Where it began.

On the 12th of November, 2011 at three o'clock in the morning I regain consciousness in a hospital bed. Everything is blurry, I hear a friendly voice but moments later it all goes black again. I hear my name being called, I open my eyes to see an angel at the foot of my bed. She has a grey bob and glasses. She looks exhausted and somewhat angry. She tells me her name and says "You scared me Jane and I don't scare easily. You lost a lot of blood and needed a full transfusion.Ive contacted your husband and told him you are in recovery"
The logical part of my brain that was still able to function under copious amounts of morphine asked, "Is the baby okay?"

Living on a small island off the north coast of Australia has its limitations. Only two weeks earlier I had been to the health clinic to have my first scan. I had been experiencing pain down my right side. It wasn't constant, so it seemed to be of no concern. I hear the familiar fart sound as the cold gel is spurted on my abdomen. I look to the ceiling feeling that all too familiar pang of pain in my bladder.Just hoping I don't piss myself on the table when i hear " oh there it is.Right there.Yep it looks about 5 and a half weeks. Does that sound about right to you Jane? Can you see that there? I can even make out a little heart beat."

I could not see a thing. But then again, I'm not a health professional. So with a sigh of relief I wipe the gel off and get up off the table. I walked home, eager to tell my husband that our four year old son was wrong! We were not expecting twins!

The baby was not okay. The baby was taken out, along with my right fallopian tube. I had experienced an ectopic rupture.A laparotomy.  I was left empty, with staples from my belly button down to an inch above my lady bits. Lost in the confusion, alone and petrified.

My bum began to itch and suddenly I remembered. It had only been a few hours since I had said good bye to my husband, on the bitumen runway at the tiny airport on the island. With my Lily white ass hanging out the back of the gown they had put me in, prepped for surgery and being eaten alive by sand flies. I was not allowed to move my arms. My husband kneels down behind me and rubs my bum for me. I had said goodbye and I love you for what felt like the last time. I asked him to remind our son of who I am. "don't let him forget me."  The expression on his face when I said this was "Jane, your such a drama queen" but laying there on the tarmac while a paramedic and a doctor manually pumped two units of blood into my collapsed veins, while trying to register a blood pressure so that I could fly made it pretty clear to him and me, I was dying.

As fate had it there was only room for one on the helicopter.Which meant the agony of choosing between coming with me or staying with my son was taken out of the equation. I thanked God. Its only happened 4 times in my 32 years of life. I thanked God when my son survived his birth, I thanked god when my mother pulled through a very late diagnosis of pneumonia sepsis I thanked God when my plane landed after some air turbulence had convinced me i was plummeting to my death and I thanked God that my husband didn't have to watch me die.

I don't know how many times in passing Ive heard that we soil ourselves just before we die and thought nothing of it. I was laying still, arms wide apart like I was being crucified and humming in tune with the sound of the careflight helicopter, consumed by the excruciating pain and an overwhelming sense of pissed offness that i hadn't got life insurance when suddenly it happened and there was nothing i could do, but cry. The interesting thing was I didn't panic, your brain needs blood to panic and there wasn't enough of that going around.

It is scary, when the surgeon who has just saved your life looks you in the eye and says, "some people would say, it just wasn't your time"

It wasn't my time, I just wish it hadn't been such a fine line though.

This is my journey. I don't always move forward, sometimes i move backwards.But I'm learning that that is okay. Its all part of the healing. The panic attacks, the nightmares, the fears, the anxiety, the irrational thoughts and the constant wishing I was the person I was before this happened to me. Before my world was shattered.

I still have a lot of questions and I wont stop looking for answers. This should never have happened the way that it did. Ive worked out why, now I just have to work out how to change it.

 Ectopic pregnancies happen in 1 of every 100 pregnancies in Australia alone. Women are still dying from ectopic ruptures, in Australia. This doesn't need to happen at all anymore. The sad thing is, most women wont  be educated on ectopic pregnancy until they experience one themselves and that I am truly sorry for. If an ectopic pregnancy diagnosis, treatment or rupture has led you here please share with me your stories so that we can educate other women. I wish you peace, love and healing. You are not alone, you are safe.

Think pink.

Janey