Not too long after it ended I slowly began exhibiting different symptoms that made me rather curious, and somehow I just knew what was going on.
A while later, I started having dreams. Very interesting, very vivid dreams.
Then came Thanksgiving, and I was showing more and more symptoms...and I missed my period.
That Sunday, December 1st I took a test and it was confirmed. I was pregnant. The surge of emotions ping-ponging all over the place, the fear, the excitement! We were confused, yet overjoyed! The reason I say we were confused is because as far as we had been told by my OB there was a small surgery I would need before I could get pregnant. It was a miracle!
Monday came.
I was just fine, I went to work and was ecstatic to tell my boss in confidentiality so that until I was in the safe zone and told everybody else he would at least know what was going on if I was excessively mood-swingish or not feeling well. All was going just fine and I came home that evening just exhausted, but happy as a clam. Slowly but surely I started to feel worse and worse, and I just knew it was the recent change in the weather that was giving my fibromyalgia a run for it's money. The pain kept getting worse and worse, and I had to go up to bed. After crying and writhing in pain for about two hours, Jordan took me to the ER. Unfortunately they were very placating and had an underlying tone of condescension in how they "treated" me. They kept me in the room for a good two or three hours, took a urine sample and just told me to go home and take Tylenol. So we go home and pass out from exhaustion in hopes that Tuesday will be more kind. Jordan went to work, but I stayed home because I was absolutely wasted from the night before and still being in a numb state of pain. Then comes Wednesday and I went to work like normal, I had a decently normal night...until the pain started to come back full force and I decided to let Jordan sleep and somehow I drove myself to the ER again, just crying and shaking from all the pain. This time they took blood, ran an IV, gave me actual pain killers (still class B, so it was safe for baby), and then they did an ultrasound. They started with an abdominal ultrasound, but after searching and failing to see even the tiniest bit of a pregnancy they decided to go trans-vaginal. Still nothing. They gave me a list of possibilities, none of which they could rule out yet - I was earlier in the pregnancy than I thought (so less than 5 weeks), I had already lost the baby or was in the process, or it was Ectopic (where the baby implants in the Fallopian tube rather than the Uterus). They sent me home with some medication and told me to come back if the pain persists or gets worse. Well, I went to work again on Thursday so as not to miss too many hours for the week. I woke up that morning and as I was getting ready for the day I noticed I was spotting very lightly; this concerned me because I obviously couldn't tell if it was because of the vaginal ultrasound or if I was losing the baby, so I took another home pregnancy test just to calm my brain. For whatever reason I hadn't been bleeding at all during the entire time that I was at work (and I went to the restroom several times), but as soon as I got home I was bleeding again. Little by little the spotting became heavier, but not quite a full flow. It was an extremely stressful night, a lot of really stressful things took place, and the pain just kept getting worse. Jordan rushed me back to the ER and they ran more tests, gave me two shots of Morphine and a dose of Percocet, each about 30 minutes apart, and that finally took the pain down to a manageable level. The doctor gave me the same viable options as my last visit for what could be happening and causing all the pain, and he also acknowledged that it could be a combination of the fibro, the big change in weather, and the pregnancy. They sent me home with some prescriptions, and told me to come back on Saturday the 7th to the outpatient lab to get another HCG test to see what the levels were then since they had previously gone from the 1400's up to the 1600's and then back down to the 1500's between all my "visits" that week. They also instructed me to make an appointment with my OB for Monday the 9th. I worked a little bit on Friday and told my boss what was going on so he would be in the loop. Saturday came and went and going to get the lab work done was an easy ordeal. Then Sunday.
Monday came.
As I woke up and started getting ready for my OB appointment I kept feeling more and more pain and I knew I couldn't drive myself. Thankfully a good Samaritan from our new stake was able to take me to and from my appointment. The nurse took my vitals, and there I was left to sit alone in the room feeling so tired and confused and scared and sad. The doctor came in and started talking to me about what was going on and all the tests that had been taken throughout the week and how they looked in comparison. He told me he was 99% sure that it was an Ectopic pregnancy...and that the only way out is to kill the tissue (terminate the pregnancy) or I will die. As you can imagine, I was definitely crying by this point. He told me we could do another HCG test and Ultrasound if I wanted to for peace of mind, but proceeded to tell me that what he was going to do since I was stable and not bleeding internally according to all the previous testing is that he wound give me an injection that's used for chemo patients and it would just kill the tissue and I would be back to normal after about a week or so. I asked him several questions, and after pausing a brief moment and letting out a heavy sigh, I asked if we could go ahead and run those tests one more time just to make sure we were doing everything we could and so I could have that peace of mind. They decided to do the Ultrasound first, and went trans-vaginal again since that's the only way they'd get the kind of detail that was needed. The technician was very sweet and very good at her job both in attention to detail and making it less of an awkward thing for the patient. She found the Ectopic pregnancy in my right Fallopian tube, then she found an ovarian cyst...and then she found internal bleeding. She called the doctor in to take a look, and I reminded him that I had been bleeding in increase since the day before, and he looked at me and said "Yeah...this isn't uterine bleeding which is what you experience on a period, miscarriage, after a birth, etc....this is internal bleeding that is far from normal. Plans have changed...we are getting you into emergency surgery as soon as possible today." and he proceeded to tell me all about the