Baby Photos

I've been back to work now for 2 weeks.  Not full time, just a couple of days a week and not even full days but its a start.  

The first week was very difficult getting up with all the nausea, but one I got moving it became a lot easier.  This week was easier still so I think I'm getting over the nausea and hopefully next week when I end my first trimester I will be back to normal.  I still get very tired though and feel the need to take naps during the day.  I think that is not wholly from the pregnancy but also from the patches I use which are like synthetic morphine.  I use them to help with the pain following my surgery that cut through so many nerves.  I'm now slowly weening myself off that. 

For the last several months, every few days I had shocking nerve pain and restlessness and was bed ridden about 2 times a week.  I only discovered 2 weeks ago that this was due to withdrawal pain from the Fentanyl Patches.  I was changing the patches every 3 days as prescribed but they were only lasting 2 days so every third day I was suffering withdrawal symptoms and yet none of the doctors could tell me what was causing the pain until it finally clicked and I realised what it must be.  I phoned Judith, my sister in law's sister in Sydney, who is a doctor in palliative care and asked her what were the symptoms of withdrawal from fentanyl.  What I was experiencing was exactly as she described. 

I can't remember if I mentioned back in December about an article in the paper about a women in Adelaide who had been diagnosed with mesothelioma 10 years prior, and was pregnant with her second child.  When I read it at the time I thought I had a lot of similarities with her. -  I was from Adelaide and I believed I was in remission with Meso although it wasn't yet official.   She was in 10 years remission which was why she was in he paper but still I had a feeling I that I was just like her.  Little did I know that I would also be pregnant less than 6 months later.  Here is the article.

Photos:  My ultrasound images in 3D.  Fetus at 10 weeks.

A True Miracle

We finally got internet connection a few days ago. It has taken this long to get connected since we moved and it was very frustrating living without it even though we have a public library across the road from us that is free to join and has free wireless internet. The reason I hardly used the library was that since we moved I have been feeling nausea and lacking in any energy so I have barely left the house. 

But that is not the only reason I haven't blogged since we moved. After being in the new house for a few days I was unable to unpack our boxes because I kept throwing up and was feeling awful. I feared the worst and rang up Opal Clinic who I was about to start a trial of Pro-pancreatic Enzyme treatment with. I wanted to start the treatment because I was worried that the mesothelioma was coming back and that must be what was causing this nausea but that it wasn't showing up in the x-rays yet. I went to the naturopath who thought I should get some blood tests done to try and discover what was wrong with me. I then went to Opal Clinic to pick up the enzymes. I had discussed with the doctor there about waiting for the blood tests to see if there was anything showing up in the tests that would explain my situation. She also added some more blood tests to the script and then I went to the lab to get the tests done.

The next day I went out with Julie for lunch. I told her how sick I was feeling and she said "you're not pregnant are you?". I told her that I definitely wasn't. I knew that for sure. I'd even done a pregnancy test in January when I stopped having my period - in the faint hope that I might be. I remember how devastated I was when it was negative even thought I knew deep down what the results would be. Besides the fact that the IVF doctor told us [a year ago] that we had a less than 1% chance of me getting pregnant and that was even with IVF. Also the literature from the chemo drugs I was using said that fertility wouldn't be possible for at least a year after treatment. Taking my age into account, not being able to conceive was a reality that Patrick and I had to accept.

I'd just come home from having lunch with Julie and noticed 4 missed calls on my mobile. They were all from the Doctor. On the first message, she wanted me to call her urgently and that she was about to leave the clinic in 10 minutes. On the next message she told me what the fuss was about. I was pregnant. I had just walked in to the house while I listened to the message and I saw Patrick sitting in the lounge and I told him what I had just heard.

The doctor had organised an ultrasound for me the next day where we found out that I was seven weeks pregnant and everything was looking quite good with a healthy heart beat. Today I had another ultrasound and it is all going along very well. I have 2 photos from the ultrasound. It is growing perfectly normally and I'm feeling very good about it. I know it is still early days. I am 9 weeks and 5 days and so still not out of the danger zone but it all seem to be going so well so far. I thought about not mentioning this on my blog until I am passed the 12 week mark but without mentioning it I found I couldn't write about anything and as I said in my last post, I want to write often enough to reassure everyone that I am doing well.

My oncologist said that while the chances of the Mesothelioma recurring are still quite high, I have beaten all the olds so far. I know there are still a lot of hurdles to overcome still and I do keep that in mind.

One thing I was grateful for when I found out what was causing my nausea was that I was really glad about being impulsive enough to buy our new place. It is the right size for us to have a baby in. The flat we just moved from wasn't and we would have had to go through the trouble of house hunting.

It has been almost a year since I found out I had mesothelioma. I must say that it has been a roller coaster 12 months.