TMI

I've been trying to decide how and what to tell you about the last week of my life and all it's resulted in is a blank WordPad document. So I'm pulling myself up by my bootstraps and coming out with it: beware, much TMI ahead. Only the truly brave and concerned should proceed.

No one educated me about the ins and outs of a miscarriage. There should be a pamphlet, people. I mean, it's bad enough that you have to lay there all splayed out on the table, legs in the stirrups, looking at a monitor with a tiny still egg all magnified for everyone to behold. It's bad enough that you have to go home and commence calling all those people who were already in the know about my condition in the early stages. (This happens when you're involved with an infertility team and everyone knows your business). It gets steadily worse when you then have to call those same people and tell them your body can't do the easiest thing on the face of the earth and that they should take back all the B@by G@p socks and receiving blankets etc. that they've already picked up for the little gaffer. But that's really all nothing compared to what comes next.

All that stuff on the monitor? Has to go somewhere.

I was given three options by one of my doctors: pass things naturally, go home and jumpstart the process with drugs, including narcotics (ahhhhh) or schedule a D&C. She ran through the risks inherent in each of the decisions and I had to make a snap decision right there. Which, by the way? Sucked. I went with the surgery, if only to get it over with, allowing me to then concentrate on losing my pregnancy pudge before the next cycle could begin. I was told to report to the hospital last Monday afternoon, unless 'things began progressing'. If that happened, it meant a trip to the ER. I called my Mom and got her on board to ferry my anaesthetized bod to and fro.

Saturday morning at 5:30 a.m. I knew the plans had changed.

By the time I'd made tea for The Boy, fed the dogs and shaved my legs it was nigh on seven and I felt mentally prepared to head for the hospital. I was beginning to cramp sporadically and my mood was taking a nosedive. The triage nurse decided to live on the edge when she literally snatched my Tim's coffee from my hand after I'd had ONE SIP. That was the last bit of liquid I would enjoy for the next 27 hours.

The OB/GYN resident was supposed to visit me at 8:00 a.m., so I shed my clothes and my diginity in Trauma Room Four. Luckily it was a single and close enough to a washroom that only two or three other patients would have to tolerate my twice-hourly visits through their ward to enjoy a little solitude.

I can only assume the resident had better things to do because the nurses that were tending to me had to begin a campaign of phone calls asking where the hell he was around 10:00. The morphine/gravol shots began around 10:30 and continued until the dude finally showed his face as the sun set over the yardarm (around 4:30). He got entirely too personal with his right latex glove for about 10 seconds, then told me he would put me on 'the board' for surgery. I was a B2, so all emergencies would jump the queue and keep my ass waiting even longer. He decided to admit me and start an IV since I was shrivelling up into one of those apple dolls right before his eyes. I sent The Boy home to eat something other than coffee shop food, feed the dogs and watch some telly because watching me alternately squirm with pain and sleep the sleep of the heavily drugged was anything but gripping.

I got to my room (beside a window - SCORE!) as the sun was setting, so I got about five minutes of Vitamin D before I settled back and enjoyed my teeny, tiny television screen with uncomfortable earphones. My roomie was Jane, a nice lady who couldn't go home until she provided the staff with a convincing BM. Eew. Her visitors were loud and happy and they pissed me off because I was in a black mood in spite of the narcotics. I'd never spent a night in the hospital and I especially didn't want to do so when I was, you know, sick. And vulnerable and tired and sore.

My wonderful, saintly late-afternoon nurse Marilyn let me in on all the details surrounding the OR and their policies and procedures. She told me I could be brought in as late as 11:00 p.m., but not after that. So, if I had to wait until Sunday, someone would wake me at 11:00 so I could enjoy a one-hour window of eating and drinking and being merry before the clock would strike midnight and I would again turn into a surgery candidate, meaning nothing by mouth. And boy howdy, were they strict about that.

