Compartmentalizing

It's been three weeks now since the surgery that ended my doomed pregnancy. That seems like not that long ago at all and a lifetime ago, all at the same time. On Monday I had to buck up and go back to school, go back to work, go back to at least appearing like a normal human being and not a walking sad sack of a tragic story. It's been four days of Teacher Me--which actually feels like a lifetime. Every day takes so much out of me in every respect, and I am ridiculously hard on myself. Tuesday I had a difficult day and felt very ineffective and like I didn't know what I'm doing (because I'm new and...I don't, not really)--and I went home and cried on the couch to my husband. He was like, "You're right. You've been at this what, two days? You should totally be an expert by now." Sometimes perspective from someone else is really helpful when you have apparently lost all of yours. Because I have to put so much energy into learning all of my kids; learning two different buildings in terms of staff, curriculum, politics, etc.; and setting up plans for a program I have never done before, I have zero energy to put into my own baggage from this past experience. So I have to compartmentalize.

I have found that the best way to make it through my days at work without being the weird new teacher who runs to the bathroom to cry, or is constantly quiver-lipped, is to leave the traumatized part of me at home. I don't talk about it at school. I really don't have time to think about it at school. And if I find myself thinking about it, I have to shut that down quick because I can't afford to be messy at school. I know no one there, not really. Everyone has been great and supportive, but these are people that I met for the first time in June and have spent only hours with when it comes down to it. So I don't have to talk about it, even though it does linger in the ether a bit simply by the fact that I missed the first week of school and so missed being introduced at faculty meetings--so there are a lot of people who I meet in hallways or who stop by and who innocently ask why I was out (or just matter-of-factly comment on it, "Ah yes, I didn't meet you last week because you were out."). Not that many people have asked, and when they do I simply say "I had emergency surgery." Because I'm pretty sure going in for ultrasound at 2:00 and going under the knife 9 hours later after phone finagling by your doctor to get an OR the same day counts as an emergency. If I'm asked what kind of surgery, I say "the emergency kind." People who simply comment and don't ask just get a confirmation--Yes, I was out, but I'm back now and excited to be teaching in the building.

It's weird, because I have always been so open. Although sometimes I question that decision, like when I have so many people to update when things go horribly wrong. If I didn't tell quite so many people, I wouldn't have to go through the torture of explaining my story, over and over and over again. This year I think I can be a little sneaky--my morning building is super supportive. Most of my appointments are in the morning, so if I miss there, they will know why and it won't travel to my afternoon building. (I say "afternoon" but it's really 10:20 that I move buildings...my sense of time is skewed. That tends to happen when you eat lunch at 10:30 in the morning!) So I can compartmentalize myself that way, too--I can have a building where I have fewer students and a shorter timeframe for being there where people know (because they'll sort of have to if I need coverage for monitoring appointments), and my more challenging afternoon building where I am at full capacity and teaching straight through the last three periods of the day, where I am responsible for reviewing everything from Algebra to German to Earth Science and my head is spinning by the end of the day, where almost no one knows. There is no room for infertility at that building whatsoever. There is room for infertility in my car, crying as I drive home. There is room for infertility when I walk the dog. I think I may be the crazy lady on the street--I was the shuffling post-op walker in my pjs, and now I'm the sad-looking teary-eyed dog walker after school. But at least I'm not the sad-looking, teary-eyed new teacher.

My compartmentalizing plan occasionally has hiccups--like when I ran into a teacher from the high school who also moved to the 9th grade academy. It was a fire drill, with my most challenging group of students. She had known about what I was going through and knew what had happened in the summer, and she gave me a wonderful hug and expressed her sympathy. And I was rendered a near puddle. I couldn't even talk because had I opened my mouth I probably would have been wracked with sobs or outright bawling, and that would not be good in front of my students. This woman knew all of my hopes for this cycle and how devastating the loss was. And her knowing that opened me up to knowing that at school, which was not so great. She understood and didn't say more, but I felt badly--here was someone who was offering me condolences and support, but I just couldn't accept it in that setting. It was putting major cracks in the box I had put all that sadness into for the school day. I couldn't handle it. It's like my tears have welled up to about my nose-level, and if I see someone who knows to offer sympathy it starts the waterworks going. I'm not quite at the verge of tears but as close to the verge as I can get. I'm on the verge of the verge of tears.

Overall, this compartmentalizing strategy is working out pretty well for me, despite the occasional near-misses. I have yet to cry in school. I have come close, but I haven't spilled over.

I discovered that I also compartmentalize in a different way. Today we had our follow-up appointment with our doctor to discuss both the surgery (while I am not doped up and likely to forget everything) and our plan to move on to our frozen cycle. We talked at length about what actually happened during my surgery, and I saw the entire series of pictures of my innards. I have one set, and I was going to post them here, but I thought it's possible they may be a bit traumatizing for those who aren't insanely interested in the inner workings of the body and who don't think it's cool to see what a uterus looks like from the inside. But I saw all of the pictures today. And I found out that I compartmentalize differently in my doctor's office. I feel almost a responsibility to be positive and good-natured and humorous about the whole thing there. I feel badly because we are STILL there, working towards our goal. My clinic is awesome and everyone is very caring and friendly and genuinely enjoys seeing us come in, although they'd rather see us leave pregnant. It's another case where kindness and sympathy can open up the floodgates and leave me a puddle, and if I'm a puddle then I can't focus on all the information I need to have about what happened to me and what is going to happen to me with the frozen. I need to turn off the sad, traumatized part of me so that I can be as informed as possible. So I am overly gregarious, instead. It's not like I'm not normally an animated, enthusiastic, silly person. (I actually had a company that I no longer work for tell me in a warning that I was "excessively goofy," which is hilarious since I went on to work for one of the most conservative workplaces in my area with no personality issues. I can be goofy, yes, but I'm always professional in the right context.) I would say that today I bordered on "excessively goofy" at my clinic, making lots of silly references and jokes and trying desperately to keep the mood light. Which took a hell of a lot of effort when seeing the photos of my surgery that I didn't see before. The ones of my tube and pregnancy excised from my body and on a surgical tray, specifically. My tear factory was threatening to go into overdrive. Because seeing it like that was incredibly sad to me. It was neat to see exactly how they removed my tube and the pregnancy, and all of the endometriosis that was removed (thankfully Stage One, so not extensive, but still another piece in our infertile puzzle), and how the surgery was performed with little instruments. But it was completely and totally devastating to see the blue-purple bulge of tissue that was what could have been my baby, trapped in a thin membrane of tube, looking like a tumor. Seeing that made it real again. So immediately I went right into a barrage of questions and jokes about how I can't focus on anything. Because at that moment, I really couldn't focus on what was in front of me. Because it made me so incredibly sad and I was in danger of completely and totally losing my shit in front of my doctor and the student that was sitting in. Poor student, witnessing our complete silliness and odd sense of humor about the whole thing (I wasn't alone...Bryce was also a total goofball at today's appointment). Part of it is real--if you can't laugh about this stuff, you really have no choice other than to lock yourself in a dark room and cry for days. But part of it was a diversionary tactic. A compartmentalizing away my sad self and displaying my happy-go-lucky self.

