More Trouble

I'm not sure how to start this post besides saying that this miscarriage did not end well. I had gone in to see the OB and we both agreed that I would miscarry naturally similar to the previous miscarriage. I knew about what to expect and things were already underway so off I went. I was to get my blood drawn every couple of weeks to make sure my hCG levels were going down to zero. I think after a couple of weeks I had stopped bleeding and my levels decreased from around 9047 to around 253 in mid-October and were down to 28 at the beginning of November. Each time the nurse called with my lab results, I told her that I had not passed any large tissue, or any tissue at all that I could tell. She talked to the doctor and said that was fine since my hCG levels continued to decrease. 

I was supposed to get another lab draw mid-November but around that time I felt that I had ovulated. So I decided to wait until after I got my period to get another hCG number, hoping that my period would sort of flush everything out and I would be at zero afterward. Sure enough, at the beginning November I had a pretty much normal period. We were happy that things seemed to be over and I was planning on going in with my lab orders on the 17th. Unfortunately, things changed on the night of the 16th and I ended up in the hospital but for a different reason.

At the start of the week and a little bit over the weekend, I was feeling fine physically but a little hormonal. I thought it was odd since my period had just ended but Brett was having some health scares so I just chalked it up to being highly anxious about that. Things started making sense Tuesday evening (the 17th). I suddenly started getting some cramping around 7:30 that night while sitting on the couch. By 8:00 when we typically put the kids to bed, I had to tap out and have Brett do it because I had started bleeding and passing a little tissue and the cramping was fairly uncomfortable. Since I hadn't passed a large piece of tissue, I knew that this was finally when my miscarriage would come to and end after almost three months.

This cramping and bleeding got pretty intense in a hurry and I spent the rest of the evening in and out of the bathroom and in quite a bit of discomfort. I took a couple ibuprofen but they didn't help at all. Brett had gone to bed and I was unable to lie down because of the cramping. From midnight to 2:00 I was in enough pain where I was mostly pacing the floor trying to get through it. I kept thinking that the next cramp would be the last one and I would pass that tissue that was causing me so much pain. All this time I was losing quite a bit of blood, probably enough to fill a pad every 30 minutes although it was hard to tell because I was on the toilet half the time. I finally had to wake Brett up (reluctantly since he was going through his own health scare at the time) at 2:00, worried that something was wrong. He had me call the OB office out of Topeka. When the doctor called back, she said to go to the ER if I was filling more than a pad an hour or feeling dizzy/lightheaded or my heart was racing. I wasn't having any of those symptoms so I decided to try to make it through the night and plan to go to Topeka for a D&C in the morning. I knew the ER in Seneca wouldn't be able to do a whole lot for me just because of some intense cramping and heavy bleeding. They would just send me to Topeka the next morning (since I am high-risk, they won't treat me). I had taken a pain pill from my c-section around 2:00 and it had kicked in by 3:00 so after we got off the phone with the on-call doctor I tried to go to bed to get a little rest.

I thought I had slept a while, but looking back I probably only got a few minutes. I woke up around 3:30 after a cramp and got up to go to the bathroom. By the time I turned the bathroom light on I was feeling extremely lightheaded. I had lost too much blood. I called for Brett and sat down on the toilet. He came right in and about the time he reached me, I passed out. I came back pretty quickly so he went to get some water. By the time he came back I was trying to get up and passed out cold. He had tried to lift me but I was dead weight so he couldn't. He went and called my mom to come over and just said he had to take me to the hospital. Then he came back to throw me over his shoulder and get me to the ER. I remember waking up on the bathroom floor and he was telling me I was foaming from the mouth. He helped me to the kitchen and as he was slipping on his shoes I felt myself starting to faint again. I told him we needed to go now and couldn't wait for my mom to get there. When we got to the garage, the frigid air kept me awake until we got to the hospital. They wheeled me in and started and IV. Slowly I started feeling better and after an hour or so (by around 5:30) the cramping and bleeding slowed down.

We were able to leave at 7:00 and were told to come back at 8:00 for a sonogram so they could see what was still there. Sure enough, there was a large round mass of tissue in my left uterus. The right looked empty and I assume the period I had was from that side. We went back home and waited for a call from Topeka on what time to come for the D&C. They called around 9:30 or 10:00 and told us to head right down and be there by around 11:30. We waited for quite a while at the surgery center waiting for them to squeeze us in. The whole day I was very out of it and extremely tired. If my head could rest on something I was able to halfway fall asleep. The doctor told Brett he took out tissue the size of a ping pong ball. I was under anesthesia which did not help my lethargy in the upcoming days. I was sent home with a $270 prescription that Brett believes was supposed to make sure the heavy bleeding didn't start back up. It worked. Ever since I have had some light bleeding and clotting but not a lot and minimal if any discomfort.

It was an emotional and exhausting couple of weeks for us. Brett calculated that I was up for 39 hours straight except for a couple very short naps. Myelle had a fever and cough the whole time and I ended up having to take her to the doctor the very next day after my D&C and she had an ear infection. As I mentioned, Brett was also having some health issues so we were worried and attending various doctors for him as well. Besides Myelle's birthday and Christmas it's not a December that I would like to remember.

The next question is where do we go from here? This was a very traumatic experience for Brett and as it was happening he was adamant that we not try again. I didn't blame him, I don't know how well I would have held it together knowing that my spouse could literally die in my arms from this (luckily it wasn't that severe and I didn't even need a blood transfusion, but when I was passing out we didn't know how bad it was). Now that things have calmed down we have decided that depending on what the doctor feels is safe, we would like to keep trying but we will be sure to have a D&C done right away if we miscarry again. Although realistically it doesn't seem like it's in the cards for us, we have really embraced the idea of having a larger family. The fact that I have even been able to get pregnant without fertility treatment is amazing to us. It's unfortunate that these miscarriages seem to keep occurring. We hope that it's just "bad luck" as our OB says, but it does seem like more than that. So for now, we will talk it through with the doctor and determine the best path to walk down. After this crazy month, we have decided to hold off until we have an adult vacation in May to get some R&R and time for the two of us.