Thursday, February 26, 2009

So my dad is on FB now.

Yippe for me, right?

The thing is, I love my dad. I do. We had some rough spots but we get along fairly well. I can't say I'm sorry to live 3+ hours away and only see him in small doses. There is more friction when we butt heads in larger doses. But he complains I don't answer my cell phone (which I frequently leave in my purse and consequently don't hear) or email him (because he only sends forwards. seriously.). So he's thrilled to have mastered this technology that allows him to be in more contact with me.

I actually groaned aloud when I saw the friend request. Because I like him a lot, but ugh. That means censoring myself more than I have in the past. And it meant I immediately deleted any references I could find to this blog (maybe I'll be encouraged to actually go on ahead and get the family blog up and running). I don't mind this being open - it's fairly anonymous. I don't mind my friends or family reading if they come via FB - there is a giant warning posted to the side that clarifies what this is primarily about. But my dad? Squicky. As far as I am concerned, I do not need to know he has a sex life and he doesn't need to know I have one. I mean, I am living proof he once had a sex life (with my mother. EW.) and I presume he does with his current wife. And babies will pretty well present him with the same conclusion about me and Jason (which I assume is an ew on his part). But we don't need to be getting all explicit, if you dig. Let alone put out discussions of my vaginal fluids for him to read.

But the bigger issue was that I never actually told him that I had an ectopic pregnancy. Really, of our families, I told my mom and my sister. And my cousins on FB might have seen it. That's it. I sort of was under the impression that either my mom or sister told my dad, but apparently not (it's so random what makes the rounds). We didn't tell anyone at first because we didn't know what was going on and Dh really wanted to wait until we heard a h/b if we were going to hear one. More time passed and we didn't what the fuck was happening and finally we knew but it seemed awfully bizarre to call and say 'Uh, so I was pregnant, but it wasn't viable, and soon I won't be anymore!' so we didn't.

But I wasn't thinking about that when I changed my status, and I referred to being tired of being poked and prodded and driving across town for tests. Whoops.

The chat conversation that ensued was something like this (this is paraphrased):
"Tests??? What tests?"
"Oh nothing important. Just some levels the doctors are monitoring, no big deal."
"What's wrong? What are they looking for?"
"Just checking to see if the hcg is down."
"What is hcg?
"Uhm, the hormone that is present during pregnancy."
"So you're pregnant again??"
"No. Well, I was, and I guess I clinically am, but not really. There is no baby growing, anyway."
"So you had another m/c?"
"Well, not exactly. It was ectopic."
"Huh?"
"When the embryo implants and tries to grow somewhere other than the uterus? In my case, in the cervix."
"So?"
"So it can't grow properly or survive and it can damage stuff and is sort of dangerous. If they didn't stop it, I could have started hemorrhaging and might have needed a hysterectomy."
"And you had one of these ectopics?"
"Yep."
"But now you don't?"
"No, I had treatment. They gave me a shot of a chemo drug to stop everything growing and we're just waiting for hcg to get back down to 0."
"Oh. Maybe you should lose some weight. It might help with the babies."

:headdesk:

Sure thing, Dad. I'll get on that.

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