-treated beef that includes "fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil..."

Oh yuck...

Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia.

The company, Beef Products Inc., had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil. The trimmings were particularly susceptible to contamination, but a study commissioned by the company showed that the ammonia process would kill E. coli as well as salmonella.

[...]

With the U.S.D.A.’s stamp of approval, the company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone.

But government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment.

[...]

In response, the agriculture department said it was revoking Beef Products’ exemption from routine testing and conducting a review of the company’s operations and research. The department said it was also reversing its policy for handling Beef Products during pathogen outbreaks. Since it was seen as pathogen-free, the processed beef was excluded from recalls, even when it was an ingredient in hamburgers found to be contaminated.

[...]

Mr. Roth and others in the industry had discovered that liquefying the fat and extracting the protein from the trimmings in a centrifuge resulted in a lean product that was desirable to hamburger-makers...

This is an extract from a 4 page article from the New York Times. I think any American who is not a vegetarian must be a) extraordinarily conscientious about where they source their food, b) extremely deluded or c) downright insane. I suspect most fall into the latter two categories. There is just so much stuff over there that is sold as food that really has no right to be called such. God forbid that ever happens to our food supply over here to the same extent in Australia. We already have disgraceful conditions allowed for farming of pigs and poultry. Moves are underfoot in New Zealand towards introducing US-style feedlot dairies. Let's hope for progressive, not regressive, policies on food and agriculture in Australia in 2010. Lord knows it's probably too late for the US, poor bastards.

Healthy diet costs double for poor families

Ugh, finally.

For some time now, so-called 'researchers' and academics in Australia have discounted the 'food desert' phenomenon that has been found to exist in the US and Britain. They proclaimed that fruit and vegetables are available even in areas of Australian cities considered to be of low socioeconomic status and that the prices of those fruits and vegetables were not significantly higher, ergo affordability was not a factor in the failure of people from low socioeconomic groups to consume a healthy, balanced diet.

Ignoring, of course, that the proportion of income that a non-wealthy person's food bill consumes is much, much higher and that regardless of equality of cost across urban regions, fruit and vegetables cost exponentially more per kilojoule, meaning it is more cost effective to consume a more energy-dense and less healthy diet.

Finally, someone with more than an ounce of common sense to scrape together has done a study on the bleeding obvious:

A welfare-dependent family of four would spend nearly half of its total weekly income on the healthy meal plan (44 per cent or 38 per cent using generic brands), compared with 18 per cent for an average-income family (16 per cent with generic brands).

Now, considering that rent also takes up a large proportion of poorer peoples' income (often upwards of 30%), that leaves around 25% of a meagre income to cover utilities, clothing, fuel, education etc. Achievable?

Look over there! It's a distraction!

Anna Bligh is really tackling the hard issues this week. After moving to overturn Queensland's backward, barbaric laws that make abortion illegal and have seen the prosecution of a 19-year-old woman and her 21-year-old partner... oh wait, no, she hasn't done a thing about that, despite attempting a token gesture (aptly described as 'cowardly') in an effort to shut up concerned doctors and hospitals. As yet, thankfully the hospitals don't seem to have bought it.

Well, anyway, onto the real issue: Schapelle Corby should be brought home! Yeah! Way to attempt to distract Queenslanders from the unfavourable headlines focusing on how backward and stupid Queensland remains under its Labor government.

Allegedly Anna Bligh 'personally supports' womens' right to obtain safe abortions. Yet she has ruled out any change in the law in Queensland that currently makes these illegal. If she had an ounce of principle left in her she would ignore the nutbags in the LNP and the minority religious extremists and move to overturn those laws. But she doesn't, so she won't. What a sellout.

UPDATE 26/08/2009: Doctors have branded Anna Bligh a hypocrite for permitting more than 14 000 abortions every year to be carried out in Queensland while it remains illegal and she refuses to change the law. Obviously Queensland Health knows how desperately embarrassing it could be for the Bligh government if the situation arises where those 14 000+ women in need of the procedure are refused abortions by doctors:

Queensland Health officials will meet doctors in Brisbane today to try to convince them to continue providing both surgical and drug-induced abortions.

At least one woman has already been sent to a Sydney hospital for treatment.

[...]

