Month: July 2017

By the grace of God (or the creator of this universe), I became one of the lucky ones. I am pregnant!

This baby survived my panic attack, my emotional roller coaster, my low body temperature and all the side effects from my medication.

I couldn’t resist but to do a home pregnancy test 2 days before my beta test, a blood test conducted by your doctor office to confirm HCG hormone level. Unlike other pregnancy tests I did before, this time it only took less than a min to show the result. It blinked for a few secs and then boomed! It said “Pregnant”. I double checked to make sure there is no ‘NOT’ before the word ‘P’. I forgot to mention that I tested this at 5:30am, at the break of dawn. My husband rushed to the bathroom to see if I was ok. I showed him the result and we hugged.

Yet, I still wasn’t convinced that I am truly pregnant. It could be the leftover HCG from my pre-transfer trigger shot. Or, a trace of HCG detected by home pregnancy test isn’t a proven sign of a viable pregnancy….

On Jun 23, I woke up early and got myself ready for my 1st beta test. I even arrived at my doctor office 10 mins earlier. By 11am, I walked out from their lab and patiently waited for the result to come back. It was the longest wait ever and I was worry that I would have another panic attack during the wait. So I did everything I could to ‘kill time’ and to relax myself. I put on my earplugs and played my ‘anxiety reduction playlist’ nonstop. I walked around the lake by my doctor office and watched the baby duckies swimming around. An hour has passed and I still didn’t get a phone call. So I decided to drive back home and to be accompanied by my furry daughter. Throughout the entire ride, I played Coldplay’s “Strawberry Swing”, one of the songs recommended by neuroscientists for stress reduction. Just when I got home, my phone rang. Angela, my in-cycle nurse first asked me if I was driving. I told her I just got home and that she reached me at the perfect timing. Then she said “I have a good news for you. Your HCG result is 157. That means your home pregnancy test is correct. I am happy for you!” I busted into tears but feeling dizzy at the same time.

It’s positive. There is real a life inside me. I am really pregnant.

I woke up feeling content. I know the dream that I had last night left me great sense of comfort and feeling self-worth.

It is not about child birth. Nothing about seeing a BFP (big fat positive) pregnancy test result.

It was me working in a small school district as an interim Operation Head. I was assigned by the Superintendent (for some very lame reasons). 1st day on the job – my desk has piles and piles of paper and proposal to sign, teachers and PTAs were lining up to see me. I had a pretty competent secretary called Angel or Angele, who I could trust despite  I was new to the job.

I met with the teacher who wanted me to add supports and funding to the school health programs for students and parents.  I was eager to help. I asked her to give me a list of priorities and we can go through them in the next meeting. I also told her I have resources and experience in launching health program. She seemed happy the way I responded her.

I noticed the school district people had no idea who I am and where I came from. So I asked my secretary to forward me the announcement that the Superintendent emailed out about my appointment. As expected, it didn’t say much except my name and the high school I graduated from (!)

I knew there has been some discrepancies in funding allocation to the school operation and student support programs. Knowing that it is quite inflexible to make arrangement due to teacher union, I planned on setting up a separate foundation that will fund directly to the student programs. This way, I could bypassed the politics and have the student program up and running without any red taps from school administrators and teachers.

I was also planning to hire my recently unemployed RD friend to run the school nutrition program.

I like my secretary very much. I even wanted her to be the member of my sounding board.

I told myself even I am just an interim. I will do the best I can to make this school district works. I was really happy in the dream because I got to be in a position that make things moving. Driving progress, pulling resources and tackling issues for this small community.

It isn’t some fancy position, in which I was bringing a health tech IT company to IPO or me being a political figure driving a huge movement. It was just me working hard in the office, trying to help this small school district connecting the dots and moving forward.

Nothing fancy. All I want is to feel being useful.