Surgery

I've had a crazy 48 hours.  After enduring pain and discomfort over the long weekend, I called my doctor on Tuesday and got a mid-afternoon appointment.  My exam lead to a referral for an ultrasound at 7:30 p.m. that evening, where a large blood clot was found.  That discovery lead to being admitted into the hospital and a 1:00 a.m. CT scan.  My string of medical interventions finished off yesterday with a last-minute decision for a late-afternoon surgery. I'm exhausted, but feeling thankful my medical issues are on the path to being resolved.

When my doctor first broached the subject of surgery the next morning, I was scared and overwhelmed.  Until that point, I was being kept in the hospital for observation and even though the CT scan hadn't ruled out continued bleeding, my hemoglobin levels were steady and I was actually feeling the least amount of pain I had had in days.  I was bored out of my mind sitting around my hospital room and I missed my family, so I tried asking the doctor if I could leave and just come back every three hours for another blood draw.  Otherwise, I was just hanging out around and feeling like I there was no reason for being there. 

Before my doctor even determined surgery was necessary, she had insisted she felt more comfortable if I stayed in the hospital until she could be sure I was going to be okay, because it's easy for young and otherwise healthy people to tolerate a lot of bad stuff going.  Indeed, I'd put up with a lot of pain and discomfort over the past two weeks as proof of her point.   But since I was feeling pretty decent by yesterday, I thought maybe all I needed was to continue resting.  Despite how healthy I looked, my doctor impressed upon me how I could go downhill very quickly and she'd rather that happen in the hospital and not at home in the middle of the night. 

Despite how well taken care of I was at the hospital, never in my life did I want to be home with my family so badly than when I was faced with an unknown amount of time in a hospital for reasons I wasn't so sure required me to be there.  Thinking about my kids and wanting to be with them made me cry.

My case was apparently unusual enough that my doctor consulted her colleagues who've treated many patients with ectopic pregnancies and complications as a result and they determined that the state of my health was a "ticking time bomb."  Yes, if the internal bleeding had indeed stopped, I'd be fine and the blood clot would have been absorbed into my body. But if it didn't and the clot ruptured or broke up, the consequences would have been disastrous.  Although the decision to operate isn't taken lightly, being able to remove the blood clot would be an instant cure. 

I was nervous going into surgery, but was at least feeling somewhat reassured that because I was having laparoscopic surgery, the recovery would be a lot easier than when I had c-sections. More importantly, I reminded myself that I have to take care of myself for Oliver and Soren.   

For all the worrying I did about whether I even needed to be in the hospital at all, the discoveries during surgery showed exactly how serious of a situation I was in and how I truly was the ticking time bomb my doctor had referred to me as.  Surgery turned out not to be just the best option, but an absolutely necessary one. 

My doctor's original goal was to remove the blood cot, drain out blood that had gathered in the abdomen and then stop the bleeding.  As soon as she got in there though, she couldn't see past the fallopian tube, which was swollen and heavily scarred.  She immediately removed it so she could see past the "mess." Because the tube was in such rough shape, she assumed at first that the ectopic had implanted there.  Once the fallopian tube was out of her way, though, she discovered that the ectopic had actually implanted in one of my ovaries, which had split open completely in half and was still bleeding and covered in scars.  So not only did I have an ectopic pregnancy, but I had a very rare ovarian pregnancy, which occurs is less than 3% of ectopic pregnancies.

It blew me away to think that I had been walking around with internal bleeding and a ruptured ovary.  After my successful round of methotrexate, I couldn't believe that there was anything left of a sizable amount that could cause a rupture.  My doctor explained to me that ovaries are really sensitive, so even if the ectopic never grew big, it could still do more damage than if it had implanted in the fallopian tube.  Without that round of methotrexate I had a week and a half ago to break up the ectopic, my body would have been in a lot more serious trouble and a lot sooner, and I would have probably ended up in emergency surgery.  I was relieved to hear that there had still been a need for the methotrexate even though I still needed surgery in the end. 

Now that all the problems have been identified and either removed or repaired, my doctor thinks I'm well on my way to a full recovery.  I'm no longer a ticking time bomb and am humbled by the knowledge that the doctor wasn't just being overly cautious when she said how serious ectopic pregnancies and the risk of rupture are.  I'm thankful now that she consulted with her colleagues and she didn't let me go home while she tried to figure out what the heck the problem was, because in her words, it would have been a matter of time before I "crumpled" if I hadn't had surgery.

I'm now waiting to be discharged from the hospital.  I'm super tired, but at least the pain doesn't seem to be as bad as it was after c-section.  Recovery from a laparoscopic surgery is a lot easier on your body since it only requires small incisions.  I hope that remains the case. I still have recovery ahead of me and have been given the same restrictions (no heavy lifting, housework, no driving while on pain medications, etc.) that I had after Oliver's and Soren's births. 

I look forward to being back at home and with my family.  I felt so lonely at the hospital without them, so it really lifted my spirits when I had visitors.  Our nanny brought Oliver and Soren to the hospital to hang out with me the morning of surgery and then Chris took over when it was time for the kids to go home for lunch and naps.  The biggest surprise was when I was wheeled back into my room after surgery and I saw Chris sitting in my room with our two little boys in his lap.  The surgery started an hour later than expected and took a lot longer than anticipated, but there was my little family patiently waiting for me.