bleeding

tw: abortion, pregnancy, miscarriages, hospital staff being dillweeds, etc.

This is a copy/paste of the original post I wrote in October 2015 after my ectopic pregnancy. I’m moving it here to keep it somewhere safe.

About that time I almost died.

I remember everything prior to surgery, but my memory is a bit sketchy after – There was a lot of morphine, oxycodone and other things in my system. I decided I should write down a complete detail of everything I remember, so I can look back on it in the future. It’s probably not a 100% accurate account, considering all of the narcotics and pain involved.

I did not mention exactly what was wrong with me when talking to friends or posting online, though it was probably obvious to most. I did not mention it not because of shame or embarrassment, but because I did not want the special brand of sympathy that tends to come along with it.

So, here’s the whole story.

My body has always acted a bit funny. I generally just refer to myself as ‘sickly,’ because it’s hard to articulate what works right and what doesn’t. I frequently go through weeks of stomach issues, extra periods or missed periods, days of vertigo… What-have-you. Things were a little more off than usual in September. I had a ‘stomach bug’ at the beginning of September that caused sharp violent pain; Which two people I know also had, so even though I didn’t feel like it was a stomach bug, I quickly accepted it must be. I had been getting spots of heart palpitations when I was laying down, which was a bit odd. My period also came a bit late, and wasn’t quite right. Still nothing odd enough to really tip me off. My period should have started again at the beginning of October. I don’t have unprotected sex, and I don’t have sex very often at all either way. But I air on the side of caution, and remembering my weird pain at the beginning of September, a weird period and then a late one I decided to take a pregnancy test just to be on the safe side. I think this was on Friday, October 2^nd.

Positive. Well, fuck. That’s just peachy.

At this point, I should mention that the reason this part is left out of my recounting online of the events that happened, is that it changes the sympathy received from ‘Oh man, that sucks, glad you’re alive!’ to “oh god I’m so sorry.” I hate to sound callous, but I had no attachment to whatever was inside of me. And I did not want that kind of sympathy to start giving me a reason to be depressed, when I wasn’t before. I was, and still am not, in any form of emotional distress. I like it that way. But anyway.

I had an appointment at Planned Parenthood scheduled for my first day off work, Thursday, Oct. 8^th. To confirm the situation, and figure out what the plan was from there. I wasn’t going to talk to anyone about it until after that. Mostly because I suspected something weird was going on. Something about sharp pains and menstruating while pregnant didn’t seem right, and I wanted to figure out exactly what was going on inside of me and what my plan was before I started talking. So, going in to Thursday, I hadn’t mentioned to anyone my potential situation.

Thursday morning, I woke up a bit before Jason went to work. I typically lay in bed for a while when I wake up, acclimating to the day. I happily stayed under the covers until about 8AM, after Jason had left for work. At that point, my dog was getting irritated that I was still in bed. I got up and wandered over to my keurig, made myself a cup of coffee, took the dog out, reclaimed my cup from the kitchen and went to my computer desk. No sooner did my butt hit my computer chair, I suddenly felt like I needed to vomit. I didn’t find this concerning, considering the news I had learned a bit earlier and the fact that sometimes I just throw up.

I stood up, started to walk to the bathroom… And made it to the door of my office before everything suddenly started to go black in my vision. Well, that’s new. I stumbled to the bathroom, and pretty promptly collapsed on the floor. I laid their for about 20 seconds, and started to feel normal again. Thought maybe I had stood up too fast. I started to sit up, and before my shoulders were even off the floor, everything quickly started to go black again and my gag reflex immediately kicked up. Back down I went. I replayed this a few times, hoping for a different outcome. At this point, time wasn’t really clicking right in my head so I’m unsure of how long I laid there. I think after about 3 or 4 minutes, I decided something was seriously wrong and was not going away. I couldn’t get off the floor though, had no phone nearby and nobody home to yell to so I was in an awkward position. It was about 10 minutes-ish after my initial walk to the bathroom that I had formulated my plan.

I’m not saying it was a great plan, but I didn’t have a lot of options here.

