Has anyone's doctor been wrong about their pregnancy?
I had the most tramatic experience yesterday. I'm 6 1/2 weeks pregnant. I had felt some mild pain my lower left side and the doctor did an ultrasound just to check where the baby was. Well she couldn't find the baby, not even a sac. She got me an appointment at radiology 7 hours later (the longest 7 hours of my life) for a more detailed scan to see if they could locate the pregnany in my tubes. My HCG's were over 24,000 so we knew there was a baby with a beating heart somewhere. She had also told me she felt a mass on my left side, perhaps in my tube. She talked to me about surgery for an ectopic and what would happen and all that. Well last night after a 25 minute scan where the tech didn't say a word at first, just looked really serious, she finally looked at me and saw I was upset, and then turned the screen around and showed me my baby and it's beating heart in my uterus. I couldn't believe it. I shareb this to remind people that doctors are not always correct and to keep hope.
2007-08-09T07:10:06Z
Sorry, I mispelled a couple of words, I was typing fast.
2007-08-09T08:48:50Z
Luckily this isn't my real doctor. She shouldn't be doing ultasounds if she doesn't know how. Thank you all for sharing your stories.
?2007-08-09T07:16:51Z
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Oh my, that had to have traumatic to go through that. Thank goodness everything is alright. I had a similar experience with my last pregnancy. I was only 5 weeks along, and was having excruciating back pain, so I went to the ER and the doctor told me that my HCG level was extremely low, and that I should repeat the test two days later. I went home, and saw on a chart of HCG levels that my levels were above range for my being only 5 weeks. So I went two days later, and waited for the results, and they had quadrupled! I found out at 9 weeks, that not only was my baby in there, but that I had TWO babies! So this ER doctor had no idea what she was looking at and made me go through all this worry that perhaps I had lost my baby. Sometimes I have the desire to take the babies back to that ER and give her a piece of my mind. The babies were born last September at 35 weeks. They are healthy babies! Good luck in your pregnancy!
I had a similar experience too. When I was 8 weeks along I went for my first ob appt. I had an ultrasound scheduled right before my appt because I had just miscarried 2 months prior. The ultrasound showed nothing but an empty sac so the dr told me this wasn't a viable pregnancy and we had scheduled an D & C that was to take place the following week. He ordered blood work to see if my levels were dropping as they were already above 38,000. Well my hcg levels were not dropping they were doing what they should be doing in viable pregnancy so 2 days before my D & C I had another ultrasound and there was the baby with a beating heart and she was as big as she should be and everything was fine. My dr told me he had only seen this this happen 3 times the whole 20+ years he has been in practice.
my sister had a miscarriage at 15, and then tragically gave birth at only 18 weeks along with her second baby when she was 19. At 22, she finally got pregnant again, and at the 10 week checkup the doc couldn't find a heartbeat no matter what. They scheduled a D&C for later that same day, but just as a precaution, he also had another doc do an ultrasound. There was the heart, beating just fine! The baby did end up having some heart problems but he's now 8 months old. He came out of his last open heart surgery just fine and we have a couple of years until the next one.
It's not uncommon for one person to miss visualizing a pregnancy via ultrasound and another person is able to find it. Especially doctors, because not all of them use sonography themselves all that frequently - usually a radiology or ultrasound tech is the one who performs scans, and since they do them so often, they are more skilled.
I don't think based on what you said that your doctor was "wrong" about anything - he just couldn't find it, and if you can't find it, yes, it's a possibility that it could have been ectopic and it needed to get checked out. The doctor wouldn't have been doing her job properly if she hadn't warned you of the possible outcomes.
It's a shame this happened and you had to worry over nothing. Great news that everything is ok. But don't let this be a sign that your doctor is incompetent or anything. It can happen to the best of them!
OMG, yes something similar happened to me as well, twice in one pregnancy. My first scan the told me I had another miscarriage, I scheduled a D&C for the next week. They did one more scan before the procedure and low and behold, there was the heartbeat. Further on the said he may have a fatal genetic disease. When my son was born, as healthy as could be, I've never cried so hard in my life. He is my little miracle baby. I kept that hope throughout the pregnancy (harder more times than not) but it gave me a blessing at the end. Congrats to you!!