Ectopic Pregnancy

This happened four years ago. We paid off the substantial bills for two hospitals and an ambulance a year later, while in the middle of a major house renovation, and I wrote about it a year after that.  

The cramps first started in December, one evening before a work party. We had both showered so we had a quickie. At the end, instead of an orgasm I was struck by a wave of vicious cramps that shut down my abdomen. Cy was confused and apologetic as I writhed on the bed. Gasping, I sent him away, and emerged in a dress and tights thirty minutes later, still in pain. 

A few more episodes struck aggressively over the next few weeks, and the bleeding started mid-month, first spotting then a regular flow that at some point started soaking through pads like my period never did. 

I was convinced my IUD was misbehaving. I did one quick Google, found nothing substantive, and left it at that. The thought of my warmhearted doctor fiddling with the IUD like she had when she inserted it, sending incredible pain through my pelvis and causing months of side effects, made my skin crawl, so I did nothing. 

Finally I made a doctor's appointment because the bleeding was so heavy and the cramps left me supine on the ottoman trying to find a position where the muscles in my stomach would leave me alone. I decided my solution was to get that little U of metal and plastic removed and then discuss other options. My appointment was in two days. 

But that night started to feel like a fever dream, the pain spreading upward like terrible suspenders into my shoulder. I started having dizzy spells and feeling too hot, too cold. While editing pages after hours at work I had to go lie down on the floor of the manager's office a couple times until the desire to faint had passed. After going to a city council meeting, I made it home, groaning as I shifted my carcass out of the car. I ate no dinner and went straight to the shower, and when that felt too intense and black spots danced before my eyes, I sat down and had a bath. 

Cy sounded more worried than I'd ever heard him, but I waved him off. I have an appointment. I can't go in any earlier, I have to get the paper out tomorrow morning. The ER is way too expensive, and what if I get a male doctor? He won't know what to do with me.

Sleep was hard to come by and after a few uneasy hours I came awake unable to breathe deeply or lay comfortably because of the pain in my shoulder. I took a piss, took a drink, and Cy was awake, and asserted again that we needed to go in. This time I said yes, I do need to go to the ER. 

We packed water bottles, books, and snacks, me distrustful of hospitals and wait times and how long we'd be away. No bra, no contacts, I walked into the ER with Cy, and a nurse I knew greeted us. He realized I was a mess. IUD issues, I told him. 

Other men checked me into the ER, took vitals, tried to absorb the information I provided. To my relief a female NP soon parted the curtain and started questioning me. She didn't seem to take in what I was saying though, or I wasn't explaining my symptoms in the right order, because she was most concerned about the shoulder pain, not the wracking cramps. She asked if I had been doing manual labor that made me sore. Yes, I've been putting in flooring in the house I just bought but I am intimately familiar with the sweet feeling of muscle soreness, I tried to say. 

A technician ushered me toward the X-ray room and I thought about all those articles I had read about hospitals performing unnecessary tests. No, I don't need that, I told him. The NP came back in and demanded to know why. I told her I wasn't concerned with my bones, it was my abdomen that was killing me. I peed in a cup. Got an EKG, although I suspected I didn't need that either. 

Twenty minutes later she returned and her demeanor had totally changed. Maybe I was no longer the hypochondriac with a sore upper body. 

She told me I was pregnant. I burst into tears. She explained it was most likely ectopic, outside the uterus, and they didn't have an ultrasound technician on call. She said she was going to send me to Rexburg (the hospital there is just a baby factory, she said) so we got ready to head west. 

At the desk they confirmed with us that Cy was fine with transporting me, but then my ears started ringing, my vision blurred, and I bent over to right myself. Their voices, sounding far away, grew loud with alarm, and they sat me in a wheelchair as I shook and sweated and heaved into a bag. I had apparently almost dropped to the ground, almost hit my head on the desk, but Cy caught me in time.

They put an IV in me and watched my color return. Ambulance it is, then. Two EMTs hustled me onto a stretcher and into the back of the vehicle. One of them, a sturdy young woman, stayed back with me and murmured comforting things and had me gauge my pain. She warmed up the little room until I stopped shivering. She pumped a dose of painkiller into my IV. Isn't fentanyl a pretty gnarly opioid? I asked. She considered this and then said she preferred it to morphine. 

I drowsed a little but didn't feel much of my pain being killed. I saw the headlights of my Subaru through the back window as Cy chased us going 80 to Rexburg. 

There, the first nurse I interacted with called my malignant growth a baby and chastised me for leaving the ultrasound tech waiting for an hour. I was on enough drugs to knock out a horse, having asked the EMT for more to little effect. I decided I didn't need to apologize to her. 

The ultrasound tech was younger than me and very apologetic for the extreme discomfort she was putting me in. She said nothing about the mysterious clouds showing on her screen, so I just gritted my teeth and dug my nails in as she manipulated the wand inside me. 

An unpleasant male doctor with a flat head, a shapeless belly, and a stilted manner asked me a couple questions but then tagged out - the specialist had arrived. He was much more pleasant without any air of judgment and was the first person to lay out possible solutions as well as the cause of the pregnancy. 

He was weighing the options but felt that surgery was the right move. Cy agreed to talk to my mom and call the newspaper to help direct them a little bit, as I gave up the last shred of control I had over the situation. They put drugs into me that had me passing out as they wheeled me into the operating room. 

I came to with a sense of noise and light. The word salad bombarding my brain eventually coalesced into It went well. It wasn't ruptured.

I felt hazy and quiet and hurt. Cy sat by the bed feeding me water, gently scratching my back under the hospital gown and letting me know what my friends and family had said while I was under. 

Finally the specialist returned and showed me a sheaf of photos of a red bulbous object inside me. The procedure worked - they drained the blood from my abdomen (the blood that was pushing up into my chest and causing shoulder pain), eliminated the growth, and double and triple checked my reproductive organs. 

He told me they caught it just in time. Ectopic pregnancies can be deadly. I didn't let my mind linger on that. And IUDs seem to increase the chance of ectopic pregnancies. This same thing happened to my wife. Also once you've had one you're more likely to have another. 

Cy later told me he had Googled my symptoms a lot more thoroughly than I had and saw pretty clearly what it was, but didn't want to pressure me. 

I was still hurting but could sense that the badness was gone from my system. I sent out some texts. Asked Cy to grab me a Sprite when he went out - he was clearing starving and running low on fuel after a hungry, intense night and morning. I had dressed myself (slowly) when he returned. An aide wheeled me to the curb where Cy picked me up. Every little bump on the drive shook me with pain but I felt clear-eyed and full of new life. Well, that was something, I thought.