Hello ladies. I have been reading everyones’ stories for the last couple of weeks and finally feel ready to put mine into words. Sorry if it’s kind of long.
I started my period on May 4th, 2006, which lasted for almost two weeks. I stopped bleeding on May 16th and so on the night of May 17th/18th it was back to business as usual with my husband.
I started feeling pregnant right away and knew that I must be as I had known early with both my daughters as well. On a strange impulse I took a pregnancy test early in the morning on May 24th, not really expecting it to show up that early. I was not surprised to find it turn out positive since I was using a very sensitive test, but I was surprised how how nice and dark the positive line was. Right away I knew there was something different about this pregnancy, but I wasn’t sure what.
That weekend I had a little bit of spotting which I figured was implantation bleeding. It was only when I wiped and was gone within half a day. Then on June 3rd, 2006 I started spotting again, that lovely prune juice colored blood that so many women with EP’s have. Unfortunately, I did not know that it was a common symptom of EP at the time. But I was concerned since I had never spotted with my first two pregnancies.
The spotting continued so I called my OB/gyn’s office and the nurse wanted me to get my HCg levels checked. I got my first blood test on June 7th, 2006 and the second blood test on June 9th, 2006, which was a Friday. By that Friday I was sure there was something wrong. About four in the afternoon I found out from the nurse that my HCg levels had gone down. They wanted me to come in on Monday the 12th for another blood test to confirm my declining levels and then to see the doctor to decide what to do. At this point they were assuming that I was going to have a miscarriage. After I got off the phone, I broke down in tears.
That night I had sudden, excruciating pain in my abdomen, primarily on my right side. Within minutes after the pain started, I became very nauseated. I could barely walk. My first thought was that it was ectopic. My husband and I rushed to the Emergency Room. Our normally very slow ER got me in amazingly quick since we already knew that my HCg levels were going down and I looked terrible.
Right away the ER doctor ordered an ultrasound. After the ultrasound was done, we had to wait while the OB/gyn on call looked at the images at home. She called the ER and told them she was coming in. When she got there, she told me that my uterus was empty except for fluid, which she suspected was blood and that there was a mass in my right tube. She did a pelvic exam and could feel the blood that was pooling in my uterus. She told me that I needed immediate surgery and that it couldn’t wait until morning, even though it was almost two in the morning and they had to call in the Operating staff. It was just over an hour before everyone was called in and I was put under. The doctor didn’t tell me how bad I was until after I woke up.
Before I went under she told me the surgery usually lasted an hour, so imagine my surprise when I woke up three hours later. The surgery had taken almost two and a half hours because, not only did I have the ectopic pregnancy but they found that my right ovary was covered with three massive cysts and was over twenty times larger than normal. They had to remove both my ovary and my tube, which had ruptured, and then clean out my uterus which had filled with blood. The doctor told me that they were going to keep me a little longer because I had lost so much blood and could have bled out to death internally within hours if they hadn’t done the surgery.
It has only been a little over two weeks since this all happened and in the meantime I have had some crazy things happen with my ten month old daughter having to go to the hospital for a staff infection, so I have not had much time to really think about what happened. It was hard when I went back to the doctor to get my stitches out and there were about ten pregnant women in the waiting room and there I was, not pregnant anymore. I also have two close friends who are pregnant, one who is due only three weeks before I would have been and I start to cry when I think about how our babies won’t be growing up together.
It is so frustrating that no one wants to talk about. As so many of you know, it’s better to talk about what happened and that it helps the healing process, but so many people don’t know what to say to you and don’t think of just listening to what you have to say. And just as bad are the ones who tell you you should be thankful for the children you already have, as if the child you lost didn’t count because you couldn’t hold it in your arms yet. That is why places like this are so precious! Thank you to all of you women who are there to “listen” to each other and support each other.
Autumn