Best. Day. Ever.

Yesterday started off rocky. It was the day of my Grand Rounds presentation. I was speaking to a full auditorium comprised of the entire staff of the Children's hospital. It was also being live-broadcasted across the satellite campuses. I was a little nervous, to say the least.

If you were to ask me immediately following how I'd done, I'd say that I was just glad it was over. I could also have pointed out each of three or four times that I stumbled over my words and said the wrong thing. But my boss, the one who is usually pretty formal and dry, had a huge grin on his face and told me in several different ways how great the talk was. His boss, the head of the entire  Children's hospital came up and congratulated me, shaking my hand. I returned to my office to find an email from the department head of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, cc'd to my boss and the head of the pediatric GI department, praising the talk as the "best grand rounds she's ever attended" and how lucky each of them were to have me working on their team. Each of them then responded, that they were indeed lucky, and that I am asset to the entire hospital. Yeah, I was on cloud nine.

When I got home from work, I received a letter from my health insurance company, explaining that they reviewed my appeal form and have agreed that I am a) not diabetic (Metformin can, in fact, be used for other purposes) and b) and not overweight. This means that I can now get lower healthcare premiums next year, just for wearing a pedometer and maintaining my activity! Totally doable, whether pregnant or not. If they didn't accept the appeal, I would have had to lose weight in order to keep my low premiums, which is just slightly in opposition of my more important goal for the year ;)

In between these two awesome occurrence something else happened. I went to the lab to get my blood drawn. I was one week post-transfer, and they wanted to check my estrogen and progesterone levels. My beta wasn't scheduled until next Tuesday, a full 14 days after the transfer; which I had accepted as a positive, despite the longer wait than I've heard is typical, because it would decrease the changes of finding out about and then being let down by a chemical pregnancy.

Well, the lab made a mistake. It's wasn't the fertility lab, but the general hospital lab in my building. It turns out that the order for the HCG was already in the system. I recognized the error almost immediately. When the lab technician was drawing three vials, instead of two, I briefly considered asking what they were for and clarifying the error. But I kept my mouth shut.

Over lunch, I decided that I couldn't wait any longer and I didn't want to be completely thrown off during the afternoon full of patients. I logged into my medical chart and confirmed. The HCG serum blood test was drawn. The result was 45.5. It was a little challenging to make sense of this because Dr. Google didn't have a ton of information on levels this early in the game, but it seemed pretty legit.

I waited until the nurse call to be sure. She confirmed it. She then said that it's still very early and that my estrogen levels are too low so they're increasing my dose. They want me to come back on Friday for more blood work to recheck all the labs; confirming the HCG results and hopefully an improved estrogen level.

I think I'm still in shock. When my presentation went stellar, I was elated. I could clearly feel the emotion, and it felt awesome. A few minutes after sharing the blood results with C, I opened the letter from the health insurance company and I literally squealed with delight. With this news, there was no squealing, no tears of joy, no 100 lb weight lifted, no elation. It's as though my mantra through this whole thing of being cool, calm, and collected has become a permanent sense of my being. As I type this now, I feel nothing. Not nervous, terrified, elated, or relieved. Not anything. But apparently I am something. I am a healthy kick-ass psychologist...who is pregnant.