2004-08-08 - 10:07 p.m. - Cycle day:

So M. taking her first steps was the big, exciting, good news of the last week. The less than good news was a completely unrelated tangent involving my gastro-intestinal system. I'm hesitant to go into details, but hell, if you read my birth story, ain't nothing you haven't seen before. Anyway, last Thursday I had a typical relaxing visit to the bathroom ... ha! See, the moms know why that's funny. Anyway, I was in the bathroom with Meredith screaming in the stroller next to me as I tried to complete my business as quickly as possible while still reading a few pages of the Delia's catalog, when I noticed that I'd gotten my period. "Eleven months to the day," I thought, since I haven't had a period since M. was born (not counting the six weeks of post-partum bleeding). But then, with the baby howling beside me, I realized that the blood wasn't coming from my uterus or any parts connected to it. The blood had come out with my urgently discarded waste (man, I am the Queen of Euphemismland - all bow!). Which concerned me, especially since there was so much blood. The bowl was totally darkened by it, and when I flushed it was one solid, bright red swirl. I didn't really have time to process it, though (see Screaming Baby above). I didn't think much about it until The Husband came home and I had a free moment to use the bathroom on my own. And there was more blood. I started to get a little concerned and ventured onto WebMD to do the ol' symptom check. It wasn't reassuring when the cyber-nurse told me that my situation warranted an immediate call to the doctor. And of course a Google search on "blood in stool" brings up the American Cancer Society page as one of the first five results.

The Husband was sympathetic, but he was convinced that it was just a hemorrhoid. I never had hemorrhoids prior to birth, and at that point everything between my waist and knees was sore, so I wasn't really sure what hemorrhoids felt like, but I was pretty sure I didn't have one. A mirror check wasn't very helpful, because the whole cosmetic situation in that region is still in flux - after 24 hours of pushing out a human, it takes a while for everything to go back into place. I then made the horrific mistake of doing a Google image search on hemorrhoid - hoping just for a medical illustration but getting far, far worse. It still makes me a little queasy, just thinking about it. Anyway. Moving on. Quickly.

I had one more bloody bathroom visit, wherein I confirmed that the blood source was internal, and I decided that I'd have to call my doctor the next morning. Which I did. He isn't in the office on Fridays anyway, and he happened to be out of town to boot, but when I told my symptoms to the receptionist, she told me to come in and see the nurse practitioner right away. So The Husband and I packed M. up and drove out there, then I waited for about 45 minutes for someone to see me. I told the nurse what was going on, and by then remembered that I'd also been having some stomach cramps and unusual bowel habits for the last few weeks. When the NP finally came in, she did an external exam of my belly then a rectal exam to check for hemorrhoids. As I suspected, there weren't any. So she ordered some blood work (I won't go into the ridiculous saga of the two-nurse effort to get one little vial of blood from me) and referred me to a gastroenterologist for a colonoscopy. Soon. She actually called Dr. Hippie to get the name of the GI guy he prefers and then the nurse got me the first appointment on Monday morning. I wasn't thrilled at the time, but I wasn't as unsettled about it as I am now. Looking back, I realize that no one said "It's probably nothing, but ..." or "We just want to cover the bases, even though it's most likely (fill in benign issue here)." They didn't mention any possible explanation at all, which makes me think that they didn't want to say the scary thing that they thought it might be. I keep telling myself that twenty-seven year old women don't get colon cancer, but I wish someone else had told me that, too. My family history of cancer could fill a book, and my dad has had pre-cancerous polyps removed from his colon. I know it's unlikely, but it's also ... not.

What probably scares me the most is that, prior to noticing the blood in the first place, I was holding M. and thinking about what would happen to her if something happened to me. I've never sat and contemplated that before; not in a permanent sense, anyway. I've thought about how The Husband would feed her if I got in a car accident or something, but I never considered how her life would proceed if I was gone completely. Just thinking about it changed my heart rate. I've had some little scares over my health before, but now I'm not just scared for me anymore. Although on the positive side, I feel like being a mother has made my life worth protecting and fighting for. I knew that my family and friends would miss me if I was gone, but having a baby means there's someone in the world whose life would be irreversibly changed by your absence.

Anyway, enough with the melodramatic navel-gazing. I'm sure I'll go in for the GI consult tomorrow and he'll have a perfectly reasonable and non-Lifetime movie explanation for everything. I'll probably still have to get a scope done, and I'm not sure exactly how that's all going to work out with a nursing baby and all, but I guess something can be arranged. It'll be fine, right? I watch enough Celebrity Poker, I should be more trusting in the odds.

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