Two.

Two years ago, I was seven and a half weeks pregnant with Tate after a whole crazy fertility journey that took more out of Dave and I than I care to admit.  We had told a handful of people.  We were planning on telling our families on Thanksgiving.

I took my Meme to the store to shop for her famous stuffing ingredients.  I was happily making plans to put together the tables.  I couldn’t wait to hit the stores for Black Friday. 

The morning before Thanksgiving, I woke up and things didn’t feel right.  I thought it was pregnancy nausea.  Finn had crawled into bed with me that morning when Dave left for work and had fallen back asleep.  I made it ten steps to the bathroom before figuring out that something was very very wrong. 

I was on the floor seconds after having that thought.

A lot of the details are fuzzy after that and it is just now gotten to the point that Dave and I can talk about it.  Before, when I’d ask, he’d get that uncomfortable tone that meant he’d curtly answer my questions and he didn’t want to re-live any of it.

I screamed for Finn.  He was three at the time, he stayed really calm even though I could tell he was upset.  He brought me the phone and I managed to dial Dave. 

In hindsight, I should have just dialed 9-1-1, but I remember thinking they would have had to breakdown the door because Finn didn’t know how to open the lock and I didn’t know what they would do with Finn.  I don’t remember any of what I said to Dave on the phone, but he said that he knew something was wrong as soon as I started talking.  He left work and sped home, calling my mom and then my RE {fertility doc} on the way.

I either passed out on the phone with him or right after.  Then, I managed to crawl into the shower.  Again, hindsight that was the stupidest thing I could have done, but I thought icy water would prevent me from passing out again.  That wasn’t the case apparently because when Dave got home, that is where he found me.  The doctor’s office told him to get me to the hospital immediately.

I remember him helping me try to stand up and get out of the shower.  I remember not even fathoming being able to get in the car to go to the hospital.  I was trying to work it out in my head how I could do it and I think it was then that Dave had told me the paramedics would be there any second, he had already called 9-1-1.  My next thought was that I didn’t have any clothes on and I was afraid my friend Chad would be the paramedic responding.  Dave pulled a sundress over my head.  It was thirty degrees out and I was soaking wet from the cold shower.  I had no bra, no socks, no underwear even.

Now that time has passed, all of this is funny to me.  That my thought was about my friend seeing me naked is ridiculous.  I realize that this is probably a really weird coping mechanism and obviously, things could have ended differently.  Dave still doesn’t find it funny, but he’s the one that remembers everything with a clear head, so I try to be sensitive to that.

I was trying to joke with the paramedics even though the situation was clearly not funny.  I remember being on the stretcher.  I couldn’t tell you what they looked like, but I remember them being so kind to me.  Our friend across the street saw what was going on, my cousin passed our house and saw the ambulance and called, at some point my mom arrived to take Finnegan and I was oblivious.   I have no idea if the sirens were even on.  I do remember that with every pothole in the street we’d go over, it felt like someone was stabbing me in the uterus and then I’d lose consciousness again.

We got to the ER and I remember Dave was there seconds after we arrived.  He told me later that he drove eighty the entire way.  They gave me Morphine and even that wasn’t touching the pain.  They hooked me up to an IV.  They put an oxygen mask on because my levels were all over the place.  They gave me drugs so I wouldn’t throw up from the pregnancy nausea.  I don’t have any clue how many doctors had come in.  There were ER docs, surgical consults, residents, my RE’s partner, and an anesthetist.   After a few bags of fluid and nothing coming out, they had to put a catheter in.  The pain was so bad that I didn’t even feel it.  Oh, here is a fun fact, for some reason every time I would lay flat, I felt like I was suffocating and the stabbing pain shot up my chest.  So have you ever tried to put a catheter in when you aren’t laying flat? 

There are some things that my poor husband can not un-see.

They asked Dave if he had a copy of my living will.  They knew I was bleeding internally, but couldn’t agree why.  They knew that my hemoglobin levels were at a point where they would need to make a decision about a blood transfusion.  They prepped me for surgery.  I knew that if they did surgery to figure out what was making me bleed that I would likely lose the pregnancy that we had been dreaming of for a year.  A nurse who was with me the entire day, she was the one that talked the surgery team into waiting and trying some non-invasive ways of figuring out just what was going on.  She probably saved the pregnancy. 

They did two ultrasounds that I sobbed uncontrollably through because they were so painful.  They were able to rule out gall bladder, appendix, ectopic pregnancy.  They figured out that I had a burst corpus luteum, made worse by the ovarian hyper stimulation I had because of the fertility drugs.  It was the size of a lime on my ovary, the RE told me it was the biggest he had seen, and just getting out of bed ruptured it.  {Here is the jist.}  It caused a hemorrhage into my abdomen that thankfully slowed enough on its own after twelve hours of bleeding that they could hold off on surgery.

We were in the ER for ten hours before they admitted me.  My husband only stepped out once in ten hours to make a call to my mom, I think because he didn’t want me to hear how scared he was.  He had his hand on me the entire time, holding my hand, touching my hair, moving around so he wasn’t in the way of anyone doing their job.  I remember him crying in the ER and Dave never cries, he told me much later that at that point he was pretty sure that it was going to end badly. 

I was there for three days, I missed Thanksgiving, I barely remember any of the hospital stay.  We went to visit my sister in law in the hospital this summer and Dave told me I was right across the hall and I had zero recollection.  I came home and slept 16-20 hours a day and round the clock babysitters, walking to the living room had me exhausted, I wasn’t allowed to lift anything over a pound or two, no sex, nothing strenuous whatsoever for weeks until they were positive that it wouldn’t hemorrhage again. 

If you’ve made it through this ridiculous tome, I will send drinks to your house.  It has been on my mind all week.  Obviously, you know I’m just as whackadoo as ever, so it all turned out ok in the end.  It sure made me more thankful for the end result.