And then I ran away with Bela Lugosi June 29, 2008

Item: I know my mother is not trying to be hurtful or annoying or wilfully stupid. And I’m not exactly making heroic efforts to let her know her attempts to talk to me about ‘you know, when it happened,’ are counterproductive. She’s my mother. She loves me. She can’t bear to see me hurting. She is also used to a family which takes any given disaster and raises it to a flailing catastrophe and then refuses to get over it because that would mean relinquishing chips in the Great Family Poker Game of One-Downmanship. Being my mother, and having sent me away to boarding school when I was twelve, her mental template of me is of a gangly over-grown child whose bodily development is seriously out-running her emotional development, sulky, unsociable, prone to tantrums and out-breaks of door-slamming and shrieking things like ‘you all hate me! I know you do!’ (umm – about that… But see below). Her natural instinct is therefore a) to minimise whatever it is quickly before I get out of hand, b) to try to jolly me into ‘behaving’ and c) to try and get me to understand that I must take responsibility for my own problems. The sad fact is none of this really worked at the time, which is why I was such a bloody awful teenager – I was permanently heart-broken that no one, not even my mother, really cared or understood and of course, I upped the ante considerably by being Really Ill (TM) when I was in my late teens even THOUGH my mother didn’t believe it was anything serious for several years. I win! Hah! and I wouldn’t recommend it. So when my mother  starts off on her ’stop the teenage nuisance by positive thinking campaign’, I, being so very very adult now, start off on a parallel ‘my Mum doesn’t care! She doesn’t believe I’m really ill! I could die and she’d still be telling me to pull my socks up and smile more!’. It sucks both ways.

Item: But I really am an adult. I will be even more adult than my mother. I will.

Item: All of which is very shaming in the face of my bellowing, wet-laundry-throwing, knocking-things-flying tantrum yesterday. H was being mildly irritating, you see, and for some reason saying ‘H! You are being mildly irritating! Please stop muttering into the sink and talk to me!’ was beyond me. I threw things and stormed out of the house. I stormed back in short order, very carefully, because I was wearing entirely the wrong shoes for storming and nearly sprained my ankle on the first lap of the block. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’ve been apologising ever since. Just, please don’t tell my mother.

Item: And then I dyed my hair black.

Item: This took two sessions of four hours each sitting about with a giant cow-pat of henna and indigo ground into my hair, smelling of compost, and then a marathon removing-said-compost-from-bath scrubbing session. Hair is more of a very VERY dark brown than a really ink-black black. You could argue that it looks more natural this way.

Item: I have always vaguely wanted to dye my hair black. I have mid-brown hair. It’s very nice brown hair, very nice indeed, but, yea verily it is brown. Also, my inner Goth, normally a diminutive little creature most concerned with reading Victorian ghost-stories and occasionally buying black eyeliner, suddenly surged up and took control while the rest of me was off wailing and sulking.

Item: Possibly, I want to annoy my family next weekend by turning up dressed head-to-foot in black and looking melodramatic. Again, please don’t tell my mother.

Can’t live with ‘em, can’t tar and feather ‘em either. June 27, 2008

And then, just when I was beginning to feel quite, quite normal and cheerful again – having long chats with friends about their lives, and also talking about my dissertation and going out for dinner and which films to go see in the next week – my mother called last night.

Naturally, Mum wanted to know how I was. I said, with absolute truth, that physically I felt fine. Yes, I had gone back to work already. I was keeping busy. But emotionally? Mum wanted to know.

May: Oh, you know, I still feel sad from time to time…

Mum: [Interrupting] Well, you know, I think the BEST thing you can do, to get over it, is to not think about it so much. You need to be optimistic and look forward now. You mustn’t dwell on it all the time. [May tries feebly to interject here and remind her mother that she has JUST SAID she has gone back to work and it keeping busy] Try to put it out of your mind and move on….

[At this point May holds the telephone away from her head and glares at it]

… And if you’re thinking positively, good things will happen. You need to create the positive space in your life for good things to happen in, and you can’t do that if you’re DWELLING on it…

[May holds phone away from her ear again and waits, patiently, for the distant scratching of her mother’s voice to stop].

May: Hmm.

Mum: [Launches into very long discussion of the various complications involved in planning the Big Family Shindig next weekend. As at any given moment at least four family members are not on speaking terms with three people each, and bestest buddies ever with another two, who, naturally, are in turn bestest buddies with at least one unspeakable – and to think I assumed Venn diagrams were a pointless waste of time and effort when I was at school – this conversation took quite some time. This allowed a thankful May to concentrate on inter-generational politics and not on reasons why her mother annoys the living crap out of her sometimes].

May: [Eventually] By the way, Mum, is anything the matter with either Trouble or Diva?

Mum: Why?

May: Well, I haven’t heard from either of them since before my birthday, and I thought it was a little odd, considering it was my birthday, and then me being pregnant and then miscarrying [Note May’s refusal to beat about the bush or use the favourite family euphemisms of ‘when that thing happened’ or ‘you know, the other week’].

