Return to the ER

Yesterday we went to the Great American Beer Festival for Mike's quarter century birthday. Yes, he is the baby, I try to not think about it most days. Anyway, aside from it being awesome for everyone who was not DD, I had a particularly uncomfortable day. As soon as we got to the festival, I noticed some spotting and increasingly severe cramping, which of course I looked up immediately on google. Essentially it said it is not a good thing, but it is common. Not normal, but not super critical. However, as the night progressed it went from spotting to actual bleeding. I was torn between telling Mike and ruining his evening and not telling, but as the night progressed it became clear to me that I wasn't going to be able to just ignore it. So, instead of staying out drinking all night and being DD for four drunk frat boys, I took them all home.

Of course, upon arrival at anywhere with an internet connection, I immediately looked up what first trimester bleeding could mean. The data was terrifying. First of all, 50% of all pregnancies end in a miscarriage, usually in the first trimester. Now, this goes back to science actually making life suck. A lot of those happen in the first few days of pregnancy and it used to be that your "period" was just a few days late, when in actually conception happened but implantation went awry. However, not that you can find out you are pregnant 5 days sooner, you can also find out you miscarried 5 days sooner, which is to say at all. Moving on with the stats. About 20-30% of women bleed during the first trimester after you take out implantation bleeding, which happens to more like 50% of women. Some of the reasons are known, and some aren't, but 50% of women who bleed eventually miscarry. The reasons that are known also suck: miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, STDs, etc. By the middle of the night the bleeding was bad and Mike and I agreed I would go to the doctor in the morning.

So, after sobbing uncontrollably for a good hour I fell asleep. Kaiser opens at 8:00 on Saturdays and has an Urgent Care center at the Westminster office. I was so relieved that the ER was not my only option. So I called the emergency nurse to have a phone consult before my appointment. The nurse was helpful and walked me through a lot of information. At the end of the phone call, she told me to go, immediately, to the ER. She said not to drive and not to speed, but to get my husband to take me to the hospital and to arrive there within the hour. Her words were somewhere along the lines of, we don't know what is actually wrong, but if it is ectopic, it can be life threatening and we have to rule that out before we can do anything else. Terrifying. I woke Mike up and told him the news and we headed to the ER. Neither of us thought it was that severe, but essentially it is one of those things you have to do. Like an appendicitis, you don't put it off until Monday. So for the second time Mike took me to Good Samaritan where I answered all sorts of things that I have never said in front of another person before. Being pregnant really decreases privacy.

The doctor saw me, they took a crap ton of blood and took away my hot chocolate (so that if I did have to have surgery, I wouldn't be full). I love this hospital, and most of the people there, but I really didn't like my nurse because she didn't seem to have a clue. Like, she asked me if I had a tampon in. What? I am pregnant! Anyway. Also, the IV dude sort of sucked and used some sort of huge needle. I am not exaggerating. I told the nurse that it hurt and I told the doctor I didn't need the IV because I wasn't having a problem with liquids, but no luck, they left the bastard thing in the whole time.

Pretty soon I went to ultrasound to check for the location of the pregnancy. The x-ray tech is quite possibly my favorite person right now. They did belly ultrasounds, which was fine, but they couldn't see anything. Then came the totally awesome inter-vaginal ultrasound. Fun times. She took a ton of photos and told me she would explain them later. That is when I got the best news, she could show me exactly where the baby was in my uterus. At four weeks we could see it, actually 4 weeks and 5 days, which is exactly where I thought I was, which was awesome. Not much of a baby, just a small dark dot, but it was there. I also have a cyst on my ovary which makes it tender and can cause some cramping, but also raises my progesterone. She went through all the scans with us and talked to us. Apparently I have a Y shaped uterus, which is abnormal but not dangerous. So the baby nestled into one side of the Y and the other side of the Y could still be unaware that I am not pregnant and could be sloughing old cells like a normal period. It doesn't hurt the baby, but it can lead to bleeding throughout pregnancy. She was awesome. At the end she told us that she isn't actually supposed to tell me any of this, but often in the ER they don't go over it with you and you have to wait until you see you OBGYN to get any information. I am so glad she told me, because that is exactly what happened.

I went back to my room and had a pelvic exam (with Mike in the room, how is that for awkward) and a catheter to extract urine. Super fun times--apparently I have a small urethra. That shit hurts. Then we waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually they came in and told me my urine was fine and my ultrasound showed my pregnancy was in my uterus so it was safe. They also said my cervix was closed, which is good because it opens when there is impending miscarriage. All good. I did have an infection that I remember reading about, but they can't treat it until I am past my first trimester. It causes cramping in the lower abdomen. That was it. Nothing about my ultrasound or anything. I am SO GLAD the x-ray tech told me. The doctor told me that if I am going to have a miscarriage, I will have one. There is nothing they can do about it, and nothing I did to cause it, it just is. It is predestined genetically at this point. She told me could definitely still have one, but it is not impending nor guaranteed and I can carry the baby to term as far as my blood work and other tests are concerned. I have to back in to track my beta levels of hgc. Finally the shitty nurse took out my IV and informed me that indeed the needle was really big and that was why it hurt. No shit. I never actually had any fluid, just an empty IV for four hours. Regardless, the shitty nurse gave me my discharge papers BEFORE they got the results on my creepy infection, so my diagnosis was pregnancy. $100 for piece of mind was totally worth it.

It took me a long time to research the infection because I didn't know the name and I couldn't find it. It wasn't on my discharge paperwork because the shitty nurse wrote it up before I was actually discharged. Essentially it is from having the ph balance off, which is the result of pregnancy or an excess of semen which changes the ph. Whatever. It is essentially Mike's fault, but so is the baby, so I am good with it. :)