Tuesday, September 05, 2006

2nd Miscarriage Begins

May 31st, 2006

At around 4:45, I discovered some bright red blood after going to the bathroom. My heart sank and I realized what was coming. Another miscarriage. At first I was too shocked to even cry. I put a pad on and tried calling the doctor. When TJ came home I couldn't hold it in and started bawling and shaking. I called the doctors pager and left my number. When they called back, they suggested we either wait it out until the next day, then visit the office, or that we make a trip out to the ER at Anderson's Hospital to be checked immediately. We opted for the latter.

When we arrived at the ER and signed in, I sat in the waiting room rocking back and forth and crying. I know the people in that room were staring at me and wondering what was wrong, since I had no visible wounds. It seemed like eternity before they finally called us back, got us registered, and took me to my room. It was a small, cold room with a teal curtain for a door. The nurse gave me a cup to pee in and told me to put on this thin robe that tied in the back. It was huge, but I put it on and just stood there by the table until TJ arrived. The bleeding had all but stopped and I noticed only a little brownish blood the last time I wiped. But I was still scared. I finally laid down on the bed and just waited. The nurse came in a while later and took a ton of blood. She was not very gentle or nice.When I held my arm the wrong way she rudely pushed it where she wanted it and said, “No, I need it here!”. Then she proceeded to fill tube after tube with blood. After she left, I laid there on the bed for what seemed like hours before the doctor came in and did a pelvic exam. When he discovered the pain in my left side he declared that I would need an ultrasound to make sure there wasn't an ectopic pregnancy. The nurse went on to insert a catheter into my bladder. She drained all the urine by pressing on my lower abdomen. I was disturbed by this, as I still had hope that the baby might survive. She finally left and I dozed in and out of sleep waiting for the ultrasound technicians to arrive. They finally arrived and took me back to the ultrasound room. There, my bladder was filled with fluid as the technician put gel all over my belly before rolling a device across my abdomen. I felt like my bladder was going to explode. It hurt so bad. She finally finished that and moved on to the vaginal ultrasound. My eyes darted from her face to the screen trying to get some idea of what she was finding. Her face was expressionless and the screen showed nothing be indistinguishable lines of black and white. After she'd finished, she rolled me back to the room with TJ. Before she left, I asked what she had found and she said she couldn't say because that was the radiologists job. So, we waited again for what seemed like an eternity before the doctor finally came back with a report. He explained that a “mass” had been discovered near my left ovary. It could be a gestational twin that implanted in the fallopian tube, or it could be the corpus leutum. I asked if the baby was alive. He said they did see a “yolk sak” in the uterus which was a good indication of a “viable pregnancy”. At this news TJ sat up and asked “you mean there's still a chance the baby could be ok?” The doctor replied vaguely but basically said that yes there was a small chance. They would still need to find out what the mass was. If it was indeed ectopic pregnancy, they would need to terminate it via surgery, but they could do that without harming the other baby. As happy as I was to hear this information, the best I could do was lay back down and close my eyes. I was exhausted from all the emotional stress, plus the poking and prodding of all the tests. Such relief was peace enough that I was able to sleep again until the nurse came back to remove the catheter before letting us go home. I was commanded to bed rest and to drink lots of fluids over the next few days, and that I should come back on Friday for more blood work. Should the bleeding get worse or if I were to get cramps, I was to come back immediately for another ultrasound...”and catheter” as the nurse said, in an almost sarcastic voice. Did she get some kind of enjoyment out of my pain? On the way home I had to focus on breathing because I was so nauseated. TJ stopped at Sonic and got himself a dinner and me a sprite. I sipped my sprite the rest of the way home. It was nearly 11:00 when we finally got home and I was more than happy to get back in my own bed. It was so much more comfortable than that emergency room bed. I fell asleep dreaming of holding my little baby someday, still hoping she will survive.

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