I'm not burying my feelings, which would be unhealthy. I'm just squirreling them away to another place so that I can safely feel all the sadness and anger and loss in the privacy of my home, or my car. And so that I can put it all here in writing, instead of verbally vomiting it onto unsuspecting coworkers. So that I can be the well-adjusted (if wacky) patient, and not the hot mess I really am on the inside, within my sad, angry little box.

Getting Back in the Swing of Things

Tomorrow is a big day. It's a true return to "normal," a term I use loosely because I don't think I know what normal is anymore. But, it's my time to go back to being a productive member of society. Tomorrow is my first day of school.

I was given an amazing gift--a compassionate administration that saw through my efforts to look okay last Monday when I went in with my husband to attempt to split the getting-ready process between my two new schools and saw that I needed more time. More time to heal physically and not be in constant pain, more time to start the emotional healing process that I hadn't yet had much oomph to put into since the physical part was so consuming. It was a beautiful thing and, after an initial freak out and an Opening Day spent at home frantically emailing everyone and trying to make sure that my bases were truly covered at both schools, I surrendered to the time I was given. I spent many hours in bed, resting and not attempting to train for getting back on my feet. I did some preparatory work during the week but decided to spend most of my time to truly relax--I read and made counseling appointments and called the nurses to make sure that I wasn't missing some vital piece of recovery information. That was nice, it confirmed that I was prescribed laziness and quality time with the couch and/or bed. As I healed physically, the emotional side of things washed over me and I was so, SO grateful to have the private space to deal with the sudden crying bursts and feelings of overwhelming loss and sadness. This past Wednesday it was only the two-week mark since everything went horribly awry (or what had already gone horribly awry came to light). Unbelievable to me that it's only been two weeks--what was I thinking when I thought I could be okay to come back to work after only a week and a half???Thank goodness I was given the option I didn't think I had. The realization on Wednesday afternoon that only two weeks ago I had been pregnant and that now I'm not, missing a part of my body, and missing the first week of school was a trigger point for days of waterworks and anxiety and self-doubt. Did I handle it the right way? Was I somehow too optimistic? Did I set myself up for a devastation? (The answers are yes, no, no. I would have been devastated no matter what and optimism is just who I am. I had to get excited about my pregnancy, there was no way to see it as doomed from the start and ignore it. I worked too hard to dismiss it despite knowing deep down that we were totally screwed on this one.)

But now, on this Sunday afternoon, I am feeling incredibly anxious. And also strangely at peace. I know that coming in tomorrow is the right decision, because:

• I can walk around the 1 mile circle in my development and feel ok.
• I vacuumed today.
• I can pass the vision board in the kitchen and look at it and not feel like my heart is breaking into a million tiny pieces.
• I am wearing my fat jeans today, zipped and buttoned with nary a belly band in sight. I haven't, however, tried on my work pants yet.
• At this point, if I stay out any longer I will just feel more overwhelmed and behind when I go back. Which won't be helpful.
• I need a regular routine and schedule. I need for things to appear normal. I need to not walk my dog in the middle of the day and have people look at me funny who know I am a teacher.

But, at the same time, I am terrified because:

• I have not exactly been keeping a normal sleep schedule. 6 am comes incredibly early. (However, I can take a nap when I get home.)
• I have not had to be "on" for 7 straight hours, either physically or emotionally. I know that I can just do my best and fake the rest, but it is a little scary to think of how that performance is going to be so completely exhausting.
• I don't know how many people actually know what really happened. So I guess I'll just go with "I had emergent surgery" and leave it at that, and I'll find out real quick who knows the whole tragic story.
• I am afraid of too much sympathy. Kindness and sympathy are beautiful things, but when you are trying desperately to look and act like a normal person who did not have a traumatic event occur less than 3 weeks ago, it puts major cracks in your facade. I feel like tomorrow I will be a veneer of calm and collectedness, and I need to keep that thin coating intact somehow.
• I did not have the chance whatsoever to set up my space fully in one building, and at all at another. August was a blur of amazing highs and the lowest lows we've ever experienced. It was not possible to focus on anything else for a time and then my time expired and I was in the hospital and completely unable to get myself into school physically. So I feel behind the 8-ball just from my own personal organizational standpoint. I am supposed to be a model of organization and time management and I feel slightly hypocritical at the moment, albeit for a pretty good freaking reason. Hopefully everyone will have patience while I sort things out this week and can be all set up for the third week of school.
• I have been wearing cozy pants all week and am not accustomed to work attire. I am not even sure if my work attire fully fits me, I haven't done the dress rehearsal yet tonight. I am literally laying out my clothes for tomorrow so that I have nothing to decide first thing in the morning. And I want to look very professional and together tomorrow, for both adults and students alike. It's my first impression day.
• I just have the first day jitters in general--amplified by the fact that someone else started my kids off last week and I have to jump into something that's already started. I know the first week isn't necessarily academic-heavy, but the second week is. I missed my relaxed acclimation window.
• I have no idea how exhausted I will be by the end of the school day tomorrow. I have very high expectations for myself and I have to dial it back so that I can just survive the day, because by 2:45 I may be barely able to hold my shit together and in a lot of pain. I may not have the luxury of staying after for hours to get everything set up the way I'd like until later in the week. Which is unfortunate because I have an open house with parents at one building Wednesday night. Not terrifying at all. "Oh, you're the teacher who had a sub the first week of school!" That should be not awkward at all.

I am confident that it will not be a disaster. I am a professional, and I have spent a large portion of the weekend going over IEPs, brushing up on my personal professional development library full of strategies (organizational! study! memory! compensatory! comprehension! writing!) and information on particular classifications to refresh myself, since the last three years have been rather specific. I have a ton of information on autism spectrum disorders but it's been three years since I worked with a more diverse group of students. I know how to do it, I am trained and certified to do it, and I have done it successfully before. I actually have walked into a situation where I felt way over my head and it turned into three years of making a difference in a young man's life and creating opportunities that didn't exist before I finagled them. So I know tomorrow will be ok. It's just scary on so many levels. I think my first day would have been frightening without all this other personal devastation added into the mix. I am learning to be just a normal human being again, and so it's a little intimidating to add "and resource room teacher in two buildings with not entirely similar policies and curricula" to my list of things to accomplish. I feel like puking, actually. But at least hopefully I can do that tonight, and not all over my lovely new students.

I can do this. I can pretend to be completely normal. I can start the transition back to actual normality. It has to happen sometime, may as well be tomorrow.

