On Wednesday morning, the 7th of October, I all of a sudden had a really sharp pain in my abdomen. I tried to go to the bathroom to see if that would help but it did not. So, I went and laid down in my bed for a couple of hours and the pain finally faded but it did not go away. I was able to stand up but not straight. I told Brady I wondered if it was pain associated with an ectopic pregnancy but wasn't sure. We were having the missionaries over for dinner that night so I had to get ready and get the house clean and food prepared. That evening while watching tv in bed my stomach just hurt and you couldn't touch it without it hurting. I honestly couldn't tell if I was just being a baby with gas pains or if this was something more serious. Brady just kept telling me that if it was bad I needed to go to the hospital but that he didn't know what I was feeling so it was up to me to make that decision. The next morning, Thursday the 8th, I pretty much felt the same as the night before. Then at around 1:00 I got an extreme pain in my abdomen again and just couldn't ignore it anymore. It was so bad at that point that I could hardly move. I called Brady wondering what I should do. He said I needed to go to the hospital. I didn't want to pay a $100 copay for them to tell me I was constipated or something so I called my doctor's office to see if I could just come into their office for them to check and make sure everything was ok. After I told her my symptoms the nurse said it sounded like an ectopic pregnancy and I needed to go to the hospital because that's where they would send me anyway. So I called Brady in tears because of pain and stress. I didn't know what to do. I was just sitting there on my bed on all fours in so much pain. After a couple minutes on the phone he said he'd call me right back. When he called me back he said his parents were on their way to take me to the hospital. His dad stayed with Bentley and his mom drove me to the hospital. I texted my friend Cassidy, whose husband is an ER resident at the hospital I was going to (Southwest Integris) to see if he was there so I could request him as my physician. He was there but I didn't get assigned to him. His friend Deacon was the resident that helped me. They had me change my clothes and put on a hospital gown and then they did a quick ultrasound scan to see if they could see anything right away. After just a couple of seconds Deacon told his assistant (a medical student) to hook me up to the monitors asap and then left the room. I was like "What is going on?" He came back with the attending physician and she did an ultrasound also and told me that there is a bunch of fluid in my abdomen that shouldn't be there and that they think I had an ectopic pregnancy and that it had ruptured. They started an IV, gave me morphine, and then took me to radiology to get a better look. I did not like being on the morphine. It just made me feel all dizzy and tired and out of it. They rolled me back to radiology and the technician did a transvaginal and a regular ultrasound. The whole ultrasound lasted about 30 or 40 minutes. It was so painful. Laying flat on my back was the most uncomfortable position to be in and then having her push on my stomach and stuff just hurt so bad. She finished up and put me back in the wheelchair and then left. I wasn't sure when she was coming back and it felt like she had been gone for a long time. Brady's mom was about to go see if she could find her when she finally came back. She wheeled me back to the ER and then Mike (Cassidy's husband came in) and told us that it does indeed look like a ruptured ectopic pregnancy and I'm bleeding internally and they will have to do surgery. Then Deacon and the doctor came in and told me the same thing. Brady got there at about that time and Brady's mom left. They then brought with them the OBGYN that would be performing the surgery (they couldn't get ahold of my doctor). She explained what they would be doing and that I would feel 10 times better after the surgery because I wouldn't have the pain of the blood in my abdomen. She said they would try to do it laprascopically but that she wasn't too confident that they'd be able to because of how much blood was in my abdomen. She said if they couldn't do it that way then they'd have to do an incision similar to a C-section incision and I'd have to stay in the hospital for 72 hours. I was hoping and praying I wouldn't have to have that incision!! They started another IV in my so that if I needed a transfusion they could do it asap and not have to wait. They then took me back and got me ready for surgery. I went in around 7:00 or so. They were able to do it laprascopically!! That is the first thing I asked when I came out of anesthesia. They removed the tube and sucked out all the blood. I had 3 incisions, each about an inch or inch and a half long. I had 500 ml of free flowing blood in my abdomen. I really did feel so much better after surgery, though! It was such a relief to not have that pain in my abdomen anymore! I was able to go home that night. Brady's mom had taken the boys to her house and they stayed the night there. Brady's work let him take Friday off without pay which was nice of them so that he could stay and take care of me. This was such a traumatic experience and everything seemed to happen so fast. We really didn't have much time or opportunity to emotionally process the fact that we weren't pregnant anymore because of the need to take care of my body physically. Sometimes I can't believe that I've been pregnant now 5 times and I have 2 kids here at home and that all 3 of our losses have been in 3 different ways. I now have a really small chance of getting pregnant again because my working ovary now doesn't have a tube. The tube from the other side can grab the egg but it doesn't happen very often. Brady and I aren't sure what the future holds for us but for now we aren't ready to go through the emotional and physical journey of pregnancy any time soon.
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