The Story Of A Ruptured Ectopic Pregnancy
I had been trying to conceive for about 3 cycles after using the withdrawal method of birth control successfully for over 8years. On December 17th, 2019, I had a cervical biopsy as a follow up to an abnormal pap. Ten days later, on December 27th, 2019, I began to bleed. I marked it down as my period since it came right at the expected time, behaving just like my periods usually do. When the bleeding continued past my usual 5–7 days, however, I began to feel a seed of concern. I had read in a few places that the first period after a cervical biopsy can be a bit more crampy, long, and heavy than a normal period. So, when the bleeding continued at a very minimal flow, I attributed it to the recent biopsy. By January 10th I was still bleeding and decided to see a doctor. By that point, I felt I may have been miscarrying, but never took a pregnancy test. I can’t explain the thoughts… it was a subconscious whisper — ‘maybe I’m miscarrying’ — but the conscious and loud part of me was thinking, ‘this is a complication of the biopsy’. I did not feel that I was pregnant, although I had been sensing that I may be pregnant in the couple of days leading up to the start of the bleeding on December 27th.
On January 10th, 2020, I went to see a doctor but was sent away from my clinic as there were no ob-gyns on call that day. Speaking with a nurse there, I decided not to go to the emergency room because I didn’t have a fever or smelly discharge. I waited the weekend out (in moderate levels of pain- I have a very high pain tolerance… Perhaps someone else would have described the pain as extreme, I don’t know). That weekend, I could not be made to laugh for the pain. I could hardly even walk. On January 13th, 2020, I returned to the clinic, this time convinced that something was wrong. Although they had ob-gyns there that day, they were again too busy to evaluate me. Distraught and full of adrenaline, shaking and crying, I found a nurse in the hallway who showed me some compassion. Speaking with me, she advised me to go to an E.R. That is when I took a bus to the nearest hospital that would accept my insurance.
My partner Manny was with me and we arrived at an urgent care center, not technically the hospital but adjacent and on the same campus. I was seen, evaluated, reported symptoms, blood drawn, all that. Not long after, a nurse came to show me the blood work results. Testing positive for pregnancy, my HCG concentrations were at 1266. I felt no surprise, no shock. Only… ‘Ah yeah, that makes sense’. At that point I thought I was simply miscarrying. I felt numb. It felt like a small disappointment that I knew would hit me harder later, but that it was something I could roll with for now. Especially since I tend to get really fascinated by clinical stuff, asking thousands of questions about procedures and equipment…. I think that actively learning by observation was distracting me from having an immediate reaction of sadness or grief.
I was given an IV and fluids. I was ever-so-slightly anemic. I was transferred to the actual hospital and admitted to the ER. Part of me wanted to go home because I thought I was miscarrying and could finish at home in peace without further monitoring. But due to the extreme pain level, I stayed for further evaluation. Manny couldn’t stay with me once I was wheeled to the ER; He had to wait outside the hospital in the cold until I was given a room, if ever. So, we separated, and he tried to wait, but after 3 hours he decided to go home and rest. I told him I would call a car when it was time for me to go home and not to worry — we both thought I would be leaving soon. Then, my phone died a few minutes later.
I waited a long time, with no choice but to meditate, zoning out really far. I felt no impatience, and gradually, I couldn’t even feel my pain. Then, finally, I was taken for ultrasounds, abdominal and transvaginal. At first the technician made small talk with me, but 1/3 of the way into the procedure she became extremely serious. That put fear in me. I don’t remember much of our conversation but at one point, I told her that an ectopic pregnancy was one of my worst fears. Somehow, I still had no suspicion that this would be my outcome. After more waiting in the ER, someone came to tell me that it looked like my uterus was empty, but that there was ‘something’ in my abdomen along with a significant amount of fluid. I was taken to another area with a little curtain to give me privacy. Not long after, a surgeon came to tell me that it looks as though I have a ruptured ectopic pregnancy requiring surgery. I asked him a ton of questions and felt my only choice was the laparoscopic, but I felt really scared and still was ‘alone’ at the hospital. At that point, all I wanted was for Manny to come back, but I had no way to reach him with a dead phone. (After this incident, I made sure to learn his phone number!).