Saying Goodbye

Saying goodbye to our run as expectant parents and the tiny lost babyling reason for that run is a gradual process. It is probably also an ongoing process--I will most likely never forget that my due date was April 13th (according to an IVF calculator where you plug in your retrieval date and they give you your due date), or I would be 8 weeks now had it not been ill-fated, or that by our second wedding anniversary we would have made it into the second trimester. It's amazing to me that it's only our second wedding anniversary--we have certainly packed a lot in over these two years. It seems crazy that I'm sad it's the second time we'll have an anniversary and no pregnancy, no baby--but I can count on both hands the number of people I know who have celebrated or will celebrate their first anniversary with a baby in their arms, and I was really hoping that by getting a jump on things a little earlier than our wedding day that we would have a similar experience. We aren't exactly spring chickens and it was our dream to add to our family as soon as possible (I say add to, because we consider the two of us a family, children or not). It just wasn't meant to be our path.

I'm getting off topic though. I think it is hard to say goodbye because I put so much energy into believing this pregnancy into existence. I really worked hard at being positive and refusing to entertain the idea that it would fail in any way, in hopes that that enthusiasm would rub off on my babyling and we could will our miracle into being. So even going into our second ultrasound, after being told our chances were close to zero of a good outcome after viewing the void in my uterus in my first ultrasound, I still held onto a kernel of hope that this was all a big mistake, a cosmic ha-ha. I could have started to say goodbye when our initial HCG number was 12, or when a conversation with my doctor at five weeks revealed our dismal odds at a healthy go of it this time. I could have started to say goodbye at the first ultrasound. I might have started the process a little when I started having pain Tuesday night, and when I started spotting on Wednesday morning. But even then I kept telling myself, "this is a fluke--it's probably just my twingey ovaries from stimulation, and lots of pregnant women spot early or even full-out bleed and have healthy babies later. This is simply not happening to us." Even seeing the sac in my tube on the screen and discussing treatment options and surgery details and how many incisions I should have (a hilarious conversation involving cosmetic concerns--like my tummy area is EVER a cosmetic concern! Ha!), and when I last ate so I don't have a higher risk of anesthesia complication...even all of those things did not make the impending loss seem real to me. Technically speaking this was doomed from the start and it has been a loss waiting to happen since I got my positive pregnancy test. But I didn't want to see it that way.

The first time I truly started to say goodbye was sitting on my gurney in the Emergency Department, waiting to be wheeled down to the OR. I have a journal that I wrote in every day of my cycle, starting with the baseline appointment, and I continued writing in it throughout the pregnancy. It has an orchid on it and I have always thought of orchids as a fertile flower, since they always look vaguely obscene to me. It was a gift from my best friend for Christmas and I was planning on saving it for a pregnancy journal. But, my previous journal that I had used for my last two IVF cycles had run out of sufficient pages for this third cycle. I needed a new one and I thought, "why not be positive? Why not make it a cycle AND a pregnancy journal?" And it was, for a time. I wrote in it for the last time on that gurney, with chaos around me and Bryce dozing off on the end of the bed. Since getting my call that I was tenuously pregnant, I had written about the day, and what I was feeling physically and emotionally, but always ended with a little letter to the babyling--encouraging it, thanking it for the good work, telling it how very loved it was already. This day was no different--I just had to put some stamp of finality to it. I thanked it and blessed it and released it. And then I cried, and cried, and cried. And of course then my wonderful (and ridiculously good-looking) doctor appeared at that moment when I was a sniveling mess, to let us know that we had been cleared for surgery and we were probably going to be wheeled down within the hour or sooner. So I didn't have much time to process the initial grief. But it was important, that first real goodbye. It was followed by a cry on the way into the operating room when I realized a) I was actually a little scared at the gravity of this not-so-small surgery what with the tubes that were to be inserted all over my body and b) I was entering the room pregnant and would be leaving it... not. Two will enter, one will leave. But then I was out and everything was blurry for a long time.

Since then, we hadn't really said an official goodbye. There had been a lot of tears, but also a lot of physical pain and I really concentrated on that. As long as I had the physical pain and the numbing pain killers to distract me, I could avoid almost completely the fact that I had lost something and was completely devastated by it, but could somehow talk about it as though it had happened to someone else. Because it still sort of felt like that--like this didn't happen to me, this couldn't possibly have happened to us after everything else we've been through to get to this point. This was supposed to be our time, it was supposed to be our turn to be a miracle story. But we weren't and it wasn't right and we have to come to some sort of peace with this cycle before we can move on to our next opportunity.

A friend who is an OB nurse at a hospital (coincidentally the hospital that my current OB/GYN is affiliated with and I will, one day, deliver in) gave me a gift on Thursday that helped me to realize that this did actually happen to us, and it is very sad, and I am going to have to deal with this not as an observer but as the actual person it happened to. It was a little dimpled clay star on a rope--such a simple little thing, but it was the letter that accompanied it that really started the floodgates going. She has seen beautiful babies born healthy, and she has seen premature deliveries, babies that have died, moms that have died. There is no sense to be made of the tragedies. But, with regards to the loss of a pregnancy at whatever stage, she felt that it was helpful to think of that baby as a star, an angel in heaven, watching out for the brothers and/or sisters to come. I have greatly simplified the letter because it was so meaningful that I want to keep much of it to myself, but it was just such a beautiful thought. We are not religious people, but I have a strong sense of order in the Universe and a natural order--cycles of life and death and energy that has to go somewhere. Maybe I'm a Jedi, who knows. But this made sense to me and was beautiful--my little babyling wasn't meant to stay with us because he (I'm with my friend on this one, I believe for whatever reason that this was a boy--we will never know for sure but that's what I think) was meant to clear the way for the babies that will come through unharmed, a protective spirit and shining light to guide my second and third children home.

