Below is an email I wrote to a friend soon after my ectopic. She experienced an ectopic pregnancy as well and I had a friend I could go to with questions, thoughts, and a shared experience.
April 28, 2011
Physically, I am feeling stronger each day, but emotionally, I feel like I'm on a roller coaster ride. As we grieve, we're leaning on the Lord for his comfort, strength and peace that surpasses all understanding. I wanted to share more details with you that I didn't share on the home group site.
Monday afternoon (my birthday), I experienced the worst pain imaginable. I took some medicine and it helped take the pain away. When James came home from work, he took me to Abington Hospital. The resident doctor did some blood work and informed us that we were pregnant. My pregnancy hormone was 760! I never reached that level before and was in complete shock since we were on a break from trying to conceive. I took a bed ride to get a pelvic and internal ultrasound to find out the location of the baby. I asked the tech if she saw anything and said that she didn't see anything in my uterus. After hearing those words, I didn't ask anymore questions. Once I was rolled back to my room, things moved very quickly. They told me I had an ectopic pregnancy, I needed emergency surgery, and had me sign a consent form just in case I needed a blood transfusion. During my stay, a couple things happened which made me nervous about the night shift staff, but once I met my surgeon, she put me to ease and I finally felt like I was in capable hands.
I entered the operating room around 1:30-2 am and the surgery took 1-1.5 hours. The nurses woke me up from surgery and I said, "I just played with my kids in heaven". One nurse said, "Aww, did you hear that?" and the other nurse replied, "yes". I honestly can't remember any details, but those were the first words out of my dry mouth. I couldn't open my eyes because they were glued shut by dried tears and swollen eyes, but I could hear the nurses talking to me and their voices sounded familiar to me...one nurse had the voice of a friend from work and the other nurse sounded like a friend from griefshare. The dream and familiar voices were comforting to me.
After sleeping for an hour or so, the doctor came in and showed me some amazing pictures of the surgery. It turns out that I had a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. The doctor cut a slit where my baby had attached to my left filopian tube, removed my baby, and tried to seal it together by burning it, but the bleeding wouldn't stop. After a couple attempts to stop the bleeding, there was too much damage done to the tube, so they had to remove it. My right filopian tube had twisted due to blood flowing into my stomach cavity and the surgeon suctioned out as much blood as possible. Thankfully, both my ovaries are OK, my uterus looks healthy and they were able to untwist my right tube. The surgeon recommends we try invitro to bypass another ectopic pregnancy in the future.
Monday afternoon (my birthday), I experienced the worst pain imaginable. I took some medicine and it helped take the pain away. When James came home from work, he took me to Abington Hospital. The resident doctor did some blood work and informed us that we were pregnant. My pregnancy hormone was 760! I never reached that level before and was in complete shock since we were on a break from trying to conceive. I took a bed ride to get a pelvic and internal ultrasound to find out the location of the baby. I asked the tech if she saw anything and said that she didn't see anything in my uterus. After hearing those words, I didn't ask anymore questions. Once I was rolled back to my room, things moved very quickly. They told me I had an ectopic pregnancy, I needed emergency surgery, and had me sign a consent form just in case I needed a blood transfusion. During my stay, a couple things happened which made me nervous about the night shift staff, but once I met my surgeon, she put me to ease and I finally felt like I was in capable hands.
I entered the operating room around 1:30-2 am and the surgery took 1-1.5 hours. The nurses woke me up from surgery and I said, "I just played with my kids in heaven". One nurse said, "Aww, did you hear that?" and the other nurse replied, "yes". I honestly can't remember any details, but those were the first words out of my dry mouth. I couldn't open my eyes because they were glued shut by dried tears and swollen eyes, but I could hear the nurses talking to me and their voices sounded familiar to me...one nurse had the voice of a friend from work and the other nurse sounded like a friend from griefshare. The dream and familiar voices were comforting to me.
After sleeping for an hour or so, the doctor came in and showed me some amazing pictures of the surgery. It turns out that I had a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. The doctor cut a slit where my baby had attached to my left filopian tube, removed my baby, and tried to seal it together by burning it, but the bleeding wouldn't stop. After a couple attempts to stop the bleeding, there was too much damage done to the tube, so they had to remove it. My right filopian tube had twisted due to blood flowing into my stomach cavity and the surgeon suctioned out as much blood as possible. Thankfully, both my ovaries are OK, my uterus looks healthy and they were able to untwist my right tube. The surgeon recommends we try invitro to bypass another ectopic pregnancy in the future.
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