To grieve or not to grieve an ectopic pregnancy?

I went back to hospital for my post surgery check up with the Obstetrician a week after discharge. He informed me that my HCG levels had dropped accordingly, he removed my staples, he noticed that I was experiencing more than just a bit of discomfort so he prescribed me some more medication and then he referred to my notes.

He asked me if I had been given any information about the procedure. I had been given a lot of information about what had happened, but I didn't know the technical jargon. The name of the procedure, what its called to have your tube removed etc etc...so he informed me that I had received an emergency laparotomy and a salpingectomy, where the surgeon had no choice but to remove the right tube. All of the tissue had been removed, all be it large amount of tissue and he was confident that with the drop in my HCG levels there would be no further complications.

Tissue? A surprisingly large amount of tissue? I sometimes wonder if the tissue looked like this?

I remember my response was "my family has a history of big babies" and he just looked at me and smiled. He hoped to see me again, next time with a baby in my uterus.

I wonder if medically a baby is only referred to as a baby if it is viable. At seven weeks and two days my embryo had 10 fingers ten toes and a pumping heart. There wasn't anything wrong with the embryo, it was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I put pressure on myself to treat this entire incident like I have stacked it on a flight of stairs. Stand up, brush myself off, make sure I'm physically okay, thank everyone around me who helped me (rather than standing there pissing themselves laughing) and go home and wait for the bruises. Its not like that though. Apart from the fact what happened to me would not win a prize on funniest home videos, it hurts like hell that what could have been didn't happen.

Ive read that when women experience an ectopic pregnancy some mourn for the baby and others do not refer to it or think of it as a baby at all. Im somewhere in between. Having a beautiful 4 yr old boy helps I think. It would be much harder if the ectopic had been my first pregnancy. I have days where I think about all the different combinations mine and my husbands chromosomes could create and what our baby would have looked like. Then I have other days where I just feel lucky to be alive and have the ability to hop back on the horse and try again. Its bazaar.

 Which led me to the question, what is grief anyway?

Jana Rubenstein, M.Ed., LPC says, " Grief is the label for the set of emotional, cognitive, behavioural and physical reactions that are seen following the death of a loved one. Normal grief responses may include denial, emotional numbing, anger, rage, rushes of anxiety (pangs), sadness, fear, confusion, difficulty sleeping, regression in children, stomach upset, loss of appetite, "hysterical materialisation"  and many other potential symptoms. These symptoms are similar to those often seen in the acute post-traumatic period.



Yep....that sound like me.Yesterday was tough. My husband was cooking up a ginger beer home brew and I was sitting in the shed watching him prep for bottling when I saw all of our baby gear. Pram, high chair, jolly jumper, bassinet, cot, baby bath ahhhhh..I don't avoid it.I know its there, and it hasn't bothered me before. Its not new, it all belonged to my son but for some reason it touched a nerve and the tears began to fall. I felt pathetic. Just when I think I'm dealing with it all I lose it. Ill be going great for a week then "Boom" back to the crying board. Ive been told this is what grief does.  I don't understand though, why am I grieving something that was hardly a blip on the existence radar? Solution? I took a pair of garden shears and hacked at my garden. I thought maybe I am grieving the loss of my fallopian tube and grieving the loss of my overall fertility.I took a few slices off my arms and legs with the pesty bougainvillea but I felt better afterwards. I think I needed a bit of grounding and gardening is fantastic for the soul. I surrounded myself in green, the colour of the heart chakra which coincidentally is the chakra directly effected by grief.

If you have had an ectopic pregnancy, please let me know if you experienced or are still experiencing grief. Do you have any tips for overcoming grief to share?

I will not let this loss consume me however it has changed me and I'm determined to make this change for the better.

Today is another day.

Think pink

Janey

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