From bad to worse (graphic)

We went to bed not long after 9. I was extraordinarily uncomfortable. I even went to sleep (or tried) laying on a heating pad. I was having strong cramps every 2-3 minutes. I would say it was on the same level as the labor I experienced with Little B. The heating pad did very little. I needed heat on my back and on my stomach, and that only offered a little bit of relief. Mr. B rolled over a couple of times, and I kept saying I couldn't sleep at all. At 11:30, in the middle of one of the cramps, I felt a pop and a gush. I told Mr. B to wake up to help me. I knew there would be a large amount of blood. My plan was to take a shower and see how I felt afterward.

I felt much much better. I brought a pillow downstairs and even started to compose an email to my friend about the whole experience. Midway through the email, the pain started to return. This time it was much much worse. I started feeling gushes of blood. The next few hours is a blur.

I would run to the bathroom to sit on the toilet. Blood was all over the place. Some in the toilet, some on my clothes, some on the floor. It felt like I had to go to the bathroom. But all that was coming out was clots, tissue and blood. I was sobbing. I thought maybe I could be tough and suffer through it. I knew that if it all came out, I wouldn't have to have the surgery. Finally, I called the on-call doctor from the practice. was trying to talk to him through the pain. I explained the situation to him. I asked if I should stay home and try to wait it out or go to the ER. He told me if I could, to wait it out. But if there was too much blood, I should come in to the ER. I asked what too much blood was, thinking I was bleeding quite a bit. "Too much" to him was going through a pad an hour. I told him I was bleeding so much that I couldn't even stand up. He never insisted that I come in, and even now I don't know why.

I thought maybe I could wait it out a little bit more, so I went up to take another hot shower. I was bleeding so much that I was practically just standing in a pool of blood. I tried yelling for Mr. B, but he was sound asleep. I quickly gathered some clothes and woke him up. I told him we had to go. I called Mom and Dad and asked them to meet us there. Mr. B woke up Little B to get her ready. I sat in the bathroom until he was ready to leave. I don't even remember the car ride. I talked to my parents one last time and asked them to have a wheelchair ready for me when I got there, because I knew I couldn't walk. I was in too much pain and I would start bleeding everywhere.

When we pulled up to the ER, I slid into the wheelchair. I waited for what seemed like an eternity. First for the guard to get off of the phone before he would let us go through the metal detector. Second for any nurse to acknowledge our presence. I sat there sobbing wishing somebody would come help me. We finally got back there and a triage nurse had to wait for her computer to boot up. She asked which one of us was her patient. Surely, it couldn't be the one sitting crying in the wheelchair. She took my blood pressure and asked if it was normally low. I said everybody always tells me it's good, but that's all I know. She gave me a lecture about always knowing your numbers. I don't think that was an appropriate time. Also through the course of her questioning, she asked if I was pregnant. Considering I had already told her why I was there, this didn't exactly thrill me. I answered, "Well, not anymore." She didn't even flinch.

I finally got back to a room. All I wanted was pain medication. They had me undress and get into the hospital gown. They put pads all over the bed for my bleeding. As I got undressed, I bled all over the floor. I threw some of my clothes away because it wasn't even worth washing them. I got situated in bed. They drew several vials of blood and started giving me fluid. I was hooked up to monitors so they could keep an eye on my blood pressure. Then they took me back to do an ultrasound.

I think the ultrasound was the worst part of the whole thing. Just 12 hours before, I had an ultrasound at my doctor's office. While there was no heartbeat, and the baby had stopped growing, there was a baby. When I looked at the ultrasound machine in the hospital, there was nothing. It was so painful. Physically and emotionally. Finally I got back to the room to be with Mr. B. Then they gave me the wonderful pain medication. I let out a sigh of relief as it helped with my pain. A physicians assistant came in to work on me. She said I passed most of the baby on my own, but I kept bleeding because there was still some tissue remaining. Until they were able to remove that tissue, I would keep bleeding. A resident came in to work on me. It felt awful. It sounded like someone mining. And felt like someone was using a hammer and chisel on my insides. She said my body did a good job, and I would most likely not have to have the D&C as scheduled. I was so excited about this.

The excitement was short-lived. My nurse came in and told me she wasn't comfortable discharging me (as I had already received my discharge papers) until I stopped bleeding. Another doctor came in to take a look at me. She repeated the procedure that the PA and resident did. Except she was WAY less gentle. It hurt a lot. She proceeded to do an ultrasound. This also did not feel good. And she didn't have very good news for me. While I was able to pass most of the tissue, there was still a small amount remaining. After all of those hours of pain, and after all of the bleeding, I was going to have to have the D&C anyway. They wanted me to wait until my scheduled time of 3:30, but they were concerned by the amount of blood I had lost.

The nurses continued to watch me while I waited. My heart rate was getting very high - 12o to 130. And my blood pressure was dropping. A second blood test showed that my red blood cell count was lower than desired. They decided they were going to move the surgery up to 10:30 just to make sure there wasn't something else wrong. Before I went in for surgery, I asked to go to the bathroom. My nurse brought a portable toilet in for me to use. After I finished, she got some hot soapy water and wash cloths out for me to wash up. Since the bleeding had slowed considerably, this was much appreciated. I got back into bed and waited to go up to surgery.

Shortly after we arrived, I finally got to see my doctor. I was so happy I almost cried. He was very unhappy with the course of events since I had arrived. Nobody checked their work on an ultrasound before my discharge papers were completed, nobody had given him the full story. I wasn't happy with the other doctor at his practice, but he was too upset with the doctors at the hospital. Everybody asked me all kinds of questions (again). Then I had to leave Mr. B to go down to surgery. I tried hard not to cry, but I did have a few tears on my way down there. When I got there, they gave me something in my IV that basically put me to sleep. I remember moving onto the operating table, but that's it. I vaguely remember them putting mesh underwear on me (and I remember being excited about this). And then next thing I knew I was waking up in recovery. While they waited to take my blood pressure twice, I was able to finally have some graham crackers and Sprite. I missed Mr. B so much at this point, I started crying. I have no idea how long I was sitting there, but soon enough they were able to take me down to see him again. He said he waited for me for about an hour, but the surgery itself only took 3 minutes. This was the only sleep I got in 42 hours. And it felt like the best sleep of my life. Now the recovery was going to begin.