OK, I'm paranoid

I ended up heading in to the L&D triage of the high-risk hospital here last night with DH. I'd had a bad day on Sunday with lots of tightenings, and noticed a ton yesterday as well while I was at work. I was also having a bunch of pelvic pressure, and little brief shooting pains in the vagina. And my cervix felt much shorter again. I came home from work yesterday and announced that I couldn't take it any more, I had to go be seen.
In I went, and luckily the nurses there still recognized me from when I was doing epidurals for their patients last year. They didn't think I was nuts for showing up. Gave a urine sample, then one checked the FHR and put on a contraction monitor. The line was totally flat for the first 10-15min, then there was one little blip with a tightening episode. Then another, and then they got to being every 1 minute for about 15-20 seconds or a little longer. Unfortunately I didn't have any of the bigtime long strong ones I occasionally get while I was hooked up. Peeing seemed to help settle things down again a little.
Some keen young med student came in to get the story, after we'd waited for the resident to do one C-section. Then we had to wait for that resident to do another before he had a chance to come and check things out. He also recognized me, and looked very familiar to me too. Luckily I'd gotten to the point of being anxious enough to get this checked out that I didn't really care if he did a speculum exam on me. Ouch did that ever get uncomfortable! I guess they don't use the narrow speculums there. Cervix looked long and closed according to him. I managed to talk him out of trying to put a small catheter through my cervix to see if the os was opening at all - I just didn't want to take the risk of stirring up anything else, or setting off any bleeding, or introducing infection. An ultrasound would tell us the same thing, I figured. Not that they did one.
I could hear the two guys out there speaking briefly with the staff Ob/Gyn, who didn't seem interested in coming in to see us, cause I could hear him telling them to get rid of us. They said that they weren't true contractions, but that things were obviously not normal given the amount of tightenings I'm having. They talked him into coming in to see me (probably only because I'm a doctor), and he basically gave me shit for showing up without having been referred, and that my OB was crap for not making me go see a high-risk OB sooner than this, either at her hospital or theirs. I tried to take some of the blame off of her, and told him that I wanted my care transferred to their high-risk group. He also told me that I was nuts to still be working at all, when I've been put on huge doses of progesterone for my irritable uterus and it hasn't calmed down. And told me rather harshly that I'd better get on the phone to my OB the next day to get myself referred to the Special Pregnancy Program Preterm Labour Clinic for next week. And to have my cervical scan done elsewhere as planned for this afternoon.
Home we went, with me worrying about how we were going to break the news to my boss, and annoyed at the further loss of income for us, especially with our new house purchase. I'd been so sure I'd be able to work full-time up until 37 weeks, and could earn good money. Instead, I may end up on long-term disability if I'm off greater than 30 days. Otherwise, no more money coming in from me!
I called my boss at lunch time today, and he seemed to think they'd be able to arrange things to not suffer too much with me off work. I'm hoping that all will hold steady the next few weeks, and then I'll be able to go back to part time. I'll be praying and keeping my fingers crossed.
Thank God, I had a good cervical scan today, after having more contractions throughout the day. Cervix was 5.5cm long, baby started out transverse, and then for the transvag part had its head and some fingers right above the cervix. I was so relieved. And then came home to put in my suppositories, and had the shortest and squishiest cervix yet. I guess there's not too much correlation there?
Now I'm just waiting to hear back about my referral, and whether they'll give me an appointment next week. I hope so! Interestingly, when I was at the hospital, they said there's really nothing they can do if preterm labour strikes for real at this point. They don't give meds to stop it, unless it's at viability when they'll try to stop labour for 48 hours to get the steroids in. Otherwise, all the tocolytics haven't been shown to work over the longer term. Seems weird, when all the US bloggers with PTL I come across seem to be on multiple meds. I guess my self-enforced modified bed rest will have to do for now...