Doctor's Office and Sonic

Today was my trip to the OB to discuss what would happen about my cyst. I was worried because we lose our health insurance completely on June 20th and while I'm working on finding a replacement we can afford (I'm looking at State-funded programs currently), I can't guarantee that I'll have something in place for me at all much less cover something to remove the cyst. So we're kind of working on a deadline, which sucks.

They managed to fit me in the afternoon at the OB's office. My OB is currently out this week which means the other two are picking up the slack and that makes them even busier than normal. Dan came with me because technically I'm not supposed to drive on the pain medication and to help hold Joey. When I finally got called back, the nurse who's been working with me the whole pregnancy asked what in the world I was doing back so soon (after she was done cooing over the baby) and I told her about the cyst and being in the ER over the weekend. The doctor who saw me was, thankfully, the same doctor who had been on call last weekend and already had an idea of what was going on with me. I brought in all the paperwork that the ER had given me to give to him. He had to do an internal exam, which I dreaded because of my stitches, but wasn't too bad (although that could have also been due to my being on the pain meds). We then talked in his office about what should happen.

Ideally, because my uterus is still large and I'm still recovering from birth, they'd wait 6 weeks, do an ultrasound, and then determine what action to take. The risk of torsion is low currently because there's pretty much no room in my abdomen for the cyst to go, but obviously as my uterus shrinks that risk goes up. There's also still the risk of rupture. I told him about my health insurance situation and that we couldn't afford to Cobra the insurance after it stops (I'm not even sure if Cobra is an option when the job simply isn't there anymore...). Much as I could tell he disliked it, he did agree that we could probably remove the cyst before my insurance ran out. By not waiting for my uterus to get smaller (although I'm working on praying that down), it means that they would potentially have to make a much, much bigger incision to get the cyst out and that means a much longer recovery time.

The doc ordered another ultrasound, a more detailed one than what was done in the ER (they could have done a more detailed one, but they wanted to do it trans-vaginally and with me only being a week postpartum and stitches on top of that, I didn't think they should go in that way and the ER doc agreed), and I was able to schedule it for tomorrow. My doc did say that a trans-vaginal would be fine (and since I wasn't in pain during the internal exam I was less worried about it) and it was the only way to determine blood flow around the cyst. They have to determine blood flow to see how serious the situation is, to see if the cyst has cut off any blood flow to the ovary (which kills the ovary), etc. The potential is there that I could lose the ovary, either because the cyst killed it or because the cyst is simply too big and envelopes the whole organ. We're praying that doesn't happen, but even if it does, it's like losing a kidney, you can still function normally with just one. We can still have kids with just one ovary and the chances of getting pregnant with just one are almost exactly the same as with having two.

We stopped at Sonic on the way home because after all of this, we needed some ice cream. We both got a Reese's Ice Cream Blast which were amazing! Amanda came over to visit and finally meet Joey. Our friend Jenny was supposed to come too but she got stuck at work, Amanda wasn't disappointed about the fact that she could have Joey to herself for the visit ;)

(Jump to Part V of The Mega Cyst Saga - Warning: graphic picture of the cyst at the bottom of the post)