Greetings from North Dakota

And a belated Happy Thanksgiving! Tyler and I left the pets with my parents and flew out to the (very) rural town of Marmarth, ND this week to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family. I love my in-laws and the rest of Tyler's family, so it's worth the long trip to get out here. Unfortunately, the little town they live in is three hours from the nearest airport... and this time, we bought tickets when oil was super high, so the cheapest flight we could find went from Hartford to Philadelphia to Denver to Rapid City. Yuck. And in case anyone pregnant was wondering, US Airways does not, in fact, supply airsickness bags, which means you may be forced to vomit repeatedly into a Ziploc bag containing Tums with holes in the bottom, while your husband pretends he doesn't know you, and everyone around you looks completely disgusted. Not that this is something with which I have recently had precise experience or anything.

Anyway, we got here and we've been having a great time. It's so relaxing to get out of Connecticut for a change, and I've been needing this break since I started school way back in July! I haven't done a single speck of schoolwork, which has been amazing... and I've been eating ridiculous amounts of delicious Thanksgiving food (I'm not messing around... we're talking entire pies here, people). I love seeing my two little nieces, too-- and watching Tyler play with them is so cute. One of them is almost two, and the other is only three months old. Usually, thinking about my baby seems so abstract and unreal because I don't ever spend time around any babies or kids. But being with little baby Jaxyn is a reality check for me... in a good way. She's a fussy baby and cries a lot, but she's so adorable, and I guess it just reminds me that this is something that people do every day, and it's not some big scary unknown.

So it's been great to relax, especially because I never ever stop and sit around and do nothing for more than a couple minutes at a time... but it turns out, when I'm not distracted by the craziness of school and clinic, I'm pretty uncomfortable! I'm getting bigger every day and I haven't been able to work out here, so I'm sure that's part of the problem, but seriously-- holy. Back. Pain. I would kill for a Snoogle (a pregnancy back pillow). And by that I mean, if I saw someone walking down the street with a Snoogle and they said the only way I could have it was to kill them, I would not hesitate to shoot them in the face, take the Snoogle, and run. Okay, maybe that's a little drastic (except not really, I'd totally do it, and there aren't any cops out here anyway, so hmmmm).

Hope everyone's had a lovely holiday!

25 weeks

Here's me! My first belly pic taken by someone other than myself. Sorry for the bad quality, we are camera-less right now so Tyler took it on his iPhone.

Fool me once...

I had a patient scheduled for a root canal this afternoon, and she no-showed. I was frustrated, because this patient needs a lot of work done and I tried really hard to get her in as efficiently as possible. When I was treatment planning her, she kept saying how anxious she was about having dental work done, so I sent out a medical consult to her doctor to get her a prescription for lorazepam, and harassed the doctor until it got done. She has a past history of prescription drug addiction, but I thought it was necessary to get her through all the work she needed to get done. The patient and I talked over the phone about this appointment (and the ones following) at least three times, so she definitely was aware that today was the day. And then she didn't show, and I couldn't reach her by phone.

I always get irritated with no-shows, just because it's so inconsiderate to me and my schedule. This one particularly bothered me since I'd put in so much time for the patient and tried so hard to meet her needs and help her out... and she has so much work that she needs done and I need to do, to fulfill requirements! I was still mulling it over while cleaning the apartment this evening (out of some misguided need to get something done today) when it hit me like a ton of bricks...

Drug seeker. Shit.

I feel like such an idiot for not getting it. She's on methadone, she says she's been clean for two years, but really that isn't that long. I let the fact that she was so sweet and timid fool me into busting my butt for her to get that prescription, because she knew she wouldn't be able to get one on her own with her history. I'm still so new at all this that I don't take charge of my patients as much as I should, and now I'm paying for it because I spent all this time on this woman and instead of helping her get the dental care she needed, I fed her addiction and now she's gone.

I know this happens and it's not necessarily my fault, and her physician did write the script (not me), but I can't help feeling kind of stupid. Maybe I'm being too hard on her and she has a good excuse, and she'll show up to her next appointment that I've already scheduled... but that's her last chance with me, I'm not getting her any more drugs and I'm not making any more appointments until she decides to show up. I'm just really, really frustrated that I let her deceive me like that!!

Happy V-day to me! (I mean, us)

Well, I'm about half a week late on this, but Thursday was viability day for baby. At 24 weeks, fetuses (feti?) are officially considered viable outside the womb, so happy V-day to my little boy or girl!

Here's what I'm looking like these days...

Apparently the baby is having a growth spurt, because I can see a huge difference between this pic and my last one at 22 weeks... even though I learned at the doctor on Saturday that somehow I only gained a pound this month! (Obviously, this gives me free reign to eat ridiculously massive amounts of food for the next month. Mmmmmm.)

So, viability... objectively, it's an exciting milestone, but honestly it scares me a little bit because my classmate's wife had that baby at 24 weeks sometime back in June, and the poor baby is still in the hospital. I guess seeing what they've gone through with such a tiny preemie really makes me think, wow, this is for real now. I'm actually at a point where this baby could be born and survive-- with a lot of medical help and heartache. Don't get me wrong, though, I am excited and relieved to be here safely at 24 weeks and counting!

Not much else is new here. I have one more week of school left and then we leave next Tuesday for North Dakota to visit Tyler's parents. I can't wait!! I've been in school since the end of July without a break, so I really, really need this time off. And I was lucky enough to get fabulous in-laws, so I can't wait to see them either.

No one ever told me...