We finally did our own goodbye ceremony yesterday. I wasn't ready before then, but yesterday seemed like a good time--I hadn't taken any percoset all day and so was clear of mind, and I was in pain but not so much that I couldn't concentrate on the emotional side of things. I could cry without feeling like my stomach was being ripped apart. Just my heart. Throughout the pregnancy we had used these Flying Wish Papers to send letters to our babyling and encourage him and help him to feel loved and maybe encourage him to keep being so strong and warriorlike. You write your wish (or letter to your unborn embryo) in pencil on a square of thin tissue paper, crumple it up, smooth it out, roll it into a tube, and put it upright on a printed cardboard base. Then you light it, and it burns down to the base and then the embery ash tube floats up to the sky (or ceiling). It was a small ritual that made us feel like we were doing something and communicating with a being that had, at least if it was developmentally appropriate, fingernails but no ears yet. Then we would light a double-wick candle (red of course) together and say something inwardly and silently to the babyling. It was a beautiful ritual, and I wanted to extend it for the goodbye. It was so, so much harder writing it as a release than writing it as an encouraging pep talk to stay. There was no way not to cry while writing--writing a thank you for the gift of pregnancy, a thank you for being so strong for so long, a thank you for giving us a glimpse at being Mom and Dad. A love note and a goodbye letter. A reiteration of the belief that this babyling was our first child and will always be our first child, and that he is a shining light to protect and guide those who will come after him. He did get rid of the evil baby-sucking tube, so no other little babylings will mistakenly think that's a good home, and he did make it possible for them to find that endometriosis and remove it so that it can't cause any problems later. He did a great job. It just wasn't his time. When we lit the tubes, on the same square and touching each other, they didn't float up very high at all (we had done it together before and it almost kiss the ceiling, so it wasn't because of how we lit them). They barely cleared the ground. I said "they were just so heavy" and burst into tears. Visceral, wracking sobs. We sobbed and hugged for a long time. I am so lucky to have a husband who will do these things with me, willingly and as an active participant, and who is not afraid to feel this loss as deeply as I do. We then lit our candle, which at this point was almost to the end, and decided to let it burn all the way down and then discard it. I have a new one that I bought during the pregnancy in case we ran out early, but that one will be for our new pregnancy. As we lit the candle, I read from a book that my confirmation sponsor gave me forever ago, Earth Prayers (edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon). It's writings from rabbis and Native Americans and Shakespeare and T.S. Elliot, among others. A lot of it is praise for the Earth, a sense of oneness with nature and gathering strength and healing from the Earth. But there is a section called Cycles of Life and I knew I would find something appropriate in it. And I did:

                 "Life and death,
                  a twisted vine sharing a single root.

                  A water bright green stretching to top a twisted yellow
                  only to wither itself
                  as another green unfolds overhead.

                  One leaf atop another
                  yet under the next,
                  a vibrant tapestry of arcs and falls
                  all in the act of becoming.

                  Death is the passing of life.
                  And life
                  is the stringing together of so many little passings.
                                                                                       - RABBI RAMI M. SHAPIRO"

It was perfect. That's how we see this--one life making way for the life to come. I don't know why we have to have such a difficult road to parenthood, I really don't. But for some reason, we have to go through this in order to get to our happy ending, whatever that looks like. We have to experience the withered leaf in order to have the fresh new green leaf. And we thank that yellow leaf for its service and for its gifts. We know we can get pregnant. Even though I am so cynical, and feel like "ok, yeah, I can get pregnant in my tube. But can I get pregnant in my uterus? Haven't quite managed that one yet!" But our doctor said that getting pregnant anywhere is a good indication that it's not hostile in there, that if I can get pregnant in the wrong spot I can likely get pregnant in the right spot. We are in a better place for our frozen cycle because of this cycle. And as horrible and hard as it was, and continues to be, it was also a beautiful time and a time to be thankful for. Even if we are thankful through a haze of tears and loss and nearly unbearable sadness.

We had to say goodbye, and continue saying goodbye in our own ways. Because if we don't, we can't possibly have the energy to give to our next try. And I want to give those beautiful frozen blasts the best chance possible, knowing full well that just because things were awful this time it doesn't mean that next time is "definitely our time." That is apparently not how it works. Life is not fair, and there is no rhyme or reason to anything. But I would really, really, really like to believe that the next stop on our journey is parenthood--a positive pregnancy test, a relatively uneventful full-term pregnancy, a non-life-threatening birth experience, and a healthy baby or babies at the end. That is my hope as we honor this experience and prepare for the next.

Random Thoughts

Because it is such a struggle to be coherent, I think I'm going with lists for a while to attempt some level of thought organization. So many random but not necessarily connected thoughts and worries and fears are playing pinball in my head, and maybe putting them somewhere outside of my subconscious will help make sense of them. Because really, nothing at all makes sense to me right now.

• I am terrified to go back to school. Not just because my first major outings leaving the house occurred today and I am exhausted, but because I have been so doped up and so focused on the physical pain that I haven't really dealt fully with the emotional pain of everything. It is starting to seep out and I fear that it will seep and seep until it ruptures and then I will be consumed by the emotional heaviness of everything that has happened. Or maybe it will just seep a slow steady bleed and I will slowly acclimate to the realization that we lost our pregnancy in a violent and scary way. Nobody wants a special education teacher in the middle of her own mental breakdown. It is awfully hard to support others with their needs when your own needs are monumental and overflowing like a cresting river over the sandbags of your coping mechanisms.

