The Bottom Line: You never know when you're going to get caught with your pants down.

I blame Anne Curry, Google and even my Mom for this. In other words, I'm not taking any personal accountability here.

Monday night I woke up to go to the bathroom - one out of the 8 times a night I have to get up to go like many of my preggo friends can probably relate - and noticed a really tight painful feeling in my calf. I didn't think much of it, but by yesterday when it was still there, I couldn't shake Anne Curry's annoying little warning message about "unexplained leg pain" and it certainly didn't help that March is DVT awareness month. After arriving on site at SC, even though I knew better, I did it - I googled "calf pain/calf cramping". (Remember the great Malaria incident of 2007?) You can imagine what the first results were.

But, no I didn't stop there - after going even further and taking a "risk factor" test (hello, what am I thinking?) Pregnant? Check. Overweight? Uh...sorta.. okay, yeah, check. Sedentary? Not really, but I did spend that entire month of February practically living on a couch or bed of some sort due to miscellaneous illnesses... so okay sorta check. History of Inflammatory Bowel Disease?...um, don't know what that's related, but yup. DING DING DING - we have a winner:

DVT Risk Assessor

YOUR RESULTS

So, I put down the mouse and call my mom. Surely the medical professional voice of reason, the one that tells me I don't have whatever I think and that it's fine and go back to work, will make me feel better. BUT she didn't. She didn't tell me to watch it and see if it goes away - you know what she told me? She told me to call the doctor. WHAT? About some little stupid calf cramp - which by now in my head was the worst calf cramping I've ever had - seriously, the doctor? But, (insert whining here) I just called them about gall bladders and flus and god, I just don't want to call the doctor again. There's probably already a big bright red code at the top of my chart that stands for "she's one of them - the crazy calling the doctor every day with some new problem people". But, I called...

Fast forward 2 hours (in which, no lie, a nurse from my doctor's office calls me and says "how quickly can you get to St. John's" - aaahhh!! what?) - I'm in a test room at St. John's Hospital Non-Invasive (thank god) Vascular services and the nurse is telling me to take my pants off and hop up on the table. What? Tests? Tables? No pants? I didn't even take a shower today and OH! the humanity! I have holey underwear on top of it all. So instead of just getting this over with and confirming there is no massive blood clot in my leg, I start nervous-Erin rambling with some awkward jokes about not knowing I was going to have to take my pants off and the holes in my underwear and it's a really big hole and yadda yadda - she looks at me and says, "Well, honey, I probably wouldn't have even known that if you didn't tell me." In other words, TOO MUCH INFORMATION - now shut up and get on this table so I can go home.

I won't even go into detail about how I almost passed out on the table as I invented scenario after scenario of why she was focusing on some particular areas and kept making me take deep breaths and DIDN'T SAY everything was looking good at any point until the very end (after like 25 minutes) when my ears are ringing the room is fuzzy and I'm about to go down, I vaguely hear, "Looks good - I don't see any clots". Gee, coulda told me that a little sooner, don't you think? In fairness to her, I think the near fainting is because I can't lay on my back for long - I've had it happen numerous times in later pregnancy - even passed out at an ultrasound once, but she certainly didn't help the situation.

Regardless, everything is fine and I really do feel much better knowing that then continually worrying today as it still hurts like hell. And even though it's not my style (to a fault) to worry about something seemingly silly like that, I did learn that people take unexplained leg/calf pain seriously. Every single person from my mom to the first nurse to my doctor to the St. John's lady didn't hesitate saying that you don't want to mess around with that. So I guess the true moral of the story is to get what sometimes seems like little stuff checked out, even if you feel silly and everything is fine in the end.

Most importantly, internet friends, don't underestimate the importance of clean, non-holey underwear every day of your life and on that rare occasion that fate finds you without that clean non-holey underwear, for the love, don't tell people about it!