Tuesday, October 6, 2009

I'm not sure what to title this post

Let's start off by telling you that I'm 31, married and want children. With that being said, our first try did not go off without a hitch.

I suspected that I was pregnant before I had even missed my period, and took a HPT the day it was due. It was positive! We were over-joyed and spent the rest of the day calling our immediate families. I went to my family doctor the next day to confirm, and get my pre-natal vitamins. I then scheduled my first appointment with my OB, who only wanted to schedule 8 weeks out. I wasn't happy, but everyone told me that the doctors just want to make sure that it's going to be a viable pregnancy, whatever. I started getting lots of rest, eating lots of healthy things, weaning myself off my anti-anxiety/anti-depression medication, and quitting cold-turkey all the things I really enjoyed eating (hot dogs, bleu cheese, cold cuts, etc)... Flash forward to my 6 or 7th week... I start spotting!
I call my OB, and my mother, and my husband's mother, and my sisters-in-law, and everyone tells me that it's common, and not to worry too much unless it gets worse. So I spend the few days barely moving off the couch because I don't want to do anything to make it worse (my paranoia is no one else's fault but mine). Saturday rolls around, and it starts to get a little heavier, but nothing like what I've heard is normal for a miscarriage or anything, so I wait (my appt with my OB is on Tuesday of the coming week, so I figure a few days won't hurt)... Sunday, it's still getting heavier, and I start getting slight cramps and a backache, and finally I have my husband take me to the ER...

Thankfully the ER got me in quickly, because I was blubbering all over the waiting room (I'm an ugly cryer). In our ER, the ultrasound technician is not allowed to discuss what she sees with you while she is doing the ultrasound, so I spent the whole length of that process in the dark, and another 45 minutes or so while the doctor was going over the scans and discussing them with on-call OB (over the bloody phone!). The on-call OB happens to be in the same practice that my OB is so I'm sort of familiar with him... Anyway, we finally are told that I have nothing in my uterus at all, no sac, no fluid, no baby, no anything, but that they see a "mass" up near my right ovary. And my HCg is only at 1000, which is definitely not normal for an 8 week pregnant woman! The on-call OB decided after discussing the results over the phone with the ER doc, that he would do nothing right then, and have me keep my scheduled appointment on Tuesday (2 days later).

The following morning (after no sleep, and having an anxiety attack), my OB's office called me to make sure I had the appointment scheduled for Tuesday. I did, but I was also pleading to be seen that day, if at all possible. The Triage nurse put me on hold to ask the Dr if I needed to be seen sooner or not, and came back and said that she could get me into an earlier appointment slot, but that was all, because the OB wanted to see if my HCg levels would go up. I still don't really know what he was waiting for, it's not like they would have seen a fetus in-utero the next day! In the two days that he wanted me to wait, my fallopian tube could have burst and I could have hemorrhaged... But whatever, I told them to give the earlier slot, but I would be spending the rest of the morning trying to find an OB that would see me immediately!

After about 5 minutes on the phone with one of my sisters-in-law, we had a recommendation for a new OB/GYN practice, and had called them and gotten an appointment for that afternoon! He was very understanding of why I wanted to see someone urgently, and after about 2 hours of blood tests, a couple more ultrasounds and another pelvic, I had the answers that I desperately wanted!

Yes, it was an ectopic pregnancy, and yes, it was still growing. In fact, it grew a half a centimeter from Sunday to Monday afternoon. The OB gave me the option of trying Methotrexate or going in Laparoscopically and removing it, and I chose to do the surgery since Methotrexate can take weeks sometimes and a lot of doctors visits and blood tests. He scheduled me for surgery the following day (Tuesday), and told me that he did not want to wait any longer than that considering that the mass was getting bigger.

Anyway, to make a long story short, but out-patient procedure turned into an overnight stay because I couldn't be trusted to be conciously breathing on my own. They kept having to remind me to breathe... When I was able to see my husband after being in the recovery room for 2 hours post-op, he told me that the Dr. had needed to take my entire right fallopian tube due to the mass being so big that he could just make an incision and remove it. I was shocked, but had been told that this was a possibility.

So now, we fast forward another week and here I sit, a healing, hormonal, ball of mess... I weaned myself off my medication, and now, I don't want to go back on it, even though I know that it will help me get through this just a bit easier...

That is all I have for now... Hopefully maybe someone will read it and feel like it's useful to them...

1 comment:

Ann said...

I am happy you bloged your story, if anything it will stop it from playing over in your head so much, and for the meds, maybe you can get a low dose of pills to calm you some,call your DR its not the worse to just help you manage this saddness.