Queensland doctors began boycotting abortions this month after police charged a 19-year-old Cairns woman and her boyfriend with criminal offences involving an allegedly self-administered abortion using the drugs RU486 and misoprostol, smuggled from overseas.

The state's biggest hospital -- the Royal Women's Hospital in Brisbane -- as well as hospitals in Logan, Mackay and Rockhampton have banned the procedure while Cairns Hospital is seeking legal advice.

New Zealand's international woman of idiocy

I saw a spate of headlines recently, all on the websites of Murdoch-rags, on a 24-year-old moron mother-of-one lost 45kg over 8 months by drinking 'nothing but the energy drink Red Bull'. Somehow it was spun into a story on the dangers of Red Bull, a tale that would take an incredible amount of ignorance to conjure up, and even more to believe.

If this silly young woman did go to such extraordinary lengths to lose that weight, the reason she developed a heart murmur was more probably a result of a nutritional deficiency- my guess would be potassium- than the particular brand of energy drink that she was consuming. Eight months drinking nothing but any kind of fizzy drink, or even coffee and a person would be lucky to be alive. Despite this, talk of bans on the product abounded in the media, with a pretty obvious insinuation that the 'dangers' posed by the product meant the same should happen in countries where bans had not already been implemented (i.e. most of them). As for the 'anxiety attacks' being caused by Red Bull- pffft.

Given that she lost a relatively piddling amount of weight for her eight months on such a stupid diet, I highly doubt the woman's tale that Red Bull and the odd handful of cereal was all she consumed. She lost only 5.6kg per month- about 1.4kg per week, an amount achieveable through a healthy diet or a commercial weight-loss diet such as Jenny Craig. If this woman had consumed only Red Bull she probably would have suffered muscle wasting and lost quite a bit of weight due to that alone.

Not a single article I read on this 'story' bothered to quote a doctor or a dietitian on any of the following:

a) the veracity of the story

b) the likely cause of the health problems attributed to Red Bull

c) the complete and utter stupidity of a 'diet' of this kind and the actual health problems and nutritional deficiencies that could be expected to arise should anyone else (and it's plausible, given the typical readers of the papers this story was printed in) be stupid enough to try it.

State of Origin Swine Flu Fears!!!

"This is a f***ing family game you c***k s****ing c***t, i'll f***ing well f***ing teach you to f***ing bring swine flu here you s***t faced mother f***er!"

Funny how you haven't seen that headline. Funny how the media are all over quarantining ships and telling kids to stay away from school but a massive sporting event in a disease vector cauldron is untouchable. I think we've just seen another example of the media knowing on which side its bread is buttered.

Lots of butts, little evidence: mental health advocates oppose smoking ban

Some people in mental health groups are jumping up and down about the smoking ban in psychiatric facilities just imposed by NSW Health. They claim that being deprived of cigarettes, even though nicotine replacement therapy is being offered free of charge, will lead mentally ill smokers to turn violent.

A spokesman for the Mental Health Council of Australia, Simon Tatz, said forcing a nicotine addict to endure withdrawal symptoms while battling an acute episode of mental illness may impose a disproportionate level of suffering on people who were already suffering enough.

Yeah, never mind the fact that the two thirds of mentally ill people who don't smoke are being forced to breathe in the smokers' carcinogens. If these people were addicted to an illegal drug would Tatz being yapping about how 'destabilising' it is to give them treatment/replacement therapy rather than allowing them to continue their habit? Smoking, however, is one of the few drug habits where the health impact arising from use of the drug is inflicted on unwilling victims. Why should anyone, mentally ill or not, be allowed to do that?

Besides, despite the bleatings of smokers in the system, there is apparently no evidence whatsoever to suggest that there is any increase in violence when a smoking ban is implemented in a mental health care setting:

A review of 26 bans in psychiatric settings worldwide published in the Australian And New Zealand Journal Of Psychiatry in 2005 found there was "no increase in aggression, discharge against medical advice or increased use of as needed medication" linked to smoke-free policies.

Daylight saving sucks- proof!

Here's one for all the supporters of daylight saving in Queensland:

Daylight saving is bad for your sleep and probably your health.

I knew Queensland had the right idea and the rest of the country had it wrong on this one!

