Ectopic

A few weeks ago, I barely knew this word. Up until about 3 weeks ago, I believe I pronounced it "eptopic", and I knew little about what it actually meant. I'm going to start from the very beginning, but most people probably don't want to read this entry. I want a record of the situation for me, but most of you will want to wait a couple of days or so when I'll put up more cute pics of Christopher. So if for some reason you came across this, you may not want to read it. But if you're curious about how I really feel about the whole thing, feel free. It will not be short, and it probably will be a little graphic.

Remember after the last miscarriage, when I said we were going to work closely with doctors before trying again? Well, we tried, we really did. The problem was, our Health Insurance company was giving us a really hard time about covering the blood tests I needed to find out if I have the problems that seem to run in my family. This because I hadn't had 2 miscarriages in a row, under the same doctor's care. So, in May, we decided the worst that could happen was another miscarriage, and then they would cover the testing. We weren't exactly trying to have another baby right away, but we stopped trying not to. Boy, were we wrong about the worst-case-scenario thing.

In mid-June, I started spotting, and realized I was probably a little late. I thought right away that I was miscarrying again. I called my doctor. She sent me in for blood work. The nurse called me a day later, saying it looked like a perfectly healthy pregnancy. However, because of my history, I was treated like a high-risk pregnancy right away. No lifting Christopher, or anything else heavy. They even wanted me to stop going to work for a while. Yeah, right. Anyway, I was told to be careful and start doing blood work every few days. The first couple went ok, but then one came back with a low progesterone level (a pregnancy hormone I hadn't been aware of before). I was prescribed a drug to help keep that up, and told this could really go either way. I should note here that I never once felt pregnant, or like I was going to have a baby in a few months. I just didn't. I did start planning, I think you have to when you get that news. We had just booked a cruise I would have been too far along to go on, so we figured out alternate plans and started thinking about how perfect it would work out with baseball season. I would barely be showing by the end of this season, and would give birth before the beginning of the next. But I still didn't feel like I was going to have a baby.

Another round of blood work later, even the main hormone level (hCG) had not "gone up appropriately". At this point, my doctor said I was most likely miscarrying, there was not much chance that it was a viable pregnancy with an increase that small (1700 to 2000 over 4 days, this hormone should just about double every day early in pregnancy). And it seemed that was exactly what happened. I started bleeding and cramping a ton, and seemed to pass everything. I was sad, but looked forward to getting testing done without a hassle and hopefully figuring everything out and trying again soon. I rationalized to Joel that had I had that baby, it would have been great, but we would not have figured out the problem and might have to go through these things every time. This way we would be able to figure out the problem and have as many children as we wanted, given our age and income and everything, of course. So, that was that, or so I thought.

My doctor had me come in for a "follow-up appointment" the next Monday, July 7th. She questioned that maybe the bleeding had not been as heavy as it should have been, but otherwise seemed to think things were fairly normal, and sent me to get blood work done (after a miscarriage, they always have you do blood work about once a week to follow the level all the way down). I went home and went about my everyday business. Tuesday evening, after 8pm, my doctor called me. She had been trying to get a hold of me most of the day. Maybe I should start answering my home phone. She said the hCG level had gone up to 5200 by Monday. Not normal for someone who supposedly just lost a pregnancy. She was leaving on vacation, but told me to see someone in the office and have an ultrasound as soon as possible. I'm not sure what I thought. I talked to a couple of friends and family who thought I had miscarried a twin and was possibly still pregnant, but I didn't think that was likely.

My good friend (and visiting teacher, but she insists she does these things as a friend : )) Alicia watched Christopher for me when I went into the office. My mother was planning on watching him, but the way they were trying to squeeze me in, it was apparent I would need someone closer. C loves Alicia and her family, so it ended up being perfect. I'm not sure why I went alone, In retrospect, it was really stupid. They fit me in for an ultrasound at 10:45am and thought I'd be able to see one of the doctors at 11:45. During the ultrasound, I started to get really nervous. Ultrasound techs can't talk to you much about what's going on, and so most of my questions went unanswered. What I did know was that the uterus was empty, and I saw no heartbeat of any kind. She looked briefly at my right ovary, and then spent a LOT of time looking at the left. She listened to the blood flow to that side, and then proceeded to highlight an area and label it "mass"; I knew this was probably not a good thing. But cancer/tumor/cyst popped into my head before anything else.

