Well, I was supposed to be pregnant by now, but instead I am stuck all day in bed in my Virginia hotel trying to figure out a way to safely get back home.
Last Thursday was my egg retrieval for my in vitro process. I had been in Virginia for two weeks and was getting more and more uncomfortable as my ovaries got bigger and bigger, and I was just plain sick of the constant shots and blood draws. I was looking forward to having the egg retrieval over with because my little Maddie girl was on her way to see me after two weeks of being apart.
But when I woke up from the egg retrieval, something didn't feel right. I was really in pain and really swollen. They did another ultrasound and said everything looked fine, gave me a Tylenol, and I was out the door. We drove from Virginia to Baltimore to check into a hotel and wait for Maddie and my mom to arrive at the airport. But some time during that hour drive I passed out. Josh woke me up when we got to our hotel and I was bawling because my stomach was hurting so bad and I literally could not breathe. He tried to help me to our hotel room but I couldn't make it. I threw up in the bushes and he got me back in the car and drove me to the nearest hospital. Luckily, it was one of the top hospitals in the country, Johns Hopkins.
Great doctors, but a crappy emergency room. There was no where for Josh to park, so he parked on the curb and helped me in the door as a security guard screamed at him to move his car. He sat me down and turned around to go move the car. Some lady was in my face asking me questions, "What is your name? Why are you here? Where do you hurt?" I couldn't move or talk and just said, "I'm going to faint." She disappeared as the entire room started spinning. I have no idea how long I was out, but I woke up half on the chair and half on the floor. The lady was in my face again asking the same questions. I said, "I'm going to throw up." She disappeared and came back just in time to hand me a little bowl. I kept throwing up and she kept asking me questions. I was thinking, "Lady! I can't freaking answer you! I'm dying! I hurt! I hate you!" But I literally had no strength to answer. They wheeled me to a bed in a room full of other interesting people (one whom was handcuffed to the stretcher with two armed police officers sitting next to him). Some med student was in my face yelling, "Tell me what's wrong or I won't know how to help you with the pain." I took a deep breath and with every ounce of strength I had left I responded in a quiet voice...."I am doing in vitro in Virginia, I had an egg retrieval this morning, my stomach and lungs and right shoulder hurt intensely, I can't breathe....." And then I barfed again. They immediately got me into an ultrasound which was so painful that I was screaming and my face was covered in tears.
To make an already long story short....turns out that my ovary hemorrhaged and I had internal bleeding. You hear that term on shows like Greys Anatomy all the time, but what they don't tell you is that it is life threatening and intensely painful. The blood had spread up through my lungs and into my shoulder. It was BAD. I was sure I was going to die.
So for the next four days I had painful ultrasounds, CT scans, and blood draws every four hours. I couldn't move or breathe at first. I realized that I might actually be getting better when on the fourth day I yelled at my nurse not to come near me and that I wasn't going to give any more blood samples. (If you could see my arms right now, you would see bruises everywhere. The nurses got to a point where they couldn't find a vein for a new IV because they had all collapsed or were covered in scar tissue and bruises.) I think my nurse took me serious because she stayed away from me for the rest of her shift. It's amazing how constant pain, and being in a hospital in a foreign place, and tortuous needles, and not getting sleep or showers for four days straight, and not being able to breathe, and not getting to see my daughter because of the hospital's "no guests under 12" rule, can turn an otherwise nice person into a nurse battering animal. I seriously got to a point where I would have told them where Bin Laden was hiding if they had asked me.
And I also got the lucky news that I have severe ovarian hyperstimulation on top of it. Apparently I just have to wait for my body to reabsorb the fluid in my stomach and for my ovaries' swelling to calm back down. Right now, they are each 10 centimeters big, and I have about a gallon of fluid in my stomach, which explains why I look 8 months pregnant and have extreme nausea and dizziness.
Awesome.
I remember watching Steel Magnolias as a kid and thinking Julia Roberts' character was an idiot. Why would anyone risk their own life to have kids? Dumb. But maybe she just didn't really understand the risk? I can tell you that it never crossed my mind that I would be the lucky one to get the extremely rare size effect of internal bleeding combined with the rare risk of severe ovarian hyperstimulation. I CAN say that this will be my last time doing in vitro EVER. So one of those ten little frozen embryos that I almost died for better work. Cause I'm done.
P.S. Is anyone interested in being my surrogate? I am accepting applications.
P.P.S. I'm not telling this story for sympathy, I'm just trying to explain one time to everyone (instead of fifty) that although I did in-vitro and look very pregnant, I am not pregnant. What a weird thing to have to explain.