• I am afraid that people won't understand that I need to say "I lost my baby." I realize that it was between a lentil and a blueberry, and technically still an embryo, not even a fetus. I realize that I was only six and a half weeks when my pregnancy was surgically removed, like a tumor. It really looked like a tumor in the pictures we have of the laparoscopy, too. I didn't look pregnant. I certainly felt pregnant, and as I've said before I really enjoyed each day of the pregnancy as much as I could. But to someone who didn't know what was happening, I was "barely pregnant." Not that I really and truly care what people who aren't in the know think, but my mind is working in mysterious ways. I feel like saying "I lost my baby" is somehow unfair to people who have lost further along in a pregnancy that actually yielded a sac, or a heartbeat, or a recognizable fetus. Like somehow even though I have gone through hell over and over and over again to get to this point, this squished tumor pregnancy, I don't deserve to say I lost my baby. But I did. I lost my baby and it hurts more than I thought I could. Not that I can really feel all that much thanks to the painkillers and the physical pain I am going through. 
• I am realizing that I am vain. I hate that I am bloated and that I look fat. That somehow, I have to start school and look presentable and I fear that I have no pants that will fit me. I have skirts, and thankfully am not involved in vocational training in a commercial kitchen this year and so can actually have bare legs and open toed shoes. But I feel like to wear any of my pants I will have to use my belly band. And that makes me horribly sad, because if you wear a belly band and it is visible (as it inevitably becomes in the course of sitting down and standing up), people will assume you are pregnant. And I am wearing it because I'm not anymore but I don't fit in my pants yet because of the bloat from the IVF cycle, the pregnancy, and its subsequent surgical removal. But I will be wearing the band because I refuse to go up a size again. I need to get back to a size ago where my BMI was within a somewhat normal range (not that I believe in the BMI, because in order to truly fit into the middle of my "normal" range I need to be a size 6, and me at a size 6 is actually comical what with my giant ta-tas). And the reason for wanting to get back to a healthier size is totally vain as well. I want to be a cute pregnant lady. And I fear if I keep all of this infertility weight on me I will not be as cute as I could be. I could just be lumpy for a long time until I truly pop. And I am hoping, because I am short-waisted, that I will pop early and look super pregnant super early. I want people to say, "Wow, you are really big!" because I EARNED that big beautiful baby belly. I want to look as pregnant as possible for as long as possible. And I want to wear maternity clothes that accentuate my belly, not clothes that hide it. I am not behind the "baby on board" crap with arrows pointing at your tummy, but you'd better believe I will be enhancing my bump to no end. Assuming I'm not too fat to have a cute bump thanks to all this infertility crap.
• I feel like this whole experience has taken from me (albeit temporarily) everything that makes me who I am. We went to a gardening center today (one of my first forays into the outside world since my world collapsed on itself), and I was walking, zombie-like, through the plants. I've been wanting to get some sedum that has dark foliage and isn't quite as broccoli-like as regular sedum, and then I found another beautiful blue plant that the bumblebees were in love with. I need to fill our side yard with perennials at some point. But that point is not now, because I can't handle the physical act of planting. So I looked at the plants and imagined where they would go in my beds, and then started to cry because I can't do any of it. I'm sure that by the time it is pumpkin-and-mums-time I will be able to set out the fall display without pain, but it depressed me that I couldn't plant cheap off-season perennials in the ground now and enjoy them for September and then all next year. Cooking is another thing that makes me me, and last night I was finally able to get in the kitchen and make something fun--goat cheese polenta stuffed poblanos with a cinnamon tomato sauce. Yummy, and it took me an hour, and we ate at 10:00, but finally a small sliver of my pre-tragedy self was restored. It's not that Bryce is not a good cook, it just is not his thing and he doesn't enjoy it the way I do. I think food tastes different when the person making it actually loves the act of preparing it. And Bryce was happy to be returned to doing something else during dinner preparation, and being left with nothing but dishes. It was definitely a small return to normalcy. Reading is another thing-- I am still struggling with reading while on the pain meds. I am slowly taking myself off them, because I need to drive and I need to be able to work (things you simply cannot do on Percoset as a responsible person), but until that happens I am not able to read the way I love to. Immersed completely in a story and devouring it like fine chocolate--slow and melty in my brain. I miss that part of me. Compulsively preparing for work is another thing that makes me me. It is killing me that I have been completely unable to focus on work prep while coping with my physical pain and eventually coming to grips with the emotional reality of everything that's happened in the past two horrible weeks. Stacks of work sit untouched next to my bed. It has to be a priority for the next three days straight. Because I do not "wing it." I exhaustively research and organize and want to feel like an expert on day one. And that is just not going to happen. And I have to somehow be ok with it. Maybe part of my inability to get deep into my work prep is because if I go back to work, I have to pretend everything is fine and I am a fully functional human, not a shell going through the motions because of a personal devastation. But maybe if I pretend enough I will actually become a functional person faster. 
• I need to start looking forward to our next try, but I don't know how to handle it. We have two beautiful frozen embryos waiting for us to be physically and emotionally ready to transfer them into my apparently very healthy uterus. Thankfully the financial aspect is tremendously less daunting with a frozen cycle--it's at least 1/5 the cost of a fresh. We have been told over and over that our frozens are exceptional, very good quality, excellently expanded blasts. We have a good chance with them. But I am terrified to have hope that this is our time, this time. I can't help feeling like we just keep getting the shit end of the stick. Yes, yes, I know, I should be positive. Really, how positive would YOU be if you failed IVFs twice in a row, then finally got pregnant but with a low HCG so you had to relive your test day every two or three days, only to discover that your precious pregnancy was literally lost, stuck in the wrong place, causing you pain and endangering your life if not addressed immediately, and you had to have emergent surgery to remove both your pregnancy and the offending tube, then suffer complications due to an asthma attack and coughing directly after coming out of anesthesia? How positive would you be, REALLY? If you can still be chipper and full of hope and not feel like you seriously built your house on an old cemetery after all that, then kudos to you. You are a far better person than I am. Because I am scared to even find out what else can go wrong. Once it's uttered, it feels like an almost certainty that it will happen to us. And I just don't understand it. I need my doctor to write a paper on how rare a twin pregnancy is with a two-blast transfer, just so that it can be a possibility for us. I realize this is crazypants logic, but I think you can see how I got there. 

So that's it for now, all the junk in my head that I can release for the time being. I thank everyone who reads this for bearing with my pain and incoherent ramblings while I sort out how to at least categorize all this, if not make sense of it.