Instead of buying babies, Salma breastfeeds

I would just like to say how awesome it is for Salma Hayek to have single-handedly booted western attitudes towards breastfeeding forward by a century or so by cross-nursing a little baby in Sierra Leone. It's really unfortunate that in this day and age, even in Australia, people are willing to express negative attitudes towards breastfeeding and actively discourage mothers from doing so. I was really, really pleased to see overwhelmingly positive comments even on sites like the Courier Mail that are usually a conservative clusterfuck of a hatefest. Hopefully the example of Salma Hayek will go a long way to ensuring a permanent change in the way society views this perfectly natural practice that is still the only way to ensure that babies are optimally nourished- and that includes cross-nursing, wet-nursing or the provision of donor breast milk when the mother is unable to breastfeed.

A few rotten apples...

So, the Australian Dental Association doesn't like the universal dental care plan proposed by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission? Why might that be, I wonder?

Maybe the answer lies here. Maybe some dentists are just greedy bastards who don't want the prices they charge in excess of whatever the government is prepared to refund them as part of the scheme, a la the situation with doctors, to be demonstrably excessive in comparison to their less extortionist-minded colleagues.

Safe Sex Made Interesting

Here's a couple of safe sex TV spots from France.



I put the gay themed one up first because I think it's better and has a clearer message, "have fun, but don't be an idiot." This is compared to the straight themed one which is, "you'll never feel complete till you have a conventional courtship/marriage/mortgage. The gay dude is clearly having way more fun."

Of course you'll never see anything like this in Australia because teaching children the skills they need to live their lives sensibly is 'controversial'. Enjoy them till the Rudd/Conroy internet filter makes it illegal/impossible.

Queensland government cures the 'Ice Plague'

Me, attempting to buy Clarinase for hayfever relief under Stephen Robertson's super-dooper Pseudoephedrine Enforcement Taskforce.

Good news! Queensland's incompetent health minister Stephen Robertson, when not preoccupied by diminishing the seriousness of the lapses under his watch that led to the rape of a nurse in the Torres Strait, has been single-handedly stemming the flow of meth onto Queensland's streets. It is now no longer possible for anyone to buy meth, thanks to Stephen's crackdown on dodgy pharmacists. Hooray Stephen!

Meanwhile, with Ivory Curl trees in flower, my hayfever is at an all-time high. I'm forking out $10.95 for a 6 pack of Clarinase- $14.95 if I have to get it from the Taringa Day & Night Pharmacy that lasts me 3 days. I'm starting to wonder if it would be cheaper to have a meth habit instead of hayfever.

Having to go and buy this shit every 3 days instead of once a week means I have to endure the routine interrogation twice as often:

Q: "What are you taking this for?"

A: I'm a meth cook and I'm buying a six-tablet-pack of Clarinase within a 50km radius of here, because at >$2 a tablet it makes great economic sense to do so My hayfever.


Q: "Have you seen a doctor about it?"

A: No, I quite enjoy having hayfever so debilitating I can get through a 250-pack of tissues in one day. The sensation of having your face swollen and your nose and eyes running for hours, rendering you unable to complete any normal activities is something I highly recommend. I've never seen the need to ask a doctor if there's anything more I can do to cure it. Er, yes, many times.

Q: Can I have your licence, please?

A: Yup, here you go. Why yes, this doesn't make me feel like at all like a criminal rather than someone with a debilitating medical condition that requires a drug to control it in order that they may lead a somewhat normal life.

Today was just a great example of how well Stephen Robertson's system is working. I was in dire need of some Clarinase, so we walked to Toowong and I went to the Discount Drugstore, where I normally purchase it. They were out of stock, but the pharmacy assistant sold me a packet of Demazin, telling me it was pretty much the same, only I could take one every 6 hours instead of every 12 hours. My hayfever was so bad I didn't wait until we got home to take one- we bought a bottle of water in Coles and I swallowed a Demazin before we walked home.

Shortly after we got home, I became incredibly tired and passed out in bed for a couple of hours before Gam woke me. It took me another 15 minutes to drag myself out of bed- I was incredibly thirsty but felt unable to get up.

