Two and a half hours...

In two and a half short hours, I will be sitting in the office of the Maternal Fetal Specialist. To say I'm nervous and anxious would be an understatement. I'm trying to stay as calm as possible and not worry too much about it but I feel like this doctor holds a lot of power right now. He has the power to essentially prevent me from being able to use the birth center I want to use. Now, I realize this is far from the end of the world, but I want so much for things to be easy for once.

So much of my life over the past 15 years has been focused on medical...stuff. Going to doctors, taking pills, hooking up IVs, dealing with side effects of medications, spending time in the hospital because of complications, having new central lines placed or old ones removed, and much more time than I would like spent in bed or on the couch either in pain or so fatigued that just getting up to go to the bathroom is a huge task. After so many years of all of this (half my life at this point), I have managed to get to a point where so much of that is reduced.

Yes, I still go to doctors but as of right now I only have one doctor that I see (she serves as both my primary care physician and my Lyme disease doctor or “LLMD” - Lyme Literate Medical Doctor). I still take pills, more than I would like, once I week I spend 20-30 minutes filling up my weekly pill containers, multiple times a month I have to pick up refills, and I always have to remember to carry around my large container of my daily pills, but this is not so bad and I'm used to it. I still do IV medications but they are greatly reduced and I have somehow managed to get to a point of being able to only infuse them every other day which is AMAZING. I'm not on any medications right now that cause noticible side effects and those nights spent curled up on the bathroom floor because it was too much to go back to bed knowing I would likely be throwing up again soon are a (somewhat) distant memory. In less than two months it will have been a year since my last hospitalization but because of my port-a-cath (central line IV access) there is always a risk of infection or other complications. As of right now my port-a-cath is working well. And my time spent resting in bed or on the couch is greatly reduced, most of the time it's just because I need a break and not because of the crushing fatigue or pain that I used to have regularly.

But the point is that I have come so far and managed to claw my way back to something that resembles a normal life. This is something that for so many years seemed just like a distant dream that may not ever come true. But here I am, proof that it CAN and DOES happen. It can take time and perseverance and a lot of years of treatment, but it can happen.

And now I'm married – something that didn't seem likely to happen because who would want this kind of baggage? And I'm looking parenthood straight in the eye and more excited than I can even explain.

So, back to the point of this post – I'm nervous about the appointment this afternoon. Now that I am getting my life back, I want the choices that so many people take for granted. I wish so much that it could be easy and I could just decide I want to use the birth center and that would be that. But I should know that things aren't easy with chronic illness, especially when it involves a central line and so many years of doctors and medications. There are so many unknowns and we don't really have a good idea of how my body will be able to handle pregnancy. But regardless of any of this and regardless of what the doctor says today, I know I will have a baby one way or another. It may not be the way I imagine it, and I am trying to be okay with that, because I want this to happen however it needs to happen.

I'm sure I'll be writing more after the appointment, which is now only two hours away. Time to get things together and prepare myself as much as I can. I just hate going to new doctors and the unknown of how they will react to all of this. Ah well, life is full of unknowns...