Read My Chart Before Speaking

My doctor's office called this morning with the results from yesterday's beta. HCG level of 18. She said that the doctor feels that it is a chemical pregnancy and we will follow up with more bloodwork on Thursday. I also started a little spotting last night, which considering how much progesterone I was taking up until yesterday, is pretty amazing. The nurse who called with the results was good, she didn't say congratulations, so she must have at least read my chart before calling. I have been the victim of careless nurses so many times I have lost count.

What about the first nurse who told me that I wasn't even pregnant when my beta came back at 26? I didn't know anything about pregnancy then, but is she tried to pull that crap now, I would remind her than a beta greater than five is positive for pregnancy. Plus, what about having some sensitivity?

Then, there was the nurse that called me as I was still bleeding from my third miscarriage. When I answered the phone, she said sharply, "Did you know that you missed an appointment today?" I looked over my calendar and saw a scratched-out entry. It had been for my ultrasound. I told her I had miscarried and that I had asked the nurse to cancel the appointment when she called with the dismal beta. She was quiet for a minute then said, "Well, we still have to charge you a no show fee." I told her that they could charge me anything that they liked, but I wasn't paying it. She then saw where the appointment had been "cancelled," but the nurse hadn't done it properly in the system, which is why I got the rude phone call. Do you think that she apologized? Nope.

One nurse was trying to be nice for me and when I went in for a D&C, she abbreviated missed abortion to md AB on the form that I signed. Now, I knew what this meant and that it's a medical term, so I wasn't really fazed by it, although I did appreciate her sensitivity. But five minutes before I was to go into surgery, another nurse came back and shoved the paperwork at my husband and said that the other nurse had messed up and that it couldn't be abbreviated. So, in huge block letters was the word ABORTION. Just larger than life. I had already been given drugs, so I wasn't allowed to sign the consent, so my husband had to do it. He had never heard the term missed abortion and so he corrected the nurse. "We're not having an abortion," he told her, thinking they had given him the wrong form. The "lovely" nurse responded, "Listen, it's an abortion, just sign the paperwork so we can get this over with." Yeah. Lovely.

But my "favorite" example of this is when I was called shortly after the D&C of my 11 week pregnancy. The chipper nurse told me that the results of my testing had come back with no chromosomal abnormalities. While she seemed to think that this was great, my stomach dropped at that news - I wanted answers for our loss. She then asked if I wanted to know the sex of the baby and we had decided that we did want to know. She told me, "It's a boy!" And for just a few seconds my mind got around that thought. A little boy, just as I had dreamed about. We would have had a son. It was a bittersweet moment until she followed it up with, "Congratulations!" For a second, I thought that she just had a sick sense of humor, but then I asked, "Are you sure that you are talking to the right person?" She wasn't.

Medical professionals, I beg you. Please read our charts. Please have some compassion. And I swear that if you call my babies products of conception one more time, I will really have to put your eye out with a dull pen.