Sometime after I had consented to surgery -(when I asked to read the consent form I was laughed at, but they let me see it, and I essentially negotiated my way into a salpingostomy rather than a salpingotomy)- and before I went in for surgery, Manny showed up out of nowhere. I am so thankful for that. I told him everything I had learned in his absence and we cried together. He agreed that it appeared I had no other options, and he stayed with me as they prepped me for surgery.
Riding atop a stretcher toward the OR, as I glid down the hallway I found myself whistling the song that the nurse from the film, ‘Kill Bill’, whistles as she walks down a hallway with a syringe full of lethal poison, with the intent to murder a nearby patient. I did this subconsciously, but someone pointed it out: ‘Oh my gosh, WHAT ARE you whistling?!!?!?!?!’ We all had a good laugh and I felt so amused. But I also knew deep down that I had just betrayed something about myself — I do not trust surgeons nor doctors, and I was completely terrified not only of my current condition but of the potential negligence of those about to perform an operation on my body. I was surprised by how narrow the operating table was. It was no wider than my hips, which are pretty narrow. Do they strap us down? How do we not roll off? I didn’t ask those questions. Instead, I had the nurse explain to me how a catheter works last minute because it had only just occurred to me that they’d probably be using one. The nurses put me under with compassion and strokes to the brow…
I woke up and started scratching my nose immediately, pulling the mask from my nose and mouth. I remember hearing myself say, ‘it hurts, it hurts! stop stop stop’ but I don’t remember feeling pain. A woman’s voice said ‘shh shh i will turn up the gas’ and then I relaxed. They brought me to a room where I was to recover. My boyfriend had gone home when I went into surgery to get some sleep. My surgery was from 12 am-1:30 am, and I just lay away all the early hours of the morning waiting for someone to interact with me, too pumped with hospital drugs to sleep. I enjoyed the intermittent checkups with my nurses, the night and later the day nurse were both super friendly and I kept having to tell them to stop making me laugh because laughing hurt something awful.
I thought a lot about what had just happened. It started to really hit me. I spent a lot of time crying but with no contortion of the facial muscles, only tears falling effortlessly. Sometime around 7 am, Manny came in, and again I was so relieved to see him. We spent the day half talking to each other, half napping, or me talking on the phone to family and friends. I very immediately began telling the story to my closest relations and very quickly began to feel that telling the story was a potent medicine.
It was 4 or 5pm before anyone came to debrief me on the surgery. Until then I was in suspense; All I’d been told was that ‘things had gone well’ and I was now in ‘recovery’. I didn’t even know if the tube had been removed or preserved! Eventually, I was told the details, nowhere near to my satisfaction, but even after my questions were exhausted, I still didn’t have enough detail so I just gave it a rest. Anyway, they couldn’t show me any internal photos from the surgery that I’d been promised due to some sort of equipment malfunction (which I find very sketchy), but told me that they saw scarring on both tubes and that the unaffected tube did not look completely healthy, or at least it wasn’t anatomically normal. In the medical records, it was described as such: “a questionable somewhat tubular hypoechoic avascular structure in the right adnexa, lateral and posterior to the right ovary”.
I tried to get a better picture of the prognosis and all that but I was so exhausted of thinking in the western clinical mindset that I just stopped. Manny’s family came to take us home and that was that as far as hospital experience goes.
The following week was a lot of rest, tears, fears, and falling deeply, deeply, further in love with each other. We had a little honeymoon of unspeakable pain. Now, it has been a year since then and I am nearly just as bereaved and devastated as I was when I woke up from surgery. Forever missing my baby, my beloved Ezra.
