7:14 am - Wednesday, Oct. 05, 2005
The Big Scare
This story is gross. It is not an exercise in naval contemplation, it is a description of what it feels like to have a �Threatened Miscarriage�. Scary sounding diagnosis, huh. I'll go ahead and spoil the ending and let you know I'm still pregnant, so as to put you at ease, like.

I used to clean house to bring in some extra money. Nothing major- I�d vacuum, scrub a toilet or two, dust and take home $50. Nice work if you can get it. So I had just finished up and I was sitting in my car signing the check when I felt what is best described as the sensation of pissing one�s self. I look down and find a crimson stain spreading where I was expecting embarrassing wetness. So I breathe deep and think about how close I am to my obgyn�s office. I feel another gush. I think that for this I am going to need Rhogam, and Rhogam they do not keep at the office. They are going to send me to the hospital. I am going to have to go to the hospital.

Things that went through my mind:
�Boy am I glad I have insurance.�
�I need to call Simon, but I would be breaking my �No driving and talking on the cell� rule�
�Jesus that�s a lot of blood- this is going to be unbelievably messy�
�Don�t sound as panicky as you feel�
�I�m losing the baby�
�All these people are driving like normal and I�m driving like normal but things are so not normal.�

I pulled up in the emergency parking lot. Past experience tells me they are touchy about parking there. You have to let the valet park the car. I pull up, get out, and the dude goes, �Whoa�. We both know he�s not sitting in that. He kindly lets me park the car and walk in.

Walk in. Here�s what walking in is like: I try to walk normally through the parking lot whilst my clothes are literally sopping in blood. The parking lot is not empty, but I refuse to be embarrassed, because where the hell else is it appropriate to show up in bloody clothes if not the ER. I have to stop a few times because I feel such a gush, and each gush is Very disturbing because I�m imagining horrible, horrible things.

I get inside and walk up to the desk. What to say? I�m trying not to cry. A man is about to ask what�s wrong when the (lovely) triage nurse next to him says �Vag bleeding� in a kind of �duh� voice and comes around to bring me a wheel chair.

It is at this point that I am done holding it together. I say that I don�t know what I�m going to do, because I don�t want to lose the baby. We want this baby, I tell her, and I know there�s nothing they can do to make it stick. I think she asked a few questions, then starting taking vitals. There is a machine doing the measuring, and an assistant reading off the numbers. I asked if all this bleeding means I am losing the baby, and she says maybe, but not necessarily. At this point I quit crying and start to calm down. The aid says �She�s tachy� but I say �I�m kinda nervous, I bet it goes down� and sure enough it starts dropping right away.

They wheel me into an exam room, give me a gown and some towels and tell me I can clean up. There is no shower. It�s like having your bathtub overflow, then being given a roll of paper-towels. They tell me to do the best I can with the towels, and then they leave.
This is a scary part. My sweat pants are soaked in blood down to my knees, and I can feel that there is a large puddle in my underwear. I�m terrified I�m going to pull down my pants and find a baby there, real horror-movie stuff.

I take a peek and it�s Gross, but no baby. I fold the pants and underwear into a ball. Now I�m trying to wipe the blood off my legs, but more runs down. All I�m doing is getting the towels bloody. There�s blood in the sink, blood on the floor, blood on me- I feel like I�m making more mess than I�m cleaning up.

Eventually things are sort of under control, so I move on to trying to figure out what I�m supposed to do with the diaper she gave me. I end up just tucking it in between my legs. I put on the gown (Gown. What kind of name is Gown? A gown is glamorous. A gown is something you want to be wearing to a place you want to be�.) and sit on the little plastic pad with Big Bird between my legs.

And I wait. That is such a large part of any medical event. I wait for someone to come give me an IV. I wait for Simon. I wait for the meds to kick in for the delusional man next door. I wait for someone to come tell me that everything is OK and I am not, in fact, going to lose the baby.

A friendly nurse comes in and gives me an IV. It is reassuring to be looked after. She tells me they�ll take some blood, give me some RhoGam, peek up my hoo-hoo and send me for an ultra sound. Each event will, of course, require waiting, so I commit myself to having lost a day.

Simon comes in, looking nervous. I am sooooo glad to see him- whenever I�m down it does my heart good just to see him. I fill him in on the situation, let him know there�s a lot of hope available.

We are lucky enough to get a tech who was a medic in the military for almost 30 years. He was awesome. He knew what I was going to need before I did- I start to shiver and in he comes with blankets- �If you get iv fluids fast it makes you cold- they�re room temperature.�. He gives me another IV, takes my vitals and generally takes care of me in a most proficient manner. Super reassuring.

