Coming Full Circle - Ch. 4

CHAPTER 4

At 5:00am the sonographer came in with his big machine. He was a nice guy. I asked him if he was there to take a better look at my cyst. He said "well, I was told you are pregnant and that I need to take a look to see what is going on." And that is how I found out I was pregnant, sadly without my husband there with me. He had brought an obnoxious nurse with him for the procedure. He prodded and poked around on my belly. It was not the most comfortable experience, I will say that. I remember him telling me that there was no baby in my uterus. At that point I knew that with all the bleeding, no baby in the uterus, and a positive pregnancy test, this was not a good combination. It got to be kind of a blur after that. I do seem to recall the moment he told me that the baby was growing in my tube. There was a lot of whooshing sounds. At one point the nurse asked in very chipper voice "is that the heartbeat?" Seriously lady!? You are a nurse. You should know better than to ask that question when you clearly know that my pregnancy would not be sustainable after hearing what the sonographer just told me. The answer from him to many of my questions that followed was, "I will let the doctor answer that for you." I knew he knew it wasn't good and wasn't allowed to share a lot of medical information with me. I bet that makes their job hard. In the middle of the sonogram, Scott came back in and I told him about the baby, but that it wasn't good news. When the sonogram was finished at about 6:00am we waited only about five minutes for the ER doctor to come back in.

When he returned, he wasted no time in telling us that I indeed had an ectopic pregnancy that was growing in my left tube. He said that the the gynecologist on call was on his way down and that I would be having surgery as soon as possible. I asked him what my other options were. I think I caught him off guard with that question because there were no other options at that point, other than being dead I guess. He left and we sat on the hospital bed and cried and prayed. Then, I called my mom who was still in Arkansas helping my sister and her family with the new baby. It was about 6:15am. I told her that I was headed into surgery. Unfortunately, this was not the most opportune time. My sister had developed a pretty bad case of mastitis and was sick with a fever. I told my mom to stay with her, but she said she would come down anyway.

The gynecologist came into the room and found us a bit shook up. Scott was taking it harder than I was. He was really concerned for me. The doctor explained to us what he was going to do. I was sitting up on the bed and Scott sat in a chair across from me. Mom had asked me to make sure he knew what he was doing. I was going to make sure I was fully informed before going under the knife. His response to my obviously ridiculous question of "have you done this procedure many times before" was "well, let's just say this isn't my first rodeo." Then, when I asked him how much this was going to cost, he looked at me like I was half crazy. He told me not to worry about the cost. This was going to save my life. I would find out later that the cost of saving a life comes at a very high price. He also reassured Scott that he would keep him in the loop every step of the way. Then he left the room.

I was again poked and prodded and put under for surgery at the brand new Baylor Women's Center. Then, by 9:00am I was in surgery.