Mum: …

May: You did tell them, didn’t you?

Mum: Oh, yes, I think so. Yes, I’m sure I did. Diva has asked my for your phone number several times since.

May: [Laughing] Well, I’ll give her one point for good intentions then.

Mum: [Insert long and very dreary account of Trouble’s splitting up with her boyfriend-who-is-also-her-boss (yes, I KNOW) in order to move back in with her ex-husband Fucktard, and then Fucktard, instead of being the reformed character he had lead us all to assume he was, followed Trouble to work, saw her having lunch with said boss, and insisted on joining them and then creating a jealous scene, so Trouble is very cross and not wanting to live with Fucktard any more].

May: Hmmm.

Mum: Well, I don’t know what to make of Trouble any more. She’s hasn’t really talked to me or anyone else all week.

May: All week? So this kicked off AFTER…

Mum: [Interrupting] I never know what Trouble’s thinking.

May drops the subject.

Frankenstein Heart June 25, 2008

Predictably, I feel I am in the process of stitching my heart back together. I’m not very good at sewing – my darning always made socks fourteen times as uncomfortable. Giant stitches, slightly puckered. And, as I said to H, they will probably come a little unravelled over Christmas. Especially if I’m not p-word again. And I don’t really expect to be. Everyone else can be optimistic if they like, as long as they don’t mention it to me. And I insist on becoming a tad unravelled on Pikaia’s due date – 16th of January 2009. And I hope not to become unglued on my 34th birthday, but that’s me being optimistic, and I can’t talk about that, in case I get somewhat titted off with myself.

Other giant puckered stitches:

Item: My step-father sent me a note to thank me for his birthday card. He took the opportunity to offer his sympathy, and did it very kindly and wrote all the right things. The man is a mensch. And I cried. But they were good tears – relieved, grateful, pleased tears.

Item: Still nothing from my sisters. I can’t think what I will say to them when I see them next weekend. But I have amused myself in composing dozens of sharp, calm, witty and above all devastating one-liners to smash them to flinders with. Heh heh.

Item: My pregnancy radar is still on hysterically oversensitive, and I find myself leaping back from people’s midriffs with a startled ‘GAH!’ several times a day. Mentally, of course. Not physically. Tempting, but no. There are a LOT of pregnant ladies out there. Also, the fashion for empire-line tops and tunics continues unabated, so no doubt a good half of the ladies I have recoiled from were probably not pregnant at all. Still, I only think ‘GAH!’ and hurry on. I do not cry in public. Children and babies do not bother me much at all, I suppose because I never got a chance to think of Pikaia as a Real Live Baby.

Item: Other people’s babies. Specifically, the very-brand-new baby indeed of a good friend (hello! You know who you are!). I’m so glad he’s here safely. His mother, by the way, despite being eight-and-a-half months pregnant, offered to come over and help us while I was down for the count. Partly, I suppose, because she has been to Bad Sad Place too, but mostly because she is a Good Person. I am very much looking forward to seeing this precious offspring of a Good Person. Also, I owe him knit-wear. He deserves such beautiful knit-wear I have frightened myself by attempting something rather tricky, but I have sensibly decided to make it for a 6-month-old, by which time it will be cold enough for him to want woolly items, and I might have actually finished it.

Item: You do get to know who in your circle actually can do the old empathy trick. Other honourable mentions to the In-Laws, who sent a card, and MIL, who actually spoke to me on the phone to offer her condolences, and Grandmother-in-Law, who H fielded telephonically when I was in an unspeakable mood and who also offered condolences. My good friend E, who offered to come over straight away and, oh, he didn’t know, do anything we needed (what we needed in the end was pizza, ice-cream and Beowulf). My New Line Manager, who won a small gold star for asking how H was as well, when I went back to work.

Item: I have two memories to cherish, and I can, now. One is the morning of the 11th of May. The previous evening, H and I had been utterly gob-smacked by the pregnancy test that turned only-vaguely-possibly-positive, and that a good hour after you are supposed to read them for accurate results. Was it really a positive? Was it messing with me? The next morning I woke up at about six, and could not even begin to go back to sleep. Bugger it, I thought, and got up, and peed in my pee-mug, and dipped an Internet Pee-stick of Doom. It came up very, very, very faintly positive. I took it to show to the unconscious H, who, to his credit, did not tell me to sod off, but peered blearily at the tiny stick and said he couldn’t see anything. So I went silently back to the bathroom and dipped the Posh Shop-Brought Test. I showed that one to H. He sat bolt-upright in bed and said ‘That’s definitely positive!’. And then we hugged, and I cried a little, and then we lay in each other’s arms, admiring the pee-sticks propped up on my bedside table in the light of dawn.

The other good memory is that, despite the stress of the constant slight bleeding, I got to see my Shakespeare Extravaganza of eight plays in one long weekend. If I had known for sure I was miscarrying, I don’t think I could have made myself go, and the Extravaganza was one of the great theatrical happenings of my life (and yes, I am very very keen, beyond keen even, on theatre. And Shakespeare). Ironic, and probably weird, but I am thankful.

