The short version: I went to the ER on Saturday with severe cramping, bleeding, and vomiting. I’d taken a couple of pee tests and we knew I was pregnant. After a regular and a transvaginal ultrasound, we found out it was an ectopic pregnancy and was nonviable. We were given the option of a drug to end it (methotrexate, often used in chemo as well as rheumatoid arthritis) or surgery. We chose the drug, thinking we’d avoid the risks of general anesthesia.
I went home in pain that night, but we expected that because of the drug. It started getting bad in the morning again, to the point where I pretty much couldn’t move. We went back to the ER where they did another set of ultrasounds and determined I needed emergency surgery because of internal bleeding. Apparently the fallopian tube hadn’t ruptured, but I was bleeding out the end of the fallopian tube. Which is possible, because fallopian tubes are these weird open things. Google it. Human anatomy is crazy.
I went in for surgery on Sunday night. They said I lost almost 2 liters of blood.
Yes, we lost the pregnancy, but my blessings are 1) I am alive, 2) I have one heck of a husband who is taking care of our 3)amazing pants 15 month old while I recover.
They took out one fallopian tube, but the other was supposedly healthy so 4) I should be able to get pregnant again.
5) The surgery was laparascopic so I only have three neat little incisions. Faster recovery than an open incision and bikini belly remains intact. Yes, I suppose that’s a good thing, but I honestly wouldn’t be whining if they’d had to do it open.
My husband has taken most of the week off to take care of me and mostly the baby, which rocks because I’m not allowed to drive on percocet. And today I think I started to really feel the methotrexate. Icky nausea and headaches. So if this makes no sense that’s why.
I will wrap up now and go hide my head under the dark of my pillow some more but it felt good to write out some of this. Will write more at some point.
I will leave you with a couple of things I learned:
1) I hadn’t had a transvaginal ultrasound before. Now I’ve had two. I imagine most people don’t get them under the painful conditions I did, but my impression is they’re generally emergency. So now I have personal experience for believing requiring them before abortions is creepy.
2) My husband rocks. I have more new evidence for my belief that yes, occasionally he says stupid insensitive crap but he will always do what needs to be done in a crisis. And not complain when it matters.
3) I am tough. If I ever pretend otherwise, just say “you bled out two liters into your abdomen and you couldn’t have painkillers.” My daughter can be proud of her mommy.
4) You can get away with cracking really terrible jokes when you are crazy sick, and people will actually laugh.
Thanks to those of you who’ve been chatting with me the last few days. Will be back on twitter in a bit, just need to go get some dark for a while.
Hugs.
Pingback: Pulling weeds | A Place of Greater Safety
So with you on the crappy jokes comment. Recently went through a similar experience with lots of blood loss and I was joking around a lot. I thought I was really funny at the time but looking back on it, they were shoddy wisecracks but people still laughed! Definitely a plus side to huge blood loss!
I don’t remember if anybody laughed. There’s something about being the one in pain that makes you want to make jokes, and everybody else not want to laugh. Thanks for commenting. Hope you came through your own crisis as well as I did.