It was then that Gam asked me to check the pack of Demazin to find out whether the antihistamine it contained was one that induced drowsiness. It was. I know I should have read the packet before taking one, but I'm not always in the soundest frame of mind when I have bad hayfever. The pharmacy assistant had told me it was pretty much the same as Clarinase, except for the dosage instructions. Failing to mention that the antihistamine in Demazin, unlike the one in Clarinase, was one that induced drowsiness was a huge omission: antihistamines of the non-drowsy variety always knock me out cold.

Gam, not liking the idea that the only antihistamine-decongestant I had at my disposal was one that rendered me unconscious, drove us to the Taringa Day & Night, whereupon we had to repeat the whole interrogation- after the girl first told us they'd sold out then, when Gam made some disbelieving comment, went and found some. God knows whether daring to buy two medications containing pseudoephedrine in one day will place a red flag against my name in Stephen Robertson's stupid system and cause the interrogations to be even more irritating, humiliating and stressful in the future. I wonder whether the system persecutes pharmacists who don't see the need to make their customers feel like criminals before handing out a single 6-tablet-packet of a drug that is now about 3 times as expensive as it used to be before the government started this crap.

Thank god that at least we can all rest safe in the knowledge that there is no more Ice on Queensland streets.

Visitin the doctor, ur doin it wrong...

I wonder if the government will ever consider that the reason so many people visit the doctor for 'minor ailments that do not require medical attention', costing Medicare hundreds of millions of dollars, is because so many people have scummy employers who insist that a worker who takes a day off due to illness bring a doctor's certificate as 'proof' that they were sick? No-one with gastro, a bad cold or flu wants to trudge to the doctor and be told to drink plenty of water and get lots of sleep- they want to stay in bed!

Dr Pat Rebgetz slams situation in Wadeye

Yikes. It's amazing that a situation like that could exist in Australia...

Mercy!

Something I've known for a while is that there are two things in particular that make my chronic hayfever much, much worse: chocolate and alcohol. I hardly ever drink, so chocolate is obviously much more difficult to abstain from. Usually I pay for my transgressions the morning after I consume the offending food or beverage. Still, having just now had a glass of red wine and shared a bar of chocolate with Gam, I'm suffering an attack of fairly nasty hayfever, and it's rare for that to happen at night, even if I do eat a lot of chocolate. Coincidence, or could it be that I really can't tolerate wine any more?

Australia's most despicable foreign aid practice

So, you know how the US has this inhumane practice of yanking foreign aid funding for any organisation or hospital overseas that provides advice on safe pregnancy termination options to women? Disgusting, isn't it?

Apparently the Australian government does it too. I had no idea. Surely most Australians wouldn't support this?

Going hormonal

For any regular readers who dislike TMI without a warning... consider yourself warned. Full-on TMI rant coming up (no pictures this time!):

Since my laparoscopy I have continued to have light bleeding and spotting, along with mild pelvic pain a couple of times a day that has become increasingly severe over the last week, to the point where I've started taking painkillers again. I still feel better than I did before the op, mainly because my stomach isn't swelled up to the size of a rockmelon. Though it does tend to bloat up a bit whenever I get pain.

I haven't had anything really resembling a normal cycle since the real trouble started back in late July- none of the usual PMS symptoms (mid-cycle horniness, boobs blowing up and getting painful, feeling the need to eat mountains of sweet food!). I have recently been horribly mood-swing-y. I'm blaming my Implanon, which has given me dodgy side-effects right from the beginning, but I figured the joys of unprotected sex were far outweighed by the mess it made of my menstrual cycle (which, face it, I never viewed particularly favourably even before the Implanon). So, given that I've had about 4-5 bleeding-free days in the last 2-3 months, I'd been leaning towards having the Implanon taken out.

I was planning to leave the Implanon out for long enough for my body to recover and then try some other form of hormone-based contraception. I'd made an appointment for tomorrow with my regular doctor to discuss my options.

Then I did some googling and found the following on the home page of Implanon-USA:

"The use of IMPLANON and other progestin-only hormonal contraceptives have been associated with ectopic pregnancies, bleeding irregularities and ovarian cysts..."

Bleeding irregularities I knew about (only too well). Ovarian cysts, on the other hand??!!1! Implanon raises the risk of ovarian cysts, as do other progestogen contraceptives, such as Depo Provera. Now, I don't remember whether an increased risk of ovarian cysts was listed as a side-effect or risk when I first had Implanon put in 6.5 years ago. But I am pretty sure I remember when I was first diagnosed as having an ovarian cyst in February this year (after umpteen episodes of pain probably caused by cysts) my doctor telling me that having Implanon should reduce my risk of ovarian cysts. Gah!

