The Week in Review; The Week Ahead

Thank you all for your posts below. I compiled the happy-ending brain-cancer stories and sent them to a friend who's kind of the point person for conveying info on my friend who just had surgery. They'll get the final path report on the tumor this week, which will then dictate treatment (and likely outcomes). I am keeping my fingers crossed that the news is as good (or as not-bad) as possible.

In other news, I found a dead mouse in our house this week. We have a bathroom that is off of our kitchen, and it contains a shower that never gets used since there are bathrooms right off of the bedrooms in our house. We do use this bathroom for quite a lot of peeing, however. But we never open the shower door - for reference, it's one of those hard-shell, frosted-glass varieties. Anyway, I went swimming one day this week (in my normal bathing suit, which was abruptly rendered nearly obscene since my tubby middle caused the high leg holes to ride up even higher, necessitating board shorts), and I figured I'd hang up my wet towel and swimsuit in the kitchen bathroom. I threw the towel over the shower shell, and, planning to hang my suit over the showerhead, I opened the door. There on the drain was a dead mouse (fortunately, a freshly dead mouse). I yelled, "Ack!" and then "Goddamn it!" (why not "Fuck?" Hmm.) and slammed the door shut. I considered getting rid of the mouse myself, but instead I just shut the door to the bathroom and waited for my husband to come home. Normally, I am the bug-killer in our family, but somehow I didn't feel prepared to be the varmint-disposer. A pest specialist visited the next day and posited that this mouse was a lone ranger, but he set up a bunch of traps anyway. I guess I should be glad I went swimming (which I rarely do) and thus discovered the mouse before he started to rot. But I also panicked about the disarray of our house. This weekend, I have undertaken an MCI (massive cleaning initiative). It is about 4 degrees outside, so I might as well be doing something indoors.

On another topic, I was emailing with an online buddy this week - we had our FETs the same day. I was saying that I was using the Bell.a Band a bunch now, and she said I should just go for maternity pants - that I'd wonder why I hadn't done so sooner. Well, the big box of stuff from my friend arrived this week, and I made the mistake of trying on some of the maternity jeans. Holy moly - I am almost afraid I'll never wear anything but elastic-waisted pants again! So comfortable. I am going to try, however, to continue wearing my stretchier normal pants and the Bell.a Band for two more weeks at work - easier to remain undercover that way. Then I'll be off for a month and no one will see me. I can then make a dramatic reentry in January, looking like a beach ball.

My amnio is on Wednesday this week. I asked for FISH results (in addition to the main ones), which you get sooner than the amnio results, which take two weeks. I learned about this on the Internets, and I am very willing to pay $524 that could otherwise be used on pest control or housecleaning services or Christmas gifts, just so that I don't have to suffer in limbo. Also, my amnio results should be back around Dec. 21, so I was afraid I'd be getting bad news right in the middle of the holidays. I keep saying I'll act more normal and confident in this pregnancy if the amnio comes back good, but I will probably be insane until the very end. They are going to do the level II ultrasound at the same time as the amnio, I think, so I do hope to know gender that day. If not, it will come back with the amnio results.