I figured that since I started to black out the second I was off the floor, time was a bigger issue than distance. I decided to, as quickly as I could, stand up and RUN to my phone in the bedroom. This was a good choice. As soon as I stood up, everything was going black. I ignored it, and successfully made the run to the bedroom. As soon as my hand was on my phone, I intentionally collapsed in hopes of staying awake before inevitable unconsciousness set in. I wasn’t in a panic at this point, and I wasn’t in pain. I was just in a desperate situation, and as calmly and logically as I could trying to get myself out of it. I knew I needed to get to a hospital, and at this point was thinking that if I went unconscious, I probably wasn’t waking up again. My subconscious knew what was going on, because I shortly after learned that was in fact the case.

My doors were locked, my dog was out, and I knew I didn’t have enough steam to get the dog locked up and go open doors. I was concerned that if I called an ambulance, they would then have to call the dog warden because there was no way Barsky was letting them in the house while I was home alone and clearly sick. It would have taken time and possibly ut my dog in danger. I decided it would be quicker for me to call family. Less logically, I called my mom. While I now realize this didn’t make the most sense, I was concerned that if I called Jason, it would turn out that I was exaggerating and everything was fine and he left work for nothing and he was going to get in trouble because it was a new job and blah blah blah. Obviously not the brightest thought process, but knowing my mother was likely at home and had no immediate plans, I called her. She rushed over, but on the drive while on the phone with me did in fact point out that she didn’t have keys to my house. I hadn’t thought of that in my slightly confused state. I managed to, in the same fashion I had earlier retrieved my phone, run to the door and unlock it. I even managed to get back to the couch, after a brief lay in the doorway.

After a few moments on the couch, panic finally started to sink in. I was losing feeling in my limbs. My lips were cold. I started to shake and cry. At this point, I then called Jason anyway, so that was a lot of unnecessary theatrics for nothing earlier. In my defense, I was slightly dying and I think that’s plenty enough reason to not make logical choices.

Jason is not a worrier, and very down to earth. A no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is chap. He got home before my mother, and as soon as he saw me the look of serious concern on his face told me I must look like absolute shit. I laid there for a moment, told him my mother was on the way and we should wait for her since she’s almost here. He left to go pull the car around to the closest point to where I was. Came back in, looked at how I was laying with my feet up and asked if I needed to keep my feet up. I said “I think so. I don’t think I have enough blood” or something like that.

And without much concern to my opinion on the matter, he picked me up, walked me to the car, and off we went. He called my mother to let her know that we had left to Toledo Hospital already. I couldn’t sit, but luckily we have a station wagon so I curled up in the fetal position in the back. He was right to get me there ASAP. Good times.

A few minutes later, we were at the hospital. At this point, I’m still half thinking I’m just being silly. I’ve been to the ER a few times in the past couple of years and the last time, I felt more dire than I did now and I still had to sit in the ER for an hour while shaking and sobbing uncontrollably. That didn’t happen this time. They came out to get me from the car, put me in a wheelchair, and rolled me straight to a room. While moving me, they asked what was wrong. And I told them exactly what I had at that point decided.

“I think I have an ectopic pregnancy.”

There was no pause of silence, no moment of calm from this point to the point I went in to surgery. Within minutes, I had multiple IVs. I had a doctor, and a few nurses/specialists in the room with me. A few minutes after getting there, a doctor said “I think you’re right, I think you have an ectopic pregnancy.” They couldn’t see anything on the ultrasound and didn’t know where the bleed was, just that there was a bleed. They confirmed my pregnancy, sent blood off with the highest urgency, and started pumping blood in to me before they even knew my blood type. My blood pressure was low – I don’t recall exactly, but my husband says it was around 65/35. Which, according to The Internet, is… bad. It isn’t even on blood pressure charts.

My mother was kind enough to sit there and take photos of me. She’s not much for worrying. I may have been a little pale.

I had a hemorrhage. My abdomen was full of blood. My body was in shock, and things were shutting down to keep my heart beating. Doctors were running in and out. I… Was just being me. I made an awesome bad joke about ringers lactate and nobody laughed. I think I tried to fist bump a nurse for something. Had a lovely talk with a nurse with pink hair about why her hair was pink. Turns our her autistic son drew a picture of her as a super hero with pink hair, and she loved it so much she dyed it pink. I sang the emergency theme music. Normal Katy stuff. That’s what I do when under stress; Try my absolute hardest to act normal. At this point, things were starting to hurt. I started getting sharp cramps and pain in my abdomen. I had sort of decided way back on the bathroom floor that if I went unconscious, I wasn’t going to wake up. I was even more sure of that at this point. They were waiting for room for me in surgery. The doctor cheered me up my telling me that I was Priority #1, I was more important than anyone else in the hospital as far as surgery was concerned. So that’s cool. I definitely felt special, and I felt well cared for. I felt like I was in good hands. At some point here they also told me that they figured out my blood was B+, so they were switching me from trauma blood to B- blood or something like that.