Heather, my nurse on the midnight shift, didn't feel the need to carry out Marilyn's request because I fell asleep and didn't wake up until exactly midnight. I buzzed Heather and proceeded to have an entirely disconcerting conversation about how I'd missed the deadline and would now have to endure a further (minimum) eight hours without food or water before the surgery. I told her rather matter-of-factly that simply WASN'T GOING TO HAPPEN, BITCH. She gave me a withering look and told me she would have to speak to my team before any decisions were made. I nodded, but DAMN I was steamed and didn't give a tiny rat's ass what they said because I had digestive cookies in my bag and would forage the used dinner trays of the other patients if need be.

She returned and told me I could have something immediately but then would have to revert to nothingness until I spoke with the intern during morning rounds. She brought me the following: a roast beef sandwich and two containers of apple juice. So I got to pound my stomach which hadn't enjoyed a blessed thing in 29 hours with grease and red meat and acidic juice. Guess what happened?

Yup.

And then: a migraine.

Oh hey, guess what happened then? The lovely Heather told me my morphine orders hadn't followed me from the ER. The stupid bint didn't stop to think that she should just call someone and get me the damn drugs because my head was going to blast off my neck and fly around the room. She instead told me I would have to wait for my caseworker. Forty minutes later, she arrived. She then made me decide which type of drug I wanted. I beseeched her to just drug me, damnit, but she would not be swayed. Through my tears, I decided to stick with the morphine and gravol since it had been working so well all day. I got a serious jab in the hip and was rewarded with four and a half hours of sweet, sweet slumber.

My new nemesis Heather woke me rudely around 5:30 to check my vitals and it took everything in me not to strangle the life out of her with my IV line. At 7:00, I met Maggie, my day nurse. She was a breath of fresh air as she leaned over and whispered that she'd been through exactly what I was going through only a few months ago. She said she was sorry for my loss and I could tell from the look in her eyes that she was being sincere. My mood brightened about a thousand percent and only got better an hour later when The Boy popped in for an update.

Fifteen minutes later, the Intern of Ambiguity returned to my bedside to tell me I was on the board today and hey! I'd been upgraded to a B1 so I'd probably get into the operating theatre sometime this afternoon. The look on my face must have been either scary or pitiful because as I geared my weakened self up for a rant session of epic proportion he quickly backpedaled and told me I might actually get in within hours. Bastard. Lying, lying, lying bastard. He headed for the hills leaving me to begin crying again even though I know it makes The Boy uncomfortable. I had hit the wall: I couldn't control my feelings. I was steadily losing the ability to control my surroundings and all I wanted was to go home.

Dr. P then showed up and gave me the gift of freedom. She told me I'd already gotten through the worst of it and if I wanted, I could go home with a prescription for two tiny pills that would urge my body to finish that which it had already started. I began weeping again, but this time relief was the order of the day. When Maggie showed up with a bag of morphine to do me the rest of the day I thought maybe it was Christmas! I could eat! I could ditch the paper gown!

I accepted the wheelchair ride to the Admitting doors and made my way unsteadily to the Jeep. We headed over to the drugstore with my script, and I made a beeline for the food aisles while it was being filled. I started scarfing digestive cookies and bottled water at a slow but steady pace right at the checkout, leaving the cashier wondering what my deal was.

Once I got home (home!) I set up camp on the chesterfield and spent some serious time with dvds and the laptop. I didn't realize the seriousness of the phrase 'bedrest' until I started to vaccuum on Wednesday. So I took it capital-E easy until Saturday morning. I figured hey it's been eight days, I'm sure my body is done healing. I did a bit of grocery shopping in the blizzard, stopped by Sbux for a soy chai and risked my life heading home. Mistake number two. Today I've been laying like broccoli, hoping everything below calms down and I can resume living like a normal person.

I have many thoughts and feelings about all this, but at the moment all I want is to have something, anything to distract me. Time heals all wounds, but my clock is stuck.

Posted at 5:22 p.m.