surgery and how it would go/what they would do. I was of course, crying again. The doctor left, I got dressed and the nurse took me to the desk where they told me to be expecting a call from the hospital for when to come in for the surgery, and they set up my post-op appointment. I had been in communication with Jordan this entire time from start to finish, and since my phone was about to lose power I had the Dr's office give the hospital his number as well. I was home and sitting on the couch for all of five minutes when Jordan walked in and said "The hospital just called, they want you there NOW!" We grabbed our phone chargers and bolted. I texted my boss who then called me to get the full scoop and was so sorry and concerned for me and extended help to both me and Jordan if we needed it. Here's a funny thing about all this - never mind the fact that I'm about to have surgery because I was in death's neighborhood and coming up to it's walkway, I was more upset that I hadn't had any food or liquid all day long and had to wait to eat even longer until after the surgery. :p Both me and Jordan had our phones going off like crazy with calls and texts. We got to the hospital and within about 45 minutes I was all prepped and off to surgery. It was such a blessing though that I was able to have each particular staff member that I had in charge of me. And I was able to get a priesthood blessing just minutes before the surgery as well, so that really helped me and I'm sure it helped Jordan as well. Anyway, the road to recovery has been very exhausting. Physically I was out of commission for a solid week, and even still I have my moments when I just can't do anything but sit or lay down for a while. Tomorrow, the 27th is actually my post-op appointment...so hopefully they will tell me things are healing great. Emotionally, I am still very much on the mend. It's one thing to know that there was something in a part of your body that could have killed you...but it's another thing to know that they had to not only remove that "thing", but also remove the tube (yes, I am now only firing on one cylinder), as well as an ovarian cyst and some endometriosis being removed. There is a certain emotional pain that has come from knowing that. But the most difficult pain of all...is that the "thing" that was removed from the tube was not just some random mass, it wasn't just some random clump of tissue or stone...it was a baby. A six week old in development human being. At six weeks, that baby...my baby...was already developing vital organs and the heart was forming and dividing into chambers and pumping blood. The doctor took "before and after" pictures of the surgery for me to keep so I could see what all they did...and most of the pictures were pretty awesome since I've always loved medicine and am halfway through my studies to be an MA. But there were two pictures that got me crying on impact of first sight. They stick to the term "pregnancy" because it's a lot less harsh sounding when they say "this is where we removed the pregnancy" than if they were to replace it with the word "baby"...and I get that, I understand why they stick to using that word, but it just made me cringe every single time that my baby was simply called "a pregnancy" as if to make it sound like a tumor or inanimate object. In those two particular pictures...it was so unmistakable...the kidney bean sized mermaid shaped baby was already showing where the head, body, and limbs were forming, and on the head was a raised looking speck for an eye...every inch of this tiny little miracle was so discernible at just 6 weeks. Again, I go back to never mind the fact that I had emergency surgery to save my life...I was never once concerned about myself over my baby. That entire day until I was wheeled away to be put under, I asked the doctor several times (fully knowing that the answer was never going to change) if there was any chance at all to save the baby...and of course, as sweetly as he could, he would tell me again that there has never been a successful ectopic pregnancy and never in the history of medicine have they been able to save the baby, they have never done a transplant from tube to uterus. He told me I was very lucky that they caught it when they did and that women die at home from ectopic pregnancies all the time. He said if we hadn't caught it when we did, he hated to think about where I would have been in a couple more days. Of course he didn't tell me this all at once, he gave me this news in bits and pieces so as not to overwhelm me more than I already was.
I know this is a lot to read...for those of you who made it past the first few lines. I have been wanting to write about this for several days, but I have just been so busy with the holidays and trying to ease back into normal life that I haven't had the time or energy. I wouldn't wish this kind of experience upon my worst enemy. The pain you feel is so much deeper than any broken arm, black eye, terrible breakup, etc., it is so much worse...so much harder to explain...and so much harder to come back from. The thing that amazes me is how quickly and deeply the connection between mother and child becomes so binding and sacred. I mean that in the fullest. It is something that can only be best understood by experience, not explanation. I have been grieving and going through a mourning process, and with no end in sight. Though I know it is still extremely soon to even try to "bounce back", which that term is entirely inapplicable to this situation, I am still so frustrated with the fact that I hurt so much on a constant daily basis and there is nothing to soothe it for more than a few moments when I become distracted...but even then it doesn't always give me a breather. I know that my Heavenly Father has a plan for me, and I know that He knows what He's doing...but sometimes, it just doesn't matter. It just doesn't make a difference. I still hurt. I still ache. I still feel alone. I still feel scared. I still feel sad. I still feel betrayed. I still feel confused. I still cry. I have never done so much crying in my life. This was and is, by far, the hardest thing I have ever done (and I've done a lot of really painstakingly hard things in my life). I do pretty well now in that I only cry or want to cry about three times a day, rather than all the time throughout the day. At least I have a break in that sense. I would just love to feel and be normal again. I would just love to be able to be close to my husband and allow him to be close to me. I just am stuck wondering if there is something more that could have been done. Something. Nothing. And I hate that.
