the past week

So I don't really know how to blog about this so I'm going to do a timeline.

Last Sunday, I wasn' t feeling very well so James made me stay home from church and sleep. No big deal, I was just really tired. Monday morning I woke up and went down stairs to eat breakfast. I called James, as I normally do when I get up in the morning, told him to call me back (at 9:17) I went downstairs started doing my normal morning routine: make coffee, check email..blah blah blah. I went in to the kitchen to fix something to eat. I took one bite of my cereal when I started having this blinding pain in my abdomen. I didn't know what was going on so I went up stairs. Generally when that happens it's gas..sorry if that's too much information..but it's true. As I was walk up the stairs I got very light headed I couldnt' see...and I laid down on the bathroom floor. About 2 min. later I openend my eyes and realized that I passed out. I was sweating, but freezing...my head was still spinning. Immediately I called James to come home. I knew something wasn't right....I don't pass out.

5 min later James came running in the door yelling for me. I was still upstairs on the edge of the bathtub trying to hold myself up. Im pretty sure when he saw me he knew something was wrong because he had one of those priceless "you look terrible" expressions on his face. The pain still hadn't subsided so I told him I needed to go to the E.R. I guess I should probably mention that I was around 8 weeks pregnant. So DEFINITELY need to go to the E.R.

We got to the E.R. at Bassett not 10 minutes later ( luckily its right down the road). They put me in a wheel-chair right away on account that I could barely stand up. The check-in nurse proceeded to ask me questions about my symptoms...I managed to piece together words to make sentences...though I'm not sure it made sense. It's still really fuzzy at this point. oh, and when they took my blood-pressure at this point it was about 90/40. Not so good. Explains why I passed out.

Now I'm in my room in the E.R. the bring a team to draw some blood. The regular E.R. nurses try 3 times and can't get a vein so they have to call in the I.V. TEAM. GREAT! This lady finally draws about 5 viles of blood to run some tests..you know normal stuff..red blood cell count, HCG (pregnancy hormone), and several other things (so we're up to 4 sticks with a needle). We wait for several hours before they are able to get me in for an ultrasound. FINALLY, around 2:30 I get wheeled to the ultrasound room (meanwhile blood pressure still around 95/55).

The lay me down on that oh-so-wonderful table and the tech proceeds to do a regular ultrasound for about 30 min...pressing hard on to my abdomen.....that...is....still...hurting...like...crazy!!! Okay, so really bad news. I'm supposed to be 8 weeks and they can't see a sac. Which means I don't have an inter-uterine pregnancy. I started crying...and James still is not really sure what's going on so over my sobs Im trying to explain to him that the baby isn't growing in my uterus (not good) but it is growing somewhere (even worse). So now, to add insult to injury, they inform me that they MUST get pictures from inside. JOY. At this point I am still in writhing in pain and they decide they have to do it THEN.

So, after about 10 minutes of me screaming on the table they finally get enough pictures. As soon as that was finished James sat me up slowly to help comfort me....and he puts it I "started to go" Yep, passed out again. The next thing I remember is 5 nurses in the E.R. running towards whomever is wheeling me back to the actual emergency room. I think I woke up in the room again. I dont' really remember that, but I was super sweaty again. The Dr. in the ER read my ultrasound quickly and determined that the baby was in fact growing IN my left fallopian tube. Ectopic pregnancy. okay. I know what this means but we have to wait for the Dr.

Since they know, it was ectopic, they were able to start me on an I.V. and they have to take more blood. AGAIN, the ER nurse misses twice and gets in on the 3 or 4..I can't remember and I don't feel like counting the trackmarks on my arm (we're now around 8 sticks) So I have an I.V. now. The couldn't get it in my hand or arm...so it went in my shoulder. Then they decide they need more blood and I need more I.V.'s, apparently I was dehydrated. So now, I have almost 11 places where they have attempted to draw blood and 3 different I.V.'s in an assortment of sizes in both shoulders.

Almost 6 hours after getting to the ER I finally get something for the pain. I should also mention that my blood pressure is still hovering around 100/40-50. So the can't give me much for the pain (it lowers your blood pressure)

This is where it gets a little scary. I'm flat on my back because I need to get blood to my head, but now i'm starting to have trouble breathing and my stomach starts slowly get bigger. I begged the nurse to set me up a little but she can't because they're afraid I will pass out again. (each time I "go" gets longer and longer I'm up to 3 blackouts now...once in the room for now reason).

Now, it's waiting game. For a couple of hours Im laying on this table in the ER 3 needles in me pumping me full of fluid and some pain killers, having my blood pressure taken every 10 minutes to makes sure Im not crashing, and 10 nurses and Dr.'s coming in and out every so often to look at my vitals.

It's now around 6:15 the Dr. we've been waiting on is out of surgery and comes to talk to us. He stays very monotone when telling me what they have to do. Sometimes with an ectopic pregnancy it doesn't last very long and just stays in the tube. Not this time. My HCG level came back at 13,000. The baby was still growing up until that morning and had managed to rupture my tube. Actually, had expanded so much that it blew out the back side of my ovary. Reason for low blood pressure, blackouts, pain, trouble breathing, expanding tummy?? I'm losing blood internally. Now i'm scared. Terrified actually. At this point James still has no idea what the Dr. is saying. I do.

45 mins later I was in surgery....ahh but not without the nurses trying to get me up to go to the Bathroom first....I passed out and hit my head. I am up to 5 blackouts now. I went out twice waiting to go in to surgery, twice in about 10 min, so now I'm getting really scared. BUT thank God for all that Yoga and meditation because the whole day I was able to keep myself relatively calm by breathing.

As we're waiting I hear the Dr. say to the nurse "In surgery STAT" and "Stop the bleeding first". Luckily at that point I was only conscious for about 90 more seconds. I think it hit James for the first time how serious it was when he asked my nurse "she's going to be okay..right?" and she replied "yea, after they get the bleeding stopped" They did. Praise God. they also had to remove the baby and my left tube.

Thank God, and airmiles my mom was able to get here by Tuesday and left this morning. I honestly dont' know if we could have handled it without her. I'm not completely immobile, but close. I have a nice 6 inch incision that is healing quite nicely and a heart that will be on the mend indefinitely. I definitley didn't think this was how I was going to be spending my Christmas. My hormones and pain killers are playing tricks on me. I have a breakdown twice a day. Mostly in the evenings. But I also thank God for watching over me. I think it really hit James just how serious this was sometime on Wednesday. Their a lot of things to be thankful for and a lot of things that break my heart on a daily basis. Anyway, that's how we spent the week recovering from Emergency Surgery. It'll definitley be an interesting Christmas, but I am still here to celebrate it and for that I thank God!

I hope you all have a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!