part two: more tmi

well, lets see. pregnant. hemangioma. i think that is where we left off.

after i had my dd, time seemed to fly by. 3 months old, and i had to go back to work. yuck, i worked for 3 months and couldn't stand not being home and away from my dd all day. so when she was 6 months old, i quit work to stay home. best decision i ever made. in all this time, i didnt have my head checked because i thought they would have to give me some drugs during removal and i would not be able to breast feed my dd. so i waited some more. last month, just before her first birthday, i called a local cosmo/dermatology office.

they made me an appointment for a month away. damn it! more waiting and now, i dont have any insurance. but ok, my fault for waiting and now i really just want it gone. its hard to brush my hair w/o scraping it, and forget getting a haircut. i have had my hair cut a few times since i had this thing, and i warn them everytime, and 9/10 times they still scrape it! grrrrr

so, time for my appointment. yay! the offie is in fircrest, which is about 20-30 minutes away. i have never been there before, and i am not so good w/o a map and written directions. needless to say, 5 minutes before my appointment, i am lost and can't remeber the name or the building address. i panic, call my mom to give me the phone number and address. i call them, tell them i am in the area but lost. she says ok, and i hang up. i keep driving around, trying to find it. sobbing i finally call my dh to get some help. have i told you how fabulous he is? well, he is amazingly fabulous. he gave me directions, and i got there. 20 minutes late. damn it.

rushing in, i give her my name. she tells me i am 20 minutes late, and sorry, but they have a 15 minutes late policy. my appointment was at 1:40. wha? huh? O M G. she then, in front of me, checks the scedule and mentions that the 1:50 person didnt show up, and the 2 person hasnt checked in yet either. umm, could i have their spot???? nope. but hey, if i want, i can sit in the waiting room, and hope someone cancels. yeah, sure, mean while, my breastfed child can wait until i get home in like 5 hours. i was in tears, and trying not to want to break something. she also tells me i can make a new appointment ( what, in another month?? i was thinking ) for thursday at 9:15. YES PLEASE!!

8:30 on thursday, i left for the derm office. i made it there by 9. ( so i have 30 minutes to spare! whoot! ) i signed in, and started to work on my booga bag. ( look, i got some knitting into this looooong saga ) i kid not, less then 10 stitches later, they called my name! so i followed and sat down.
when the angel came in, she saw my knitting and asked if i sold them ( i said no ) and said her sister would love the colors. mmm, thanks? she measured the granuloma ( not a hemangioma, thanks group health for a great diagnosis! ) it was 2 centimeters!

some numbing shots, some burning smell, and a small bit later, i was free. no more nasty, painful, and sometimes messy bump on my scalp. i even knitted on my booga right after removal. ( i had to stay lounging in the chair to make sure it wasn't gonna bleed more ) i now have a yucky scab, which is lovely and greasy from the antibiotic ointment. when it heals, i will have a tiny bald spot, which may or may not grow hair again. what ever. i dont even care. i just am so happy to be able to cut my hair, brush it pain-free, and dye it if i want to. and hey, no more nasty, messy, stained pillows from it bleeding as i sleep.

part one: a little saga with TMI

i wasn't going to post about my health, but today was a bad day emotionally and i just have a need to put everything down in writing to relieve some stress.

my dh and i have always wanted to have children. we started trying ( or really, we weren't doing anything to not get pregnant ) as soon as we knew we were right for each other. we got married, and still, nothing. i was working at the airport prior to TSA taking over ( post 9/11 ), and prior to us getting married. i had no health insurance ( they didn't offer it ), so knowing that TSA was coming, i waited after we got married so we could compare insurance options through both our workplaces. dh's ins. was cheaper, so we went with that. on our merry way we went, and i went to a women's clinic to have my annual exam. she informed me that i had no insurance coverage. huh???? umm okay. so i call dh, dh calls boss and boss calls ins. they ( ins comp. ) says, oh sorry, you tried to add her outside of our open season. what?!??

as far as i understand, when two people get married, it is considered a life altering event ( as is birth, death, adoption, divorce ... ) and therefor, an insurance company ( at least all the ones i have had the pleasure of doing business with up to that point ) gives you a year from the event date to alter you insurance coverage to add new persons or remove them.

i go ahead with my exam, and based on some symptoms i was having ( no menstrual cycle, able to produce 'milk', weight gain ) it was possible that i had a pituitary tumor. dread. so we decided to wait to add me to his insurance during open season. because, we are young, and dumb.
almost a year passes. i am supposedly added to dh's insurance. i say supposedly, because of what happened previously. i get a bad sinus infection. we make an appointment. we check to see if i am actually on insurance...... i am not. why???? because TSA offers insurance, so they will not cover me. huh? mind you, TSA's open season just ended. so again, one more year with no insurance. ( remember that tumor? still no cycle at this point )

zoom forward. i have insurance! i have an appointment at a medical center! i get an annual exam. same response "possible pituitary tumor."
so i have to go north to seattle to have MRIs done as well as appointment with an endocrinologist. and lots of blood work. my prolactin levels were registering at 190 ( 190 of what i have no clue, except that a normal level is 3-22, with the higher end being a woman who is nursing a baby ). i went home after this appointment, and searched the internet for information. it looked good. not deadly, and usually treatable with parlodel ( bromocriptine ), with surgery for larger tumors. mine is little, and i started on parlodel in april '05.

in june '05, i had my first full menstrual cycle. i started charting my basal temperature so we would know as early as possible when i was pregnant. sometime in the midst of all of this, my lovely head decided it needed a hemangioma. this is also benign, but it can bleed profusely ( it is on my scalp ). i did nothing about it, because in july '05, i got pregnant. it took a back seat.