At some point, still battling myself on whether I was actually dying, or whether I was just being silly, I asked a doctor “So.. How life threatening is this? Slightly? Very?” and he said “Very. Very life threatening. You need surgery, right now. Every minute counts right now” or something of that nature. That was reassuring. At least I wasn’t crazy. Someone, maybe my mother, had asked how long I’d be in surgery. They guessed a half hour.

At some point, I also informed the doctor I couldn’t remember his name so I was calling him Doctor Brackett from that point on.

I have no idea how long I was there. It felt like 15 minutes, but I suspect it may have been closer to an hour. Near the end, I kept falling asleep and waking again, and I’m not entirely sure how long these down spells were. But from my perspective, soon after my arrival, they were wheeling me up to surgery. I was still pretty chipper, despite just presuming I was dying at this point. It’s good to know that when faced with death, my outlook is ‘meh.’ I certainly wanted to be alive, but I decided being positive and upbeat was probably going to help me a lot more than freaking out would.

… It went downhill when I realized that hospitals have elevators. As anyone who has been in an elevator with me might know, I’m quite scared of elevators. I’ll use them, but only as a last resort. I’d rather climb stairs with crutches. I tend to get in the corner and hold on to rails with a nervous look on my face. In this grand scheme of confusion and pain and shock, that’s what pushed me over the edge. My heart started to feel racy and weak, and I started to hurt BADLY now. I lost my composure, and started to get a bit mean. I demanded they knock me out, because things were becoming unbearably painful very rapidly. And I thought “Well, at least if I’m going to die I want to be unconscious when it’s happening.” A doctor went to take my lip ring out, and I took it out for him because I was in a hurry to not be awake. I was quite spunky for being near death. And I hadn’t even had my morning coffee!

So, up until that point, the visuals were pretty clear in my head. Down I went. I don’t remember waking up, or what order things really happened after that.

I woke up in Intensive Care. I know I asked questions. I asked how long I was in surgery (an hour or more, I think was the answer.) I asked what my blood pressure had gotten down to (the previously mentioned 65/35-ish.) Someone, I think a nurse, volunteered the information that they had removed over two liters of blood from my abdominal cavity. I thought that was pretty impressive. They had to remove my left fallopian tube, and maybe my ovary. I don’t remember. I’ll ask at my follow up appointment on Wednesday. They had given me three units (or 3 liters, but I think it was units. I could have sworn they said liters, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense looking back) of blood, and many more of saline.

I was… Slightly less yellow now.

It was extremely difficult to breathe from the start, which I worried was abnormal. Why would removing some reproductive bits effect my lung? After some poking and prodding, they said there was probably quite a bit of air pushing up against my diaphragm, causing differed pain. That was the worse. The drugs made everything else feel fine, I wasn’t aware of any pain in my abdomen. Every breath hurt though. That sucked. That day and evening in the ISO was pretty much blurry and no longer in my memory. I had plenty of visitors, to which I was thankful. I think I made that bad ringers lactate joke again (essentially, any time someone said ‘they put you through the ringer’ or something similar, I said “YOU MEAN THE LACTATE RINGERS?” and that happened like two or three times. Give me a break, I was drugged and watch a lot of Emergency.)

Day two, I remember a bit better. I was in ISO all day again. I accidentally offended a nurse so badly with my pro-choice jargon she got me a new nurse. In my defense, she was making a lot of assumptions about how I felt at the time. A preacher came to see me too. At this point I asked a nurse what the deal was and she noticed that I had an incorrect religious preference on file, and changed it to atheist for me. That was special. I think Jason might have been there for part or all of that.

