First and foremost, I have to say that I am doing great. Now, where do I begin?
Tuesday morning, I suppose. All was going well Tuesday morning until about 8:45am when I started to get a sharp pain in my gut. I headed over to the bathroom, but made it as far as the living room floor. Thankfully, J is a good listener in a time of crisis as he went and got me the phone so I could call my Mom. Mom to the rescue. I put in a few calls to my Dr. and headed up to bed. I wasn’t overly concerned as I had similar sharp pains when I was pregnant with J but, I did want an ultrasound just to be sure.
Mom dropped J at my sister’s and cleaned my house, gotta love when you are sick and Mom fiddles around. My ultrasound wasn’t until 3:30pm so Hubby headed home from work so he could relieve Mom. In the meantime I did a bit of reading and realized that a lot of my symptoms were really looking like it was ectopic, but I was hoping for a gastro problem as I was getting so gassy.
The ride to the ultrasound was probobly the worst ever in my life. Hubby was hitting all the bumps and I was getting pretty nauseous, not to mention it was 35+ degrees out there and I had been freezing in a/c all day. We get there and I find out that I can’t really walk far without possibly passing out. There were no wheelchairs I had to take frequent breaks. I was given a bed immediately. As long as I was horizontal all was good. Vertical was not doing it for me.
To make a long story short, the could not find a pregnancy in my uterous, but they weren’t sure what was going on in my tubes either. My right blocked tube was so massive, they couldn’t make head or tails of it and my left tube was hiding out. It was determined that there was now blood flowing into my abdomen, about 200-300ml at this point. The Dr on duty was fantastic and she was trying not to sound nervous but, really I need to go to the ER pronto. I asked if she could call ahead so I wouldn’t have to wait and she said she already had. She was also able to contact my Dr. at the Clinic, so the oncall Dr. was able to be there for me.
The ride to the Hospital was much worse than the ride to the ultrasound. Even I could tell that things were getting worse. The pain was no longer just in my gut but under my ribs and now in the shoulder. My breathing was getting laboured and I was trying not to get nervous but, I knew it wasn’t good. The wheelchair ride into the ER was pretty rough and the reception at the desk was less than stellar. Needless to say the reception lady was mad at me because I had to lie on the floor. “Tough sh*t” was all I could think of. The orderly finally arrived with the gurney and wanted me to do this slow sit up thing and I said, one shot buddy up on the bed, no sitting. He wasn’t impressed with me but, I knew what I needed.
I was wisked away pretty quick to the first set of rooms to get assessed. I was only there a few minutes when I was wisked away to the pre OP rooms. Apparantly I was considered to be in pretty grave danger and we were just waiting for the OR room to be prepped. Hubby and I were joking around waiting for the Doctor from the clinic saying if it had to be ectopic let it be in the good tube so our IVF would be covered by insurance. Hubby was starting to get upset, but I could not cry for the pain so he had to tough it up for me. The nurses kept wanting to pump me full of pain meds, but I refused. I stayed tough and wanted my wits with me. The Dr. finally showed up and although on previous occaisions he was not one of my favorites, both Hubby and I were quite impressed with him. He wasn’t convinced it was ectopic, he was thinking ruptured cyst. He was going to check out my damaged tube while in there and do his best to make sure that we could have more kids in the very near future. I should add that the Gyny resident was trying to scare the crap out of me by giving me worst case scenerios. They were going to open up my gut, I was most likely going to have damage to my internal organs… blah, blah… she wasn’t the brightests and watching Dr. C tell her to settle down was quite comforting.
Off we went. I was crackin a few jokes about a tummy tuck and Dr. C was shaking my bed to see if it hurt. Funny, funny guy.
Two hours later, Hubby was beside himself. They told him it would be an hour, but they didn’t tell him it would take a half hour to get into the room and a half hour to get out. I was able to have laproscopic surgery so I have three little incisions. One in my belly button and two lower down, bikini line. The pregnancy was ectopic for sure, in my left tube. Which was apparently damaged before from possibly one of my miscarriages being ectopic. My right tube was so massive it was the size of a child’s fist full of hydrasalpinx which would have been poisoning any other pregnancies that would have made it to the uterus. I lost about 2litres of blood in the end and had to stay overnight in case I needed a transfusion. All was good by morning and I was heading home at 8:30am!
That was the fastest, scariest 24 hours I have had in a very long time. I am so thankful that I am ok, that I am here to see J and that nothing else happened that left me permanently unable to care for my family. There is definately a bright side to all of it. I know I left out a few details here and there, but hopefully you all get the gist it ;).