So I phoned up straight away to find out when I could get the nearest available appointment to have my Implanon taken out. I'm having it out next Monday. I only just had it replaced in June!

Frankly, I've had it up to *here* with hormonal contraceptives.

I also hate and despise condoms. Sure they have a very valuable place in society when it comes to protecting people from STDs. But they really do reduce the sensation. Despite believing Girlfriend and Cosmopolitan magazines as a (virgin! Ha-ha!) teenager when they told me that when a guy says that wearing a condom during sex is like showering in a raincoat it's all bunk and he really can't feel anything different- well, I beg to differ. Heh. Come to think of it, they also perpetrated the myth that penetration is overrated because a woman can't feel anything once it's more than 2 inches inside her vagina. Come on! We all know that's not true!

Condoms are horrible things, and sex without them is so much better. If there's one great thing about having a steady partner who you can trust not to give you some horrible STD, it's not having to wear a condom. Gam laughs at my no-condom evangelism, but I reckon he dislikes them as much as I do. The last time we had to use them was back in 2005 when the abcess in my arm meant I wasn't allowed to have my Implanon replaced for a month or two. I'm seriously not looking forward to having to use them again. On the other hand, I'd rather be pain-free, horny and having plastic-wrapped sex than in pain, uncomfortable and be getting sweet sweet unprotected sex only when the pain and bleeding stops enough to allow it to happen.

In conclusion, fuck Implanon... and a reluctant 'hello' to condoms.

Victorian assisted reproduction bill a step forward

I'm really glad to see that Victoria is making its way out of the dark ages by allowing lesbians, single women and infertile couples greater access to fertility treatment. The Assisted Reproductive Treatment bill, like the recent bill that led to the decriminalisation of abortion in Victoria, was one that brought the noisy bigots out of the closet, so I'm glad to see that the majority of MPs were able to resist the pressure.

Until I read the article in The Age, I hadn't been aware of the following provision in the bill:

Under the posthumous use of gametes (sperm and eggs) clause, a woman can conceive with her dead partner's sperm, providing she had his prior written consent.

This is something that I've always thought should be legal everywhere in Australia- and I don't necessarily think written consent should be required. Because, honestly, how many young couples have a will, let alone think to put something like that in it? Gam and I don't have a will, but when we finally get our act together we are putting a provision like that in there so I could still have kids if he died. Even if it's illegal in Queensland, like abortion (and, until just a week or so ago, surrogacy) I'd still want to do it, just in case the law changed or there was the prospect of going somewhere like Victoria to undergo the IVF. It's gut-wrenching to even think of something like that happening, but I honestly feel that if we didn't have kids- or the prospect of having them- I would have absolutely nothing to live for if Gam died. I want him to be a part of my life forever, and that includes having children by him. Having kids with someone else would never be an option- I'm not saying I'd stay celibate for the rest of my life, I'm just simply not open to the prospect of ever caring for someone as much as I care for Gam, or having kids with someone else just for the sake of having kids. I don't know that it's necessarily a rational desire, but it's not an invalid one. I don't believe the state should have any more say on what a woman does with her husband's sperm after his death than whether she chooses cremation or burial- a woman whose husband held certain religious or other beliefs that proscribed her from giving birth to his child after his death would probably never consider using his sperm to have children anyway. Even if that did happen, such cases would probably be the minority, so why should the government disadvantage other women who wished to have this option?

I should note that Gam had never considered this before I brought it up a few years ago, and I have no idea whether he'd want to take my eggs (presumably I'd have to have eggs frozen before dying, as I doubt they could be matured after my death... now that's getting technical!) in order to have children via a surrogate if I died- I really doubt it, but I don't think either of us ever thought of that as an option.

Laparoscopy post-op appointment

Left: my nice healthy uterus; Right: uterus, ovary, fallopian tube
and various other bits...

Gam said that I should give this post a porno title: Deep Inside Sarah!

Today I had my post-op appointment. Yesterday I noticed that for the first time since July I wasn't bloated- I'm getting a waist back! I still have a bit of tightness in my stomach muscles, presumably from the op, but maybe from not moving around enough. Stretching my stomach muscles is a little bit painful instead of being pleasurable, but presumably as I heal up that will be fine.