Some Things I Have Learned This Week

1. I am really, really bad at "taking it easy." I thought I was taking it easy after surgery, I mean I didn't get out of bed until Sunday and even then my big accomplishment was walking at a rate of .5 mph 10 houses down the street and back. It wiped me out. I am now being forced to "take it easy" by staying in bed all week thanks to a followup appointment on Monday where I was basically told to pretend I had the surgery Monday and to stay in bed and stay doped up. I hate it. I feel trapped in my home and my body.
2. I hate my downstairs. Downstairs has it all--the refrigerator, the bigger TV, the shower, the ability to make myself tea. Except being downstairs yesterday had me walking around (hobbled, hunched over "walking") to get myself tea, and waffles. Not good bed rest. Downstairs means the dog is in my face and wanting to get on the futon. Downstairs means laying on the futon, which is basically a glorified dog bed, an ass-licking station, an allergy nightmare, and not set up for good back support/tv watching/sleeping. Bryce did cover the thing with flannel sheets to mask its disgustingness, but it doesn't work. Downstairs I can see all the rugs that need vacuuming that I physically can't do and I would rather Bryce spend time with me rather than do right now. I can see my gardens that need watering. I can see all the shit that I am supposed to be able to do but can't. And I try too hard to move downstairs. Yesterday I was set up downstairs but after my superfriend came over to visit and saw how much I loathed that setup she set me back up upstairs. Ahhhhh.
3. I can't concentrate while drugged. Just say NO to drugs! I totally get it. Because while I am thoroughly enjoying the lack of sharp physical pain, and the total numbing of my emotional state of being so that I can concentrate on physical recovery, I feel incredibly stoopid. Not stupid, stoopid. I have difficulty reading. I have difficulty spelling and typing, which is a travesty for me since I pride myself on both those things. Writing this blog is taking me days and I keep deleting it and starting over. I have to do a boatload of school preparation, as I am supposed to be at school right now. I can't concentrate on any of it. The drugs make me sleepy but then I can't concentrate on falling asleep anough to get there. Today was the first day in a while that I actually slept most of the morning and last night I fell asleep quickly. I didn't think sleeping required concentration. I was wrong.
4. Percoset makes me itchy. Not a biggie, but as the day goes on and there is more narcotic in me, my skin gets itchier and itchier. I look like the people you don't make eye contact with on the subway. It's not a true allergy because there's no rash, but I wish maybe I could skip this annoying side effect.
5. I am bad at asking for help. I tend to have passive aggressive tendencies. I will do all the work without complaining so that then I can complain later that I had to do all the work. (Sorry Bryce, this is my secret! It's out of the bag! You can thank the percoset for this revelation!) I like to do things all on my own, sometimes to my detriment. I have gotten better at asking for help over time, as I have realized that I can't do it all myself. But I get resentful, sometimes, having to ask for help. Like somehow people should know what I need and magically provide it. Sometimes I think it is common sense. But it is not. I have been hinting and had several people immediately take the hints, friends and family (thank you, said friends and family, you know who you are). I need to feel connected right now. I need phone calls and visits and to feel like I am not an icky representation of loss that needs to be swept under the couch with the other ugly dustbunnies. I need to not feel like an inconvenience to people's otherwise happy lives. When you have suffered a traumatic event, and you are recovering, and that recovery is taking a really long time, it is helpful to receive phone calls and visits and offers of help not just on the day it happens. If six days have gone by and you are still housebound and there are people that you haven't heard from at all since the day of your surgery, you start to feel forgotten. And terribly, terribly lonely. It can be a horrible feeling to feel that you need to remind people that you are still there. I don't think that being busy is a good excuse unless you have been kidnapped and are busy sorting coca leaves in Columbia under gunpoint. A call or even a thoughtful text "I am thinking of you" takes 2 minutes at most. On a side and related note, after a trauma you don't always want to talk only about the traumatic event, there is more to you than that. Maybe you need to talk about a book or a movie or those ridiculous Kardashians instead. This balance in how people relate to you and how you relate to people is by far the most difficult thing about this whole situation. As of right now, at least.
6. I may never be the same after this. I realized that when you are infertile, things change. So many (SO MANY) people who have gone before me on this journey and have their families now through one path or another have told me...you may become a parent but you never stop being infertile. It is part of who you are. These experiences, these losses and traumas and revelations, they shape you are. You are still the same person, you just don't have the luxury of the carefree anymore. I am not out of this yet and I do not take anything for granted. I appreciate everything. But I also see through the bullshit. Life is not fair. Some things are important, and some things are not. Some people will understand you, and some will not. I feel like I still have a goofy side, a sense of humor that helps me through tough times. I just also feel like a part of me is necrotic. Like I have dark edges that have been burned away and won't grow back. That is part of me too, and while it is not fun and happy-go-lucky, it is something that has to be accepted. Because to not accept my scars is to not accept me. You can't have just the cotton candy parts and call it good.
7. I have a lot of people to thank who have supported me on this journey. This is an ongoing thanks, it seemed kind of final and eulogy-like when I just typed it but that's not what I mean. There are a lot of people who don't know me that well who have been very supportive. I have a love-hate relationship with facebook. I think that it encourages people to have superficial relationships and feel like an effort has been made when it hasn't, not by human standards. However, facebook has allowed me to share with others for better or worse, and it has allowed me to connect with people I didn't truly know before who are excellent cheerleaders. It has allowed me to connect with people I do know who are going through similar struggles privately. It has given a forum to connect with masses of family and friends quickly and to feel a lot of love. Something as small and quick as a facebook comment or note can really make my day--make me feel loved and thought of and cared about. I also have an email support group that has been tremendously helpful, full of women who have all been or are on this same shitty path. They have been lifesavers when I needed to talk to others who actually know firsthand what this feels like. It has been so helpful to not feel like an anomaly. And my friends and family who have stuck with me through all of this, I thank you. I thank you for sending me elephants and owls in the mail, for calls, for texts when young children made calls impossible. For flowers and cards and visits. For calling me from work to make sure that I'm ok and coming home from work to make me lunch and get me pain pills. For loving me when it is so, so hard and not just when it is easy.

Coming To Grips With Reality

This week was a blur--a hazy montage of doctor's appointments, pain, phone calls, hospital wards, medications, instructions, and sensations both physical and emotional. I did not have the chance to really stop and realize what everthing truly meant until recently, and even then I am still feeling pretty numb.

I think that part of the problem is that this whole summer was focused on our reproductive endeavors in one way or another, and the way that it went made the summer fly by in a blaze of confusion and uncertainty. The plan for this summer was that I would not teach summer school, I would focus on getting ready for my new positions at two schools in my district while really focusing on getting pregnant as my top priority. July would be all about our IVF cycle, and August would be all about acclimating to our new status--whether that would be the joy and terror of a new pregnancy or figuring out what to do if it failed again. It seemed like an awesome, straightforward plan. It seemed like it would give me plenty of time to deal before school started in September. I was a mastermind of time and scheduling.

Or not.

I had no way of knowing that July would be freaking fantastic--a banner month with the best-news cycle we'd ever had. July was amazing--we had an excellent response, we had beautiful embryos, it was a much calmer and less difficult cycle to deal with emotionally and physically, we had embryos to freeze, we had three to transfer, it was looking really promising. It was hands down our best cycle ever. At the end of July/early August our fears were mostly focused on the chances that we could end up parents of triplets, a scary thought but when you transfer three beautiful embryos, a thought you have to seriously entertain (I don't think anyone can truly be prepared for the reality of triplets in advance).

I had no way of knowing that as awesome as July was, that August would be so hard. Well, hard and beautiful. I had implantation bleeding a few days before my test--light spotting that is the stuff of infertility fairytales--everyone looks for it and hopes it's a sign of pregnancy and not a harbinger of period doom. I felt PMS-y, which was scary but also very encouraging, as most people I know who have gotten pregnant before me on this journey (which at this point feels like everyone) felt that way before their positive test. I was nauseous and nervous but had a strong thread of confidence that we were pregnant. And we were. But barely. August became a month of living day to day. Of enjoying every day that I was still pregnant. Of trying to focus on the miracle of the life struggling inside me rather than the dire statistics telling us that it wasn't likely to last. Of creating playlists and rituals and traditions to support my babyling in its struggle. It was beautiful and exhausting. I had a test every other day or every couple of days, which meant that I could work on school stuff on the days I wasn't receiving a call and on the days I was receiving a call that could potentially end our bubble of fragile bliss, I was good for nothing. Which meant that half the time I really was good for nothing. The weeks in August that were meant for studying up on algebra and earth science and structuring a resource room were spent stalking my phone, reading picture books to my belly, begging for miracles. We honestly were still keeping that miracle alive until Monday when we saw nothing on the ultrasound, and then any possibility that I could get anything done for September went flying out the window.

So I am left dealing with the reality of my situation. That although if I were to pee on a stick today it might still give me a positive thanks to wacky hormones, I am not pregnant anymore. Logically I know that this was a doomed pregnancy that would never have produced our miracle baby. Emotionally I am empty and raw and grieving my chance to harbor a blueberry. I didn't quite get to blueberry size, the emails I had signed up for (and have since unsubscribed from) had the babyling at a poppyseed, then a sesame seed, then a lentil bean. I lost my bean just 3 days shy of graduating to blueberry. I know this is not actually right, because our bean didn't follow the proper growth patterns and was squished in my tube, so I am saved the horrifying vision of a baby-shaped tumor in my tube. It really was a mass of cells, but I prefer to remember it as halfway between lentil and blueberry.

