April 22, 2012 – The Beat Goes On

Last week I had finally started to recover from the emergency surgery on my birthday.  The bleeding had dwindled down to spotting and that alone was making me feel better.  I hadn’t had a single contraction since the surgery.  I was still feeling exhausted and drained, but I was so happy with the not being dead part of life that I was willing to ignore it. 

I saw my internist on Tuesday.  She is amazing and offered an iron transfusion to help me get back on track.  I decided to wait, because I wasn’t feeling that badly.  Wednesday I was slammed with a pounding headache every time I tried to move.  I felt nauseous and dizzy all the time and had to keep closing my eyes to try and steady myself.  Doc said I needed to return to the doctor.  We made a deal after the birthday drama; I would keep my doctors in the loop with any and all changes and allow them to make the decisions about what was important and what could be ignored.  That way when something major changes it wasn’t such a shock.  I also think that we could have avoided the emergency surgery if I had gotten my internist involved the first time I went to the ER.  Apparently because I was polite and cleaning myself up they didn’t realize I was serious about the pain and bleeding.  Had I called my regular doctor she could have helped advocate for me or could have seen me the next morning and she would have helped me.  That was my mistake and I don’t plan to make it again. 

I called my doctor and got in to see her on Thursday.  She agreed with Doc that I was looking pale and not well.  They took some blood, she ran a few tests, and she came to the conclusion that I was going to need some blood.  My blood pressure was so low that I would nearly pass out when changing position from sitting to standing or laying to sitting.  I had noticed when I tried to pet my dog that morning I got really dizzy when I stood up.  I had been making myself move slowly to compensate.  My poor heart had been working overtime to try and keep my body oxygenated.  Between my asthma and my propensity for low iron my body has a hard time remaining oxygenated on a regular basis.  Add a month of blood loss on top of it and we were looking at a very over taxed body.  I agreed to head to the fusion center and get 2 units of blood.  Not something I ever thought I would do.  Doc was on overnights last week, so he was asleep for all of the fun.

It turns out you can’t just walk in and get blood, it takes a while to get the blood ready, so I spent all day at the fusion center.  Thankfully, some of the residents were nice enough to spend their lunch break with me.  It pays to bake them cookies and treats! 

Fusion nurses are the best at finding places to stick people.  They stick giant needles into people all day long.  My fusion nurse told me my veins were looking pretty shot.  She finally opted to stick me right above my IV stick on my right forearm.  It was not a pretty stick.  The vein kept collapsing on her and she had to hold it just right to get the blood to flow out (for typing and cross matching).  It actually made a hissing nose; she said she had never heard that before.  Awesome.  My veins are trashed and the IV hurt all day long.   



Apparently getting blood
 does not make you
sparkle in the sun. 

It wasn’t until around 2:30 that my blood was actually ready to be pumped into me.  I wouldn’t recommend it, it hurts… a lot.  It basically felt like my whole arm was swollen and achy.  It throbbed with the machine and if I moved my arm at all it would block the IV and the machine would shut off, so I had to sit perfectly still for 3 hours while my arm hurt.  It did make me feel a lot better though.  That was kind of amazing.  I am pretty sure my doctor is a genius.  

Bleeding in reverse.

It was while I was sitting there, watching myself bleed in reverse, that I started to think about everything that had happened.  Watching this machine pump blood back into my body I started to realize that I really could have died.  Who almost dies because they got pregnant?!?!  Why is this happening?  And the dreaded, totally illogical question; what did I do to deserve this? 

I know I am not being punished.  That being said, it is hard to not feel like I am being punished.  I got pregnant.  Then I had a miscarriage, 2 D&Cs, a painful and embarrassing trip to the ER, several painful pelvic exams, I nearly bleed to death while crying on my doctor’s exam table on my birthday, and to top it all off I had to have blood pumped back into my body.  That kind of feels like punishment.  That kind of feels like the universe just bitch slapped me and said, “NO!  Bad girl!  Don’t do that!” 

I am sure it doesn’t help that my hormones are still out of whack.  My HCG was 37 on Thursday, so I am hoping it will be 0 when I see my OB on Wednesday.  I hope that will be the last blood draw for a while.  I know I will have to keep getting stuck and continue to have my HCG checked for a while, but hopefully it won’t be every week.  Lately it seems I don’t go 5 days without a blood draw or IV.  In grad-school we had a professor who told us that exposure was the answer to curing all fears.  We were told even exposure to needles would reduce a person’s fear.  I am going to go ahead and tell you she was wrong.  Exposure to painful stimuli does not reduce the fear associated with the stimuli; it is more likely to create the experimental neuroses documented by Pavlov.  I know I am certainly feeling more neurotic, but I am trying to deal with it.  I am trying to let my body heal and let my brain process everything that has happened.  I acknowledge that I am feeling very emotional and worn out.  My body feels old, much older than ever before and I wonder if it will ever feel better again.  I feel beaten down and hurt.  I am not sure how this will all work out, and for right now I am stuck with the repeating thought; who gets pregnant and almost dies?