No more bleeding (first time in over 3 weeks that I haven't been bleeding!), still a little bit of pelvic pain on my left-hand side. Given that I've had most pain on the left-hand side I was expecting the doc to say that the things they'd found were on the left, but they were all on the right. Weird. She did say that intra-abdominal/pelvic pain is notoriously poorly localised and not a very good indicator of where the problem lies.

Anyway, after taking out my stitches, she sat us down with a bunch of pictures taken during the op... I probably showed an inappropriate level of enthusiasm for the pictures, but it's nice to see what went on!

The first and most important thing was that I don't have endometriosis.

The second and most annoying thing was that there is no certainty as to what it was that was causing all that pain. She found:

Polyp photo, taken via hysteroscopy.

- A single polyp in my uterus, which she removed (pathology proved not cancerous or anything like that)

Large adhesion with lots of blood vessels

-A very large, thick adhesion (pretty much internal scar tissue) that she said was attached to a few of my organs and might have been the result of some infection or trauma, or might have been present from birth. Adhesions can cause pain but given that this one had clearly been there for a long time there was no good reason for it to have started causing me pain in the last two to three months. The doc also said it would more likely cause sharp pains from tugging on my bowel and other organs it was attached to, rather than the chronic, low-level pain and bloating I was experiencing. It was very well vascularised so they didn't want to remove it.

Fine adhesions to the ovary

- A couple of fine adhesions between my ovaries and something else... I forget what. They also might have caused pain, or might not. They were removed (I forgot to ask how).

- Another damn ovarian cyst. Not a big one, just a couple of centimetres this time, and they drained it. Again, a potential cause of pain, but at that size, who knows? The first time I went for an ultrasound for pelvic pain and they found a cyst it was much bigger, while the second time I went for an ultrasound they found nothing... although it was a different kind of pain that time I had pretty much assumed it was a cyst.

So yeah. Nothing definitive. After the initial relief of being told I didn't have endo I felt rather deflated and a bit scared when I realised it could all happen again and still no-one would have any idea what the problem was. I hope to god this episode was a one-off. Being in constant pain was really, really wearing- on my sleep, my concentration and my general mood.

My liver :)

By the looks of the pictures my uterus and ovaries are nice and healthy looking, as is my liver. For some reason I felt kind of proud when I saw my liver- 'that's what a liver should look like!', I thought. Truthfully I have very little idea what a healthy human liver looks like, but I thought mine looked pretty good. I signed up for the Medicare organ donation registry recently, but to be honest I really hope I get to hang onto my liver. I enjoy living at the moment!



Actually I was also very happy to be told that my uterus and ovaries look healthy... I never had to worry about my fertility before, but after being told that I probably had endometriosis I started to obsess a little bit. I really don't want to miss out on having kids.

Laparoscopy, 5 days after

Well, today was a step backwards. Not sure why. I was having abdominal pain and period-like pain all day and barely got anything done. Next to no gas pains though- just some minor discomfort in my diaphragm like there was a bit of remnant gas there. A lot of the pain was on my left side, like it was before the op, and there were no holes cut in that side, so I'm assuming maybe a lot of the pain is being caused by whatever led me to have the op in the first place. Unless they did something on that side when they made an incision in my pubes... I suppose I won't know until Friday. I could barely eat anything all day even though I was hungry, because the pain and bloating made me feel like it would be uncomfortable to eat. I felt a bit better by the evening, so I managed a proper meal then. I suppose given that I was sitting around in pain all day I wasn't exactly burning much energy anyway.

I've decided that a week (plus a day) is way too long to wait for a post-op appointment. That might be standard practice for my gyno but if, god forbid, I ever have to have something like this done again, I'd like to go with someone that will keep me in the loop. Being in pain all the time was getting me down before the op, and I'd like someone to fill me in on what's happening so I can just focus on the end in sight instead of how crappy I'm feeling at the moment.

My scars are healing up nicely, but the one near my hip keeps getting itchy. So far I've managed to avoid scratching it, which I'm pretty sure would hurt, but I've reflexively scratched the area a couple of times, thankfully missing the stitches, only to catch myself and quickly stop!