but when one has surgery it becomes a lot harder to keep things a secret.
So...two and a half weeks ago we found out we were expecting again. Because of our history and because I am seeing a reproductive endocrinologist, I was being followed closely and having my hCG levels checked. My first draw was low for 4wks, but the next draw more than doubled in 48 hours. Doubling is the important thing, so we figured things were probably ok, even with the low numbers. I had another draw 96 hours later. Well my levels had barely doubled in 96 hours. Not a good sign. I was told I would probably miscarry and to come back a week later for another draw. I was in the airport in Charlotte when I got this news - flying to Louisville for my brother and his fiance's bridal shower. Airports are a great place to get bad news. It's a little hard to fall apart when you are are surrounded by 1000 people and trying to figure out how to get a connecting flight to Louisville when you've missed your flight due to ridiculous delay leaving Fort Myers.
Anyway....
I spend the weekend in Louisville and it's a good weekend despite my bad news.
I get home Monday night and James and I go out to dinner. We get home around 11, in bed around midnight. And I'm really uncomfortable. Not in pain...but my back and some weird feeling in my left side. I just can't get comfy and I don't sleep well all night. I had also been spotting intermittently since Saturday afternoon at this point. It just does not seem right to me, so I call my RE's office as soon as the open - around 830. The nurse takes my call and I tell her I just don't feel right. So she says she'll talk to the doctor and call me back. About an hour later, she calls me back and tells me that Dr. Sweet wanted me to go for repeat labs that day instead of waiting for Thursday. He also wants me to have an ultrasound that afternoon. So off we (Corbin and I) go to quest for bloodwork. The nurse mentions that they are a little concerned about an ectopic pregnancy, but not to worry...blah blah blah.
I go in for my ultrasound at 230. James Aunt Amy agreed to watch Corbin for me - didn't even ask why, which I appreciated b/c I did not want to get into all of it lol. I don't take him to the RE's office with me b/c there are women there who can't get preggo and I'm trying to be sensitive. Plus an internal ultrasound exam is no place for a curious, nosey 4 year old. I'm not up for that lol.
I see the nurse practitioner - who I really like. She asks me a bunch of questions. By this point my discomfort is pain and it has moments where it is pretty bad. So we do the ultrasound. No sign of pregnancy in my uterus - but we would expect that based on my levels. My tubes look ok - but it can be hard to tell on ultrasound sometimes.
She brings Dr. Sweet in and he says it could be ectopic, it could be a normal miscarriage. He has no idea. He can do surgery in a couple of hours to find out but it would be stupid to do so if it's not ectopic. BAsically - he has no idea what the best option is. He does a couple of tests - one involves me jumping to see if it makes the pain worse (it does) and then tells me I can go home, but I am to call him if the pain gets worse at all and we will do surgery. He's confused. I have no risk factors. The first thing he asked me when he walked in the room was how many people James and I had slept with before each other. (no one else in case you're wondering) I don't have an IUD, I'm young, they don't think there is any scarring anywhere - based on my HSG last fall. I should not have an ectopic pregnancy. But he's concerned now b/c there's no evidence of pregnancy and I have pain mostly on one side of my lower abdomen. It's not a good thing.
So I go home, pop a tylenol 3 with Codeine, and put my feet up for a couple of hours. The pain begins to get worse b/c that is my luck. Nothing can be easy around here. James reminds me that I am supposed to go to the hospital. I say we can wait. So we wait. A couple hours later, it's definitely worse and I'm still putting off the hospital. BEcause if I go to the hospital, I'm having surgery - Dr. Sweet has made that perfectly clear. I don't want surgery if I don't have to and if I over react and end up with unnecessary surgery at 830 on a Tuesday night - well my doc and the anesthesiologist on call are not gonna be happy with me. Plus it's surgery. I don't like being cut on. It's not my thing.
My friend Terri - who has had an ectopic - texts me around 8 and she's worried about me. I promise I'll go if I need to. About 30 minutes late, we decide we should just in case. Call Dr. Sweet, he says go on in, we can do surgery around 1am. Call my IL's - they take Corbin for us and off we go. After mass confusion in the ER about where to send me, I get a voicemail from Dr. Sweet saying OR knows I'm coming, surgery at 11. The ER figures it all out and I bypass triage and everything. I'm sure the other ER patients were wondering why I got pushed ahead since I really didn't look critical and some of them were in BAD shape. I get sent straight over to OR and they start prepping me.
Again, Dr. Sweet says he will be surprised if we get in there and it is ectopic - I have no risk factors. The man has only had 2 other ectopics with no risk factors in 20+ years of practice. He's had several ectopics - but high risk women for them. Not women like me. But we're gonna be safe and do surgery. I sign all the papers, tell him to only save the tube if there is minimal damage and off we go.
When I wake up, we're all glad Dr. Sweet played it safe. Ectopic pregnancy - left tube. He saved the tube b.c there was no damage to it. It was caught very early, thank God, and I was still at low risk for rupture. We have no idea what caused me to have an ectopic pregnancy.
Since he saved the tube, I will have to go in every week for hCG draws until my levels are 0. There is a chance some cells may be left behind if they leave the fallopian tube and those cells may start growing. That would mean another surgery or a shot of methotrexate. So we have to watch carefully and make sure we catch it if that happens.
That pretty much sums up my week. Like I said - we hadn't planned to share, but it's slowly leaking out. So we decided to just get it out there.
It's kinda different from my other losses. We're very sad, but we are also very relieved that we caught things early enough that there weren't any problems. It's weird. I can't really explain how I feel.
I told the nurse practitioner if I never have to have another ultrasound again, I will be a very happy person.