The Doctor is less reassuring. He drops in a couple times to tell me he�ll be back, then another Doctor shows up for a second to say the same thing. When it�s my turn to be visited he sets me up for the exam (a much more accurate term than gown- exam implies anxiety and unpleasantness�) and digs around a little in the nether-regions. I�m not usually embarrassed by this sort of thing, but I know it�s pretty messy down there right now.

When he straightens up he tells us there are no �Products of Conception� to be seen. As far as I�m concerned, it�s only a �Product of Conception� if it is unwanted, otherwise call it a Baby, bub.

He leaves, and we�re left to wonder if we�re going to get an ultrasound, there being some difference of opinion betwixt the doctors as to whether it�s necessary. Maybe you�re reading this and you�re going to be a Doctor some day, so I will tell you: it Is necessary. Not because I could die if I don�t get one, but because We Need to See that the Baby is Alright. Maybe this doesn�t go through the Dr.�s mind because to him it�s a Product of Conception, I don�t know, but even if they said �You have to pay for this out of pocket� I would have signed up.

As we wait, I begin to have some cramping. This scares me again, because up till now I figured I�d be fine because I wasn�t having contractions.

A new tech comes in and wheels us over to ultrasound. He wanted Simon to stay behind; all of us who know Simon know this wasn�t going to happen, and the tech was intimidated enough to let him come along. Turns out it was fine with the ultrasound tech. It was more than fine with me- I was scared. What if they did the ultrasound and we saw the little heartbeat and Then we lost the baby? What if we lost the baby and it didn�t die till after it was born?
Also, keep in mind that no one has told us Why I�m bleeding. They�ve said that it could be placenta previa (the placenta grew over the cervix), maybe placenta abrupta (the placenta pulled away from the uterus), or maybe the beginnings of an old fashioned miscarriage. There�s even the rare chance that I�ve got two babies, and one of them is up the fallopian tube.

The lady lubes my belly and waves the magic wand and there is the little heart beat- just a goin a mile a minute. It was very very hard to hear this. Up to now we�re wondering if the baby is ok, but we know that if we miscarry, the baby probably had genetic issues and just wasn�t meant to be. Now we�re looking at the little heart and it sure as hell looks ok, so the thought of losing it becomes more distressing. The tech measured, and poked around, and looked for other babies. Then she did another ultrasound right up the hootchie. Very uncomfortable. I kept thinking that it couldn�t be helping matters to have that thing poking around in there.

The tech left to go show the pictures to a Dr. She came back to clean me up and send me off, but still no word on why I was bleeding. They wheel us back to the ER, then wheel us out of ER and into a kind of ER-light. I believe this is because the ER-light is cheaper, and if all you�re doing is being observed you really don�t need the real thing.

A nurse says I can finally eat, so Simon the Brave gets me Wendy�s and calls everyone in the family to tell them, well, not much.

Finally the Dr comes in to say that it�s probably placenta previa, but everybody�s cervix is over their placenta in the beginning because the whole package is so small. He says go home, don�t have sex, don�t pick up heavy things. He doesn�t explain why placenta previa makes you bleed. Or how long not to have sex.

My pants have been tossed, hence an obvious delemma. I mean, it�s ok to come to the ER with bloody pants, but you can�t very well leave wearing nothing but a Sesame Street Pampers. The nurse wants to give me PJs. Apparently this is against protocol. The way things are done is to call a social worker to bring me britches. After a half hour a very nice lady shows up with some man-pants, wondering where the man is who needs them. She is very confused. She leaves and returns in fifteen minutes with lady-pants. Very nice pants. Simon wasn�t keen on me wearing some unknown-unwashed-stranger pants, but she said she washed them herself, so I was allowed to wear them. Still sporting spiffy Sesame Street diapers, I tucked everything into the pants and off we went.

My poor car seat. Do you know what happens to large puddles of blood that sit for 8 hours? I think the best description would be puddingnation. It puddingifies. It is gross. All I could do was fold the blanket over it and drive home.

And that pretty much sums up the day. Scariness, waiting, and worry. The funny thing is, you stay in that state afterwards, although to a lesser degree. That is, when I feel cramping, or I bleed a little, or I feel a pain it scares me. And we�re still waiting for the stupid placenta to grow out of the way. And in the back of my mind is the constant worry that something could happen to the baby. Scariness, waiting and worry.