Yesterday's Meeting & Clinic Visit

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes! :D My day did get better yesterday. I worked a half day and slept all afternoon. Greg came home with flowers and cooked me dinner.

So here’s an update on two things:

Yesterday’s Meeting

My meeting was, well, interesting. The reason for the meeting was because my client has a water line in the state highway. The state told them they had to move it. I did the design and am now managing the construction. Now that we are in construction, the state is making all these changes to the design, and it would have been much less expensive if they had made these changes during the design phase. So, my client is not happy. It has cost them over $100,000 so far.

I made my points, which were all very good ones, and the contractor said, "You have a good argument. Let's hear what the state has to say." Well, the guy from the state didn't have much to say, other than, "You have to do what I say because I said so." (That's me paraphrasing, but I am not exaggerating.) When I said, "You permitted and signed-off on these plans. You can't just go and make changes now," he responded, "We don't have time to review your plans. We just sign off on them without looking at them." I told him, "That is not our fault." And he flipped out on me and said, "Look! You guys have been doing work with us for 20 years! It's not our job to wipe your asses for you!"

Very professional. I got pissed and started arguing, but my boss's boss said, "Kristen, Kristen, it's okay," so I shut my trap. Then the contractor winked at me. So, I knew everyone in the room thought guys was a jerk and that I was right. And, I did get him to back down on the some of the stuff he was telling us to do.

When I told the client how the meeting went, he said, "Good job! You got them riled up and now they are on notice!" So, overall, after my initial shock at being yelled at, I felt pretty good because I "won" and the client is happy.

Hemoptysis (Coughing up Blood)

My CF doctor had me come in this morning – he said that, normally, he would just prescribe an antibiotic, but, with me being pregnant, he wanted to be extra careful. I am glad I went in. My PFTs actually went up! Only 3%, but I was still shocked because I expected them to go down during pregnancy, and because I felt crappy. Everything looked and sounded good, so he told me to just lay off the hypertonic saline for a few days and keep an eye on things. He said I could have a mild exacerbation or a virus, but it was so mild that it didn’t warrant antibiotics at this time.

I did cough up some more junk today that was streaked with a bit of blood, but I think it may be just leftover from the other day. However, I still took the day off so I can rest. My nutritionist wants my vitamin levels checked, (more than what they checked at my OB’s office), and I have to do another OGTT (yay :P). And they’ve upped the frequency of my clinic visits from every three months to every two months.

A few stats at 12 weeks:

FEV1: 115% (up 3% from pre-pregnancy)
Weight Gain: 4 lbs