I tried not to jump to conclusions and waited over an hour to actually see Dr. Voss. She promptly told me she was fairly certain it was an ectopic pregnancy. Somewhere in me, I knew this was a possibility, but I was still somewhat in shock. And at this point, emotionally, it seemed I had been on a 3-week roller coaster. I cried and felt very alone as she presented my options. She told me it was at just about 3 centimeters, and borderline for treatment with medication. 3.5 is the cutoff. The other option was surgery to remove the mass, which had no heartbeat, as I had thought before. I immediately gravitated toward medication, although she told me it was a chemotherapy drug called methotrexate that wasn't exactly a picnic either. She still seemed concerned and I told her I would do whatever she suggested. In my head I just didn't want this to take up too much time, and normalcy from my life. I was already thinking about my hair clients, missing work, etc. I know, I'm such a dork. She actually said she thought we should try the drug first as well. We needed to first do more blood work to make sure my liver and kidneys were up to the stress the drug would put on them. I was told to do the blood work, and go home until they called with the results, or come back at 4:30 if they had not yet called. I called Joel and told him to get off work early. I called my mom, and Alicia, and my cousin Becky. I was still pretty much in shock. I went to pick up Joel, we went to my parents' office where he and my dad gave me a blessing, and then we had a late lunch. We picked Shauna up from the lightrail station and took her home, (I was supposed to go to the Journey concert with she and Jaime that night) then headed back to the hospital. They were just getting the blood work results. Everything looked fine, so we proceeded with the methotrexate. They gave me a shot in each hip just before 5pm. They gave me a list of things to watch for, told me to take it easy and to absolutely not leave town. I got a little light-headed, and felt a little weak, but I wasn't sure whether it was the drug or from crying so much. We headed back to Alicia's to get Christopher. They invited us to stay for dinner, and even got me ice cream : ). Then we went home and hoped the mass started shrinking.

Thursday I took it very easy and consulted the list often. It was a little complicated, because they said the drug would cause more abdominal pain, but too much was a warning sign. Same with bleeding. Thursday night I started to have really strong pain, but it was still mostly to one side, so I thought it was fine. I was a little more concerned with the fact that going to the bathroom was really hard. Friday morning I decided it was better to be safe than sorry, and that I should at least talk to someone before it was the weekend. I was planning on doing 4 clients hair that day, and my other Visiting Teacher, Kelly, was already set to watch Christopher for me, just because it would be hard to get around with him. The ob/gyn Center called me back and told me to come in right away. I reluctantly cancelled my one morning hair appointment. They immediately called back and said I would have to check in through the ER and get an ultrasound done.

I called my mom to come get me. Kelly took C. I checked into the ER and answered the same questions to 3 or 4 different people. I had the ultrasound done, but at least this time I couldn't see everything on the screen in front of me. A PA came in and told us the mass had grown an entire centimeter. 4 cm's off mass in my tiny little tube. Obviously, I would be having surgery. Dr. Etten, the doctor on-call from my Dr's office, came in and told me the same thing, asked me most of the same questions, and informed me that she had thought I should have done surgery right away on Wednesday anyway. Thanks. She also said she was not hopeful about saving my tube. My mom called Joel. Dr. Etten said surgery could be at 7 or 8 that evening (I think this was somewhere around noon, maybe), but a few minutes later a nurse came in and said they'd be taking me right down. My mom called Joel back and he got right on the lightrail. I was prepped for surgery. Here we go!

I don't remember anything after that until I woke up in recovery. I promptly told them I needed to throw up. I remember looking at the clock and it being about 3:30. I seemed to be in recovery forever. I was SO groggy, but I also had to go to the bathroom a ton. I was later told they had put a gallon of liquid into me during surgery. I also was put on an IV for the rest of the night. Getting up and down was the worst. I was told I would be spending the night in the hospital, because I had woken up nauseous and they had had to make a larger incision than usual. However, there weren't any rooms, thus the wait. I asked about the tube. I was told they were able to save it, by 2 different nurses. But when I got up to my room, Joel told me that Dr. Etten told them she had taken it. I verified that with her the next morning. I didn't get up to a room until about 6:15. They let me order dinner. I hadn't eaten at all that day, so the soup, salad and cobbler I had was about the best thing I'd ever eaten. I looked at my wonderful incisions. There were 3, the longest one with staples. Joel stayed with me until sometime after 8, and my mom and dad came back with Christopher, who was pretty much terrified of me. I had an IV in each arm, and I looked like hell. No, seriously. My parents took him home so that Joel could come back in the morning.

I tried to sleep, but I had to go to the bathroom SO often. Dr. Etten came in fairly early in the morning, and seemed impressed I had kept my dinner down. She told me she did indeed have to take the tube, that it was totally blown. Later in the morning I asked for more pain medication so I could rest a little better. Joel graciously sat by and talked to me or let me rest. He also finished my breakfast for me : ). My TV remote wasn't working, so poor Joel wasn't very entertained. They asked us what time we wanted to check out at about 11am. I had just gotten really groggy again, so I asked for 1pm, so I could rest a little longer. It ended up being closer to 2.

It's now Monday. I had my staples removed this morning. I still don't know if the whole situation has hit me yet. I do think the left side was my polycystic ovary, so the loss of the tube is not that huge, if that's the case. I'm pretty sure we have options left for having children. I'm reserving my total judgement until I talk to my own doctor. No one else ever seemed to read my whole chart, so when I asked them questions they really didn't even understand.

This has all made me really aware of Heavenly Father and his plan for me. I'm sure he's always aware of us, but sometimes it takes being knocked down a few pegs for us to remember him, and to include him in every aspect of our lives. Every time I've lost a pregnancy, I've always thought a lot more about things like; "when does the spirit really join the body" and "will these kids be with me in the next life?" I really don't know, but it's interesting to think about. I would hope there's a reason for all that we've been through. Either way, I've learned a lot medically the past few weeks. And this has made me so grateful for Joel and Christopher. SOOOOO thankful for Christopher. And yes, I'll probably smother him again, and yes, he's spoiled. But you know what? I really don't care right now.