They were still pumping drugs in to me. I don’t remember what was when, but throughout the day I had morphine, roxycodone, fentanyl, motrin, and percocet. And, unlike the first day where my lungs were the only thing that hurt, today nothing helped. My lungs were still horribly painful, and now my abdomen was also horribly painful. It got worse as the day went on. The only thing that made any difference was the fentanyl, and only for about ten minutes after they put it in my IV. I probably was pretty annoying at this point, because I was paging every 30 minutes to tell them how much pain I was in and getting upset when they couldn’t help me. I actually apologized to two nurses later for being kind of a bitch. I told them I knew they couldn’t give me anything else, but I still felt they needed to know how bad it hurt. They forgave me.

Sometime on day 3, they decided they were moving me out of the ICU. They needed me to sit up though. THAT is, without a doubt, the most scared I had been. Even very slight movement; Moving my leg over an inch or trying to lift my shoulder off the bed, was near excruciating. I have a high pain tolerance. Reading this probably doesn’t indicate that, but I do. And I mean excruciating. Due to ‘moving organs around’ and the air in my abdominal cavity, I was in worse pain than they expected. But I had built up enough trust with the nurses caring for me, that I believed them when they said it was imperative that I sit up. I was a clot risk, staying still greatly increases chances for clots. And the longer I stayed down, the more it was going to hurt when I got up. And I told them I believed them, but I was still mortified. I kicked all of my visitors out because I don’t like people to see me in pain.

… And up I went. And I don’t think I’ve ever hurt that bad in my entire life. When they tell you to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is the worst pain you have ever experienced, that became my 10. I can’t even tell you. I think I screamed. I definitely sobbed a bit. If anything gives me nightmares or stays with me from this entire ordeal, that was it. I pushed through it, I stood up, and I went and sat in the chair they wanted me to sit in. I am so glad that these were nurses that had been caring for me for the last 8 hours, because without that trust I would not have believed them for a second that everything in my abdomen did NOT in fact just rip open and I was NOT in fact about to keel over dead.

… But enough about that. It sucked, let’s move on.

The story after that gets a lot more boring. They were having trouble keeping my hemoglobin up (their goal was above 11, mine were hanging out around 7. I don’t know what that means.) Two more units of blood fixed that. Most of the staff was delightful, but once I was moved to a regular care ward the level of care definitely wasn’t great. I had a few good nurses, and a few bad ones. They did a CT scan, and while I was very slowly laying myself down the CT technician accidentally pulled my pillow out from under my arm and I fell. So that hurt like hell. Another doctor told me I still had some internal bleeding, and that it wasn’t a serious concern but that they needed to monitor it and could not release me until it resolved.

I had one really bad encounter with a doctor on day 3 – I had not seen her before, and she walked in to my room while I was in pain, and told me (not asked, and did not give me an opportunity to speak back) that they were switching me off narcotic painkillers due to my nausea, but since everything else was great and I wasn’t in pain and there were no complications they’d be discharging me today. That was all very confusing, because A.) I wasn’t having nausea problems,  B.) I was in pretty bad pain and had terrible double vision, C.) Last I had heard my hemoglobin was still way to low, D.) Not 15 minutes before a nurse had confirmed I had a bad UTI that we hadn’t started meds or treatment for, and E.) Someone had also just told me I still had internal bleeding. There were two nurses in the room at this time, and this was so confusing that they both looked absolutely flabbergasted. The doctor rushed out of the room as quickly as she had come in, and one nurse immediately ran after her. The second nurse just said “You are NOT ready to be discharged. If someone tries to discharge you today, SAY NO.” and then also left. If that tells you something.

Did she have the wrong chart? Was she just not listening when nurses were catching her up on my case? Who knows. I certainly don’t. But the first nurse that had chased her off came back a short while later, and informed me that I now have a new doctor. That was all very unsettling.

I did manage to eat half a fruit cup on day 3 (Saturday) though, which was the first food I’d had since Wednesday. And I could open my eyes all the way which was nice. Thanks to the low hemoglobin levels, I was still suffering from extreme vertigo and double vision. That was lovely.