My house is full of remnants of my brief pregnancy--the gallon of milk in the fridge (I wanted to be sure I was getting enough calcium, I was on a self-subscribed glass-a-day to support development); the closet full of progesterone-in-oil (I do not miss the shots but I do miss terribly the reason for continuing them); the supplement box full of my prenatals and baby aspirin and other pills that I can take a break from now that I'm not sustaining a (dysfunctional) life; the stack of picture books that we rotated through and read to our babyling to help it see just how loved it was already (Stellaluna, Verdi, Whoooo Loves You?, Guess How Much I Love You, Moon Child, The Dream of the Little Elephant, I Love You So Much, The Stone Wall Dragon, Goodnight Ocean) are in my guest room along with the child's rocking chair, stuffed elephant, onesies, ceramic elephant, and pregnancy books. Everything is tucked away for next time. And we had a lot of stuff to tuck.

I don't regret the exuberance with which we embraced our tenuous pregnancy, as hard as it makes it to reconcile its violent end. We made a conscious decision to enjoy every day, starting with that low, low 12 and ending with our empty ultrasound that was really the end of our miracle story. And we did it--I said "I'm pregnant" to Bryce with joy in my heart as often as I could. We wrote letters to our baby and felt silly and joyful to sign them "mom" and "dad." I reveled in every bout of nausea because it meant that maybe I would stay pregnant. I don't regret that we chose to be excited while we could, because it did not last. And while it is hard to see my gallon of milk and my food comparison emails that I haven't deleted yet, and especially hard to be aware of my boobs (they seem to be the last to get the memo--they are still very heavy and swollen and pregnant), in a way I love coming across these things. Because everything was so fast and hazy that I could possibly forget that I WAS PREGNANT. I was the miracle for short period of time, and as painful as it is that it's gone, I am so happy that I had that experience. That is my reality now. I cry and I sob and I mourn because I lost something, but the amazing thing is that I had something to lose.   

A Really Bad Movie

Last I wrote, we were due to go back for a fancypants ultrasound on Thursday to confirm ectopic or confirm something abnormal that was hiding in my uterus. Last I wrote, we were still stuck in the awful limbo of uncertainty and things were definitely not looking good. I was still holding out the tiniest amount of hope that this could all be a big mistake and we could still be the miracle story that I so desperately wanted to be. A lot has happened since last I wrote. I could probably write forever on everything that happened, the background, my feelings, etcetera, but I am fairly exhausted and feeling somewhere vascillating between completely numb and a complete hysterical disaster, so I am going to write about what happened since Tuesday the way that it has felt. Like I am watching a bad Lifetime movie where I am playing the part of Valerie Bertinelli playing the part of me, because shit this bizarre and bad can't really happen in real life.

Tuesday we got the call with my HCG beta from Monday. It was 1161. This is a number that would have had me doing cartwheels down the street had I not already seen that my uterus was empty. They were very concerned. A number that high should have yielded something visible and definitive if the pregnancy was in my uterus. The chances that it was elsewhere were much higher now. I was to come in Wednesday for the special ultrasound and we would meet with our doctor immediately after at the clinic. There was a sense of urgency that made me nervous, very very nervous. I was asked if I had any one sided pain or bleeding. I had neither. I felt better.

Tuesday evening I got up from sitting with Bryce and experienced sharp localized pain on my right side. I couldn't ignore it, but I didn't feel that it was severe or anything--I could breathe, talk, I didn't feel like passing out. I waited to call until Wednesday morning, figuring if it got worse I could always call the on call doctor and if it went away, well then it was obviously my brain playing tricks on me because I can't possibly have an ectopic pregnancy. That has been my fear all along. Since starting fertility treatment and learning it's more likely in my new demographic. But it's an irrational fear, because it is so rare, especially with IVF.

Wednesday morning I woke up and still had the pain. I was going to do some work and be productive about the house but quite frankly wasn't feeling up to it and spent most of the morning in bed, reading and watching TV and spending quality time with my phone. I called about the pain and was told that my doctor would definitely be there with us at the special ultrasound. I got up from bed to eat lunch and discovered that I was bleeding vaginally. I started to cry, because this was not good, and it added to the uncertainty. Was I bleeding because there was something abnormal in my uterus that was leaving me now? Or was I bleeding because of the pain I was still experiencing and I was facing the scary chemo drug therapy for an ectopic pregnancy? Either way, bleeding was not a good sign of a miracle.

We went in for the ultrasound and it was impressive--definitely a much higher-tech machine than I'd ever seen, anywhere. I got my first abdominal ultrasound for this pregnancy. It was my last. They saw nothing. Well, they saw my uterus with nothing in it. My doctor walked in as this first part was happening and said, "Hi, how are you guys doing?" and I said "Still empty." Sounds sad when I write it now but it was actually borderline hilarious at the time. They switched to transvaginal ultrasound, which is how they actually do all the follicle monitoring so I am most familiar with that obscene-looking magic wand of interior illumination. It really is like it is in the movies and TV shows. They talk about what they see that is normal, and as soon as they find something abnormal everyone is deathly quiet and the ultrasound tech won't answer any of your questions (like, "Um, what IS that???") with anything other than "that's concerning but I need to talk to my doctor first." This is where it was fabulous that our doctor was there. He explained that that ugly balloon-circle-fluid looking thing we saw was my ectopic pregnancy. Which was why the probing hurt like hell. I was officially entering the nightmare.

We had two options: try the methotrexate (I think I've been spelling it wrong), which would take at least 4 days to wait and see if it worked and then either get another dose or end up going in for emergency surgery, or go for the gusto and have the surgery. I liked that we were given a choice, but it really wasn't one. We had to do the surgery. We weren't willing to wait any more, and I was in pain, and it was apparently fairly sizable already, and the idea of nurses in hazmat suits injecting me with toxins that may or may not take care of the problem sounded horrible to me. Our doctor said that with surgery they could get a better idea of what was going on and also look for other possible issues such as endometriosis, and remove the tube. Because chances were the tube was defective anyway if it was sucking my baby up into it. And if it was defective it was possible that we could have the same problem in the future, so we were all about getting rid of it. I don't need tubes for IVF.

It was about 2:30 at this point and we had gone from being pregnant (my numbers were up to 1350) and uncertain about whether it would be viable or not just a day or two before to being pregnant and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that by the end of the day I would not be pregnant anymore. This is where I think I truly numbed up and decided that this was something happening to someone who looked an awful lot like me but wasn't. Because everything went super fast from here on out. My doctor and the adminstrators at our clinic got all the paperwork together and called the hospital and had us all set for surgery between 8-9 pm. I had eaten that stupid BLT with my tomatoes that I grew myself (proof that I actually can grow something correctly) around 1:00, so it limited where we could go and it made it much more possible that we'd get delayed. How was I supposed to know it would turn into such a whirlwind? The BLT was only one of my ill-timed mistakes. The other was that I had stopped taking my asthma medication the Monday we left for the Boston area last week, when I forgot it one day and our numbers went up. I of course, using all my intensive medical studies and experience as a doctor, chalked this up to Advair=bad for baby developing. By the way, this is totally not true. It was just a fluke but meant that I was going into surgery without my asthma under control. I felt fine but was a ticking time bomb. More on this later.

