My Greatest Fear Realized

Ever since high school, I feared I would struggle with infertility because I had issues with ovarian cysts and irregular cycles. After Kevin and I had been married a year and a half, we were excited to announce that I was pregnant. To my delight, I hadn’t had any struggles conceiving.

From the beginning of our marriage, our plan was to have two kids, then adopt a baby. We loved the idea of providing a home for a child in need of one. So when our daughter, Emma, was two we decided to try to get pregnant again. This time the struggle I had feared became reality.

After over a year of trying, we started infertility medication. I had taken two doses when one night I woke up in severe pain. It eventually went away so I shrugged it off as gas pain. A couple of months later, my friend and I had plans to go to lunch at our favorite bagel shop. It was a few days until Christmas.

As I was getting ready, I felt an overwhelming sickness flow through me. I couldn’t tell you what was wrong, only that I was very sick. I called for my four-year old to get her dad, who was sleeping off a night shift. She woke him up saying, “Daddy, mommy needs you. You can sleep later.”

I’m not sure why, but I had Kevin call my OBGYN instead of our family doctor. They squeezed us in and during an ultrasound discovered that I had an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy. They scheduled my surgery for later that afternoon and sent me home. My usual doctor was off that day but heard about my situation when she went in for an office potluck. She called to tell me that she was doing my surgery, that they got my lab work back, and wanted me to go straight to the surgical hospital as they were moving up my surgery.

At the hospital, they calmly brought me back to pre-op and had my husband start paperwork. While the nurse was taking my blood pressure, I felt light headed. She asked me if I could raise my hand. I shook my head. She commanded me to raise it. I told her I couldn’t, then passed out. Later, I discovered that my blood pressure was 80/20 (it is usually 120/80), that I had a partially ruptured fallopian tube, and had lost about half my blood volume. They took me into the operating room where my doctor stopped the bleeding and saved the tube. All the while my husband and parents were in the waiting room wondering why they hadn’t been able to see me before the surgery.

Weeks later, I ran into my pre-op nurse at the movies. She was overcome with emotion as she told me who she was and how scared she had been when I passed out. She had acted with amazing clarity and professionalism as she called for help and started an IV in her unconscious patient. She then asked if she could hug me.

I learned many things from this near-death experience. I learned that I needed to listen to my body. I knew there had been something wrong since that night that I woke up in extreme pain. There were lot of signs that things weren’t right. I learned that sometimes God’s plans for my life are different than my plans and not to push my agenda when I feel it’s not right. I learned that there are some amazing people in the medical field, who are affected by their patients even if the patients never know. The doctors, nurses, and even the clerical staff were a huge blessing to me and my family.

We learned that the chances of getting another ectopic pregnancy rose significantly after the first. After such a traumatic experience, we decided that continuing down the pregnancy path wasn’t God’s plan for us.

As my body healed, we started researching adoption. That’s when we discovered the hefty price tag that came with it. While we were blessed to be Emma’s parents, we felt our family wasn’t quite complete. However, we had no idea what challenges awaited us.

To be continued…