And I had some very frustrating confusion with pain meds on days 3 and 4. I was in pain, and hadn’t (expect forpart of the second day where I was just feeling horrible) said that it was unbearable, or that I wanted them to change something. It’s normal to be in pain. When they asked about my pain, I told them it was holding steady around a 3-4 on the scale we had talked about and that I could tolerate that fine, but almost like clockwork about 3.5 hours after my percocet dose it would jump up to 6-7. That held true through day three. Part way through day 3, the above bad doctor thing happened during that half-hour window of pain between the percocet wearing off and me being able to take it again, and after that my med delivery started to get kind of random. Day four, new nursing staff and new doctors, they kept changing my meds around or not giving me meds when I was due or changing my dosage. It must have happened at least three or four times. I kept asking why, but they kept not giving me answers. At one point, I paged for my percocet after four hours (I was told to take it every four hours,) and the nurse never came. I pages two more time. After two HOURS of being overdue and being in pretty serious pain at this point, I walked (which I shouldn’t have been doing unassisted) to the counter and told them I was two hours overdue for pain and was in pretty horrible pain. This was after about 16-20 hours of really inconsistent care and a new med or amount each time someone came in.

I went back to my room, cried a bit, and a new nurse came in… with a motrin. This was probably about 9PM on day 4. I asked why I was not getting percocet, and she said “Well, you keep requesting medication changes and won’t take your medicine on time. We can’t help you if you can’t be consistent.” Jason was with me when that one happened, and I totally fucking lost it. My pain had climbed up to about an 8-ish on our pain scale, the worse it had been other than my sit-up moment. And I was frustrated. I yelled and sobbed at her “I HAVE NOT REQUESTED ANYTHING. I HAVE NOT REQUESTED A SINGLE CHANGE. I HAVE PAGED, EVERY TIME MY MEDS WERE DUE. YOU KEEP CHANGING THINGS, AND YOU KEEP IGNORING MY PAGES. AND NOBODY IS TELLING ME ANYTHING. I AM IN PAIN AND I AM FRUSTRATED.” or some angry stuff like that.

… That worked. I calmed myself down, and I had my disgruntled and inattentive nurses attention now. And Jason confirmed, having been with me most of the day, that I have not requested anything or complained about anything, and that every time a nurse or doctor comes in my meds have been changed and nobody would tell me why or what was going on when I asked. And for the first time since having been moved out of the ICU, someone actually listened – She apologized for all the confusion, mentioned that they’d been very short staffed the last two days (which I would normally call a deflection, but I was happy to have any insight as to why I was not being cared for other than ‘nobody cares about you,’) talked to a doctor and they put me back on my percocet every four hours. She asked me to page her 15 minutes before my meds were due, and she would personally make sure I got them. So, through the rest of that night everything was peachy and I was in a tolerable and reasonable amount of pain.

That same nurse also, at my request, went to figure out what was up with one doctor telling me I had internal bleeding and then the next telling me I didn’t. Turned out I did NOT have bleeding, but I had some pockets of blood in my abdomen and somewhere along the line someone got confused.

And the next day, day 5, they ran another blood test to confirm my hemoglobin was now staying stable, and got me ready to go. I asked, and I think my mom was with me then, some questions about post-op care – How long I should take percocet, what I should switch to, how active I should be, when can I go back to work… And was told those questions would be answered at my post-op appointment the following Wednesday. A little frustrating, but whatever. And I left, and we went home. I couldn’t walk unassisted, so spent a few days going back and fourth between my house and my mom’s house. At least my face had colors other than white and yellow at this point. Still a bit more sickly pale than normal.

Two days later, showed up to my appointment, and my doctor had scheduled it for a week later and wasn’t even in that day. A fitting end to the last confusing couple of days.

Here I am, ten days after the initial hemorrhage. I still have not received any post-op care, and have my post-op appointment THIS Wednesday (13 days after the initial admittance.) I had asked to talk to a doctor at my supposed-to-be post op, and got my wish, but she was unwilling to answer any questions about post op care since she was not my doctor. Great. Thanks to the power of the internet, I got it mostly figured out myself.

I am healing well. I can’t lift anything over a few pounds and can’t stand up completely straight. I have a 7” long horizontal incision that looks like a cesarean scar. I have some minor pain that feels like bruising more than anything else, but overall feel pretty good. Things look to be healing nicely.

I got to see some of the best of patient care, with my initial arrival and my time in the ISO, with caring and competent staff. And I got to feel absolutely neglected for a while by the not-so-intensive care ward. They had me in a post-pregnancy ward, and part of me wondered if the nurses would rather be talking to happy mothers than someone like me. At least I got to enjoy the entire hospital experience, from the best to the worse. And I’m happy to be home.

(I also lost my dream job that I had gotten just a few days prior to the situation, which sucks pretty hard. But I’m trying to ignore that for now.)