Progress

I finally got back in to see Dr. Boss this morning for a second opinion. Things look better in there than on Monday, as the free fluid and the fluid in my uterus are gone, but I'm still hurting. The whatever-it-is in my cervix is a little smaller than on Monday, but it's still pretty sizeable. Dr. Boss didn't know what it was today, either. At first he thought it might be a fibroid, but after fiddling with the ultrasound, thought it might be some blood instead, trapped in my cervix. Where it came from, and what it's doing there, are good questions, to which we don't have answers just yet. He allowed that it's possible it could be infection, although with a normal white... and then I interrupted to remind him about how I didn't ever have an elevated white count with the tube-eating infection of doom, and he said, hmmm, yeah, that's a point.

He wants to give this a few days to see which direction it's headed and see me back on Wednesday. At that time, we'll consider doing an endometrial biopsy if I'm still feeling gross. Hysteroscopy's also potentially on the menu, but he's wary of potentially spreading around infection. He doesn't want to do antibiotics right now, because I've had so many rounds that he is worried about antibiotic complications popping up. That seems a fair point to me, especially given how wonderfully they've worked so far. In the meantime, he also gave me some pain medicine, so the waiting will be more comfortable.

As for Andrew, he is doing much better. He was up to 12 lbs 2 oz at his weight check today, for a gain of 10 oz in a week, which is great. He's consistently been taking about 12-14 oz a day, but I can tell that my milk supply has noticeably increased over the last day or so, and he's only had 4 oz so far today. We'll keep doing what we're doing for another week and let him regain some more weight.

Since I had to take him to the pediatrician as part of all this, I wound up being the asshole with the baby at the reproductive endocrinologist. I brought him on Monday too, but there weren't any patients around then. It wasn't crowded today, but there was another patient waiting, and he was in full-on squeal-and-laugh mode. I told her I was sorry, and she said it was OK, but I still felt like a jerk. At least I'll be leaving him at home on Wednesday, since I don't have to take him to see any doctors then.

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My mom just called and said that my records from Dr. Pro had finally gotten scanned into their EMR system, including my op notes and the pathology from the various biopsies taken during my surgery. Dr. Pro told me after the surgery that she thought that the infection had resolved, and that the damage was leftover rather than ongoing. When I spoke to her on Tuesday to ask for my records, she reiterated that viewpoint, that I had not had an active infection at the time of surgery. Guess what the pathology showed in the removed tube?

Chronic salpingitis, that's what. The inflammation wasn't just leftovers -- I forget the exact wording, but basically there was active infection. TOLD YOU SO, says I. That infection survived two rounds of clindamycin, plus the useless amoxicillin. So it's not a stretch to assume that it survived somewhere else (like, say, MY CERVIX, or that left ovary that still hurts like a bitch), and that explains why this latest round of clindamycin didn't fix matters either. I presumably had antibiotics during my surgery (none were hung while I was awake, but I assume I got them), but obviously, they weren't enough or the right kind, or it wouldn't have come back.

Now we wait and see if that changes Dr. Boss's treatment plan.