Well, I had another one of those unbelievably crappy days that makes me want to lie on the floor and cry and then get up and immediately quit dental school. But tonight, my strategy is to completely ignore that, and instead share a list of things no one ever told me about pregnancy. There are a lot of weird and sometimes gross things that happen to you that I never would have guessed...

1. "Morning sickness" is a stupid name. It should be called "constant, all-day, horrific nausea and vomiting that does not always end with the first trimester." I know, it takes a little longer to say, but in the interest of accuracy...
   
2. You feel like you're about to get your period (cramps and all) for the first 8 weeks that you're pregnant.
3. Your taste changes: foods you used to love, you might not be able to stand thinking about... and foods you used to hate, you might want to eat every day.
   
4. You can start getting (fake) contractions as early as halfway through your pregnancy.
   
5. You might never poop again. Or at least it seems that way.
   
6. You can get random nosebleeds for no reason at all. Your nose can also be really stuffy and/or runny all the time.
   
7. Your boobs can start leaking waaaay before you need them to. We're talking 18 weeks here, ladies.
8. Your gums get really sensitive and bleed like crazy. Seriously, it is like a horror movie every time I floss.
9. As your belly grows, your bellybutton becomes a terrifying thing that I can't even look at anymore, honestly, that thing freaks me out to no end. Okay, maybe this is just me...
   
10. You discover a whole new meaning to the term "snail trail."
11. Heartburn. Sometimes I think this baby is living in my esophagus. And breathing fire in there.
12. You might pee a little when you sneeze (a.k.a., the dreaded "sniss"). I'm not saying this has happened to me yet (it hasn't), but I've had a few close calls.
    
13. Varicose veins: they're not just for old ladies anymore. Fortunately, these allegedly go away after delivery.
    
14. Your hair stops shedding while you're pregnant. This is rather a problem when you already have enough hair on your head for two people.
15. You might need to try and soothe your baby so you can get some sleep... even before he or she is born! I wake up most nights to feel those little fists or feet beating away at one of my internal organs.
16. Sometimes when you eat, you end up hungrier than before you started eating.

That's been my experience so far, anyway! Feel free to add to my list in the comments.

It all started with one little cankle

Over the past few days, I've noticed that one of my ankles has decided to turn into a cankle. You know-- when your ankles are swollen so that your calf just leads straight into your foot. I expected cankles at some point-- they're just part of being pregnant, right? Plus, they're like, way sexy. But I kind of thought they always came as a matched set, so this one did seem a bit odd.

Anyway, I just thought it was kind of funny, but a few people suggested that I might want to call my OB about it, since it is just one leg and that's a little freaky. I called this morning after my prosthodontics practical exam (not good. Don't want to talk about it.) and she brought me in right away. Apparently singular cankles are a sign of a blood clot, which would be a rather unfortunate thing to have. She took a look at my leg and sent me to the outpatient facility of my hospital to get an ultrasound done. Luckily, the tech told me it's not a deep clot (whew!!), so now I'm waiting to hear from my OB as to whether she thinks it's due to a varicosity or a more superficial clot. Neither one of those things are a big deal, so I'm feeling pretty lucky at this point. If I remember correctly from medical school (although chances of this are slim), I'm pretty sure that DVT (deep venous thrombosis) during pregnancy is a sign of an undiagnosed clotting disorder, which is a big problem... I am really, really relieved that it's not that.

So I'm getting a bit tired of having these seemingly little things like a swollen leg or a stomach bug, calling the OB, and getting a "go straight to the hospital, do not pass go, do not collect $200" card. I don't want to go back there until I deliver! You hear that in there?? ::Taps uterus::

Election day!

Did you?

I love election day. Presidential election day is even better. I love that feeling of excitement and change in the air, and I love feeling like I'm becoming a part of something important, and feeling like I did something good just by showing up and casting my vote. And this year, I'm pretty tired of hearing all the propaganda from both sides, so I love that it's finally done with!

I was anticipating huge lines, even though I got out of clinic early, so I was pleasantly surprised to only have to wait a few minutes. Those paper ballots, though, I dunno... I felt like I was feeding that thing into a shredder when I turned it in. But probably I can assume the nice little old man who watched me do it wasn't quite that diabolical. Another plus: unlike the last presidential election, there weren't any "challengers" who stood over me and screeched in my ear that I wasn't allowed to vote because my last name was spelled slightly wrong on the list. (You people are crazy down there in PA... ;)

I don't like to go into politics on my blog, so I'm not going to rant on about who you should vote for and why they're awesome and coincidentally, why I'm awesome because I voted for them, but I will say... if you didn't go make your voice heard yet today, go do it! It'll make you feel all warm and happy inside.

Changes...

So, I've made the big switch from The Nest! I can't believe it was so easy to copy over all my old entries. Anyway, I'm loving my new format and I'm hoping it will motivate me to update me more often.

I have my oral radiology clinic rotation this afternoon. I wasn't sure if they would let me take a bunch of x-rays, so I went up to the clinic this morning to ask... and the tech I found there said "yeah, no problem, of course you can do it. I'm pregnant too." I got all excited and asked "Oh wow, really?? When are you due??" because she didn't look pregnant at all. She said "March." I couldn't believe it, she's as far along as me and I couldn't even tell, and here I am with my bump practically poking her in the face. I didn't say anything about it, because I'm sure she gets comments all the time (and I hate all the remarks about how big I am... not sure why those social rules about not commenting on someone's fatness don't apply to me anymore?). But, let me just say, anybody who still looks like she has a waist at this point in pregnancy is no friend of mine... ;) Maybe she's due at the end of March. We'll go with that.

Well, gotta run to clinic. Thanks for checking out the new blog!