We got to the hospital at 5:30, got shuffled around due to some admitting issues between the surgery department and the emergency department, and ultimately ended up spending a lot of time in the emergency department, where we really were not supposed to be. They were very nice and rushed us through, but we were unable to avoid three very pregnant women who came in to deliver their babies, not remove them; a woman who was clearly a frequent visitor having a psychotic break; my having to tell the story that yes this was a diagnosed ectopic and yes this was my first pregnancy and yes this is certainly something to be very sorry about. When we got a bed at around 7:30ish it was on the other side of the curtain from a gentleman who had apparently shot his finger with a nail gun and they were in the midst of cauterizing it when we were shown to our gurney. That smelled nice. We had wonderful nurses who did the fastest blood draws and most painless IV insertion I've ever experienced, and who were very sympathetic to the horror of our situation. I finished The Book Thief despite the hubbub around us. Bryce tried to nap, unsuccessfully, but he did manage to remove the outer layer of his hand skin due to obsessive purelling. I had no idea that he was so uncomfortable in hospitals. The things you learn when you have to have surgery to remove your pregnancy.

We did get down to surgery by 10:40 and I was under by 11:00. We sat with pre-anesthesia and Bryce went white as they explained how they would calm me with drugs and then knock me out completely, then stuff a breathing tube down my throat and another tube down to empty my stomach and another tube up my urethra (ahhhh, the catheter). Luckily all tubes would come out while I was still out of it. The nurse anesthetist was very soothing and looked and sounded like the Drug Fairy. It was surreal. The drugs they gave me to "calm" me actually caused me to hallucinate and my knit blanket that was around my knees undulated like a stormy sea and freaked me out but also was weirdly meditative at the same time. I got lots of goodbye kisses from Bryce, especially after he freaked me the fuck out by telling me what a trouper I was and how scared shitless he would be if he were the one going in for surgery. That was nice, because he was genuinely proud of me, but then I was like, "oh shit, I am going under general anesthesia and this IS scary as hell." So lots of kisses and then crying as I realized that the body under the waving serpent sea blanket was pregnant going in and would be truly empty and not quite whole coming out, and that this really was a life-threatening situation and it was happening to ME. Thankfully I was out like a light shortly after that and I didn't have to think about it as though it was me for much longer. The one funny thing was that my doctor told me he caught Bryce in the hall and assured him I was in good hands, and Bryce told him to "Kick some ass in there." So my doctor said "So we're here to kick some ass!" Have I mentioned how much we love our doctor?

I came out of surgery minus my right tube, minus the mass of cells that would have been a baby had it not had a terrible sense of direction, and with the peace of mind of knowing that this was absolutely the right decision because it had already started bleeding and had we waited it would have been a very, very bad situation. They found endometriosis on my uterine ligaments, which was cleaned up. They inspected my left tube and found it physically fine. My uterus is physically fine, which is a relief. In all the bloodwork I did finally find out my bloodtype, which is O negative. Great because it is the universal donor, which is guilt-inducing because I cannot give blood (having donated buckets to my own cause through blood draws, I have learned that my veins are crappy. I did try to donate blood twice during college and was unsuccessful both times due to anemia and crappy veins. Sorry, blood centers. Not happening.) However, this whole negative thing meant that I had to have a Rhogam shot, because of the whole RH negative mother positive-father thing where I will create antibodies that seek to destroy my baby's blood the next time. So even though my baby didn't look like one at all and probably wasn't making its own blood cells, I got the shot anyway as a preventative measure for next time. Which was lucky and I am grateful, but it just seemed like one more thing to add to my oddities.

Oh, and the asthma thing. After they removed my intubation tubes and I was coming out of anesthesia, I had a whopper of an asthma attack due to my idiocy in stopping the Advair because I thought it was having some kind of impact on HCG levels. I had to be nebulized twice and I vaguely remember the sensation of drowning in the gunk in my lungs. I am still chesty and it does not feel good on my incisions or very sore belly to have a deep cough. I wonder if I am so sore because of all the deep coughing so soon after coming out of surgery. I just couldn't believe that I would have such an issue after coming out of such a bizarre surgery to begin with. I was monitored tightly for oxygen and had more adhesive and cords coming from me than I knew what to do with because they were making sure I was oxygenated. I also vaguely remember feeling like I needed to pee in the worst way either before or after the asthma attack. The nurses thought the sensation was because of the catheter, but that I probably had nothing in there, but I was insistent so they gave me a bedpan to lay on (no walking to the bathroom for me, apparently with the heavy narcotics and my breathing that was not a good idea). I can't pee lying down. Or I just didn't have to go. But I did apparently promptly fall asleep on top of the bedpan and snored super loudly, so they took it away.

I woke up at 3:45 and couldn't find my call button. So I said "helloooooo" for about 10 minutes until someone heard me, because I had no voice (thank you, tubes) and no lung capacity to make it louder, and plus I am a generally considerate person and I didn't want to wake anyone up. I did make it to the bathroom but then realized how sore and painful I was, and then I asked for my book. So sad. When Bryce left at 3:00 because he was exhausted and the nurses pretty much forced him to go to bed at home (I was not lucid anyway), he was going to leave my book but the nurses mistakenly told him I wouldn't be able to read it. I would be too loopy and tired and I would read the same page over and over again. There was TV in the room, I would be fine with that. Bryce thought that wasn't the case, but they were adamant and he had to go and so no book for me. I can tell you this--I wanted that damn book in the worst way possible. I am not a TV watcher. And nothing is on at 4 in the morning. And by 4:45 I could totally immerse myself in my book. It was so sad. Another weird thing--there was apparently a severe and dangerous electrical storm at 3 a.m. -- Bryce had to call the nurse to let them know he got home safely it was so bad. Really? All at the same time as everything else?

That pretty much brings us up to now. If you have made it this far I really appreciate your dedication, because this is a really long post. I am recovering and grateful that we have compassionate, talented medical professionals working with us. I am grateful for the family and friends that have flooded us with sympathy, empathy, offers of help, and hugs. I am very high on Percoset all the time because my pain levels are ridiculous even now. I think that this physical trauma is making it difficult to focus on anything but my physical recovery. Although as time passes it is becoming more clear that this was not something that happened to someone else. That it is me that was pregnant and then through a very rare but dangerous situation had to go through surgery to become not-pregnant. It is a lot to take. I have a lot of positives that have come out of this cycle and I will write about those separately. I am grateful for the things we have to look forward to. I am grateful that we are not out of this game. I am especially grateful that I have an amazing husband who is here for me and patient with me as I flit in and out of psychosis and depression and physical agony. He loves me so. But right now I am just kind of sitting in the physical pain and the slow emotional awakening to the fact that I have lost an awful lot in a very short and confusing period of time. I think I liked it better when I thought it was just a bad movie.