Commentathonadingdong June 24, 2008

So. Umm. NaComLeavMo. I signed up for that, didn’t I?

And was catastrophically honkingly bad at it.

(I do have an excuse – the dog ate my homework, the antibiotics sapped my will to live, kind-of-thing).

Never mind! I have 24 hours! I WILL say hello to the entire damn list! I will! If it kills me! Which it might! Ah ha ha ha ha!

Edited to Add: Yes, Ms Pru [see comments below], I was high. I had had a whole pint of beer. First drink in well over a month. Weeeeeeeeee! And I will comment on every blog. But not by midnight tonight. Ahem. That was the beer yelling excitedly.

That was… adult June 22, 2008

H and I seem to have reached the grieving stage where we fight, cry, and have make-up sex. Don’t ask me what we’re fighting about, I don’t know either, and in any case it inevitably turns into a fight about how we fight within approximately seventeen seconds (or two turns, for the gamers out there).

In the cold, well, mild and clammy, this being a British Summer, light of day I find I have entirely forgiven H for the Astonishingly Stupid Remark, but am now fuming about the Accidental False Accusation – which I had barely noticed at the time. We have to have another row. We have this one incoherently in the middle of the night, with pitiful sobbing on my part and the realisation on H’s part that I am not, oops, quite as rational and ‘emotionally intelligent’ as usual right now, and therefore he can’t rely on me to know why we are rowing or where the row is heading or what, if any, was the point of anything I’ve said in the past half-hour (this is my usual role in rows. Especially as I usually start them). Neither of us has a clue next morning what in holy hell the other 97% of the row had been about. But it must have been good, because we both definitely remember the make-up sex.

The next morning (next morning, note, and not at midnight when there would have been a point to my remembering) I also remember that the make-up sex was not, as it were, conducive to this cycle being a rest cycle from attempted reproduction. We were encouraged, after all, to lie fallow until after my next period to allow my battered uterus a chance to sit in the corner with a dunce-cap on and meditate on her stubbornness and when and when not to apply it in future. And in any case, the premises need a thorough scrub-down and redecorating, especially after the endometritis. A rinse cycle, if you will.

Therefore my cervix starts acting all slutty and fertile.

I mention this to H.

H, well, H had been given the impression that the Satsuma was in a bit of a coma at present and therefore a non-issue. And he didn’t want to ruin the moment as we clearly both so desperately needed said moment before we both either died of stress or disembowelled each other.

Well, Satsuma was in a bit of coma until Saturday morning.

This is exactly the sort of half-assed tom-foolery that gets seventeen-year-olds knocked up in pub car-parks.

I am not crying. I am not. I am not. June 18, 2008

Item: A working day leaves me so tired my legs ache. It suddenly occurred to me that I (go me!) had bled for, well, actually, a month exactly now, and I might possibly be a little anaemic, yes-no-maybe? Luckily it has slowed right down to spotting for the past two or three days. But I have some iron pills left. I might take them.

Item: Half my colleagues think I’ve been off work for three weeks because I was on study leave and/ or holiday, and bounce up to ask me if I’ve had a good time. I say, calmly, ‘actually, I was ill,’ and they say ‘oh dear,’ and we gossip about things that have happened at work since I was last in.

Item: One of the above colleagues got in an ‘oohh, and you’ve lost weight!’ before I could say I had been ill. I said I just HAD to go the ladies’ and ran away and locked myself in the disabled cubicle and sat with my head in my hands. I just sat there. For minutes on end. It’s true. My breasts have deflated back to their normal 36DD (I was seriously heading for E by five weeks) and I have lost all the midriff puffiness (all hormonal retained water, of course). It makes me feel tearful thinking about it even now, but I did not cry then. I simply waited. And eventually I went back to my desk.

Item: I wouldn’t even mind if everyone at work knew what had happened, as long as I didn’t have to tell them.

Item: People who I am absolutely sure know about the miscarriage and yet have not phoned me or written to me or emailed me or texted me:

1. The aunt who sent me a happy congratulatory card, and who I wrote back to saying it had all gone tits up;
2. My father (he signed a card his wife sent);
3. The other aunt, who I know my mother has been talking to, and who told my mother, and so my mother told me, about the three miscarriages she had in between her two healthy beautiful grown-up kids.

People who probably know about all the above and haven’t written, phoned, emailed or texted:

1. My sisters.
2. The rest of my aunts and uncles on my mother’s side.

The parts of the above that made me lose my temper and rant on and on about my bloody stupid bloody fucked-up bloody family last night:

1. My father.
2. Happy congratters Aunt, who used to be my favourite, most loving aunt when I was growing up.
3. My sisters, and this because either Mum has told them everything, and they stink, especially Trouble as Diva gets extra time for having Aspergers; or, my mother told them nothing, whereapon she stinks, as I asked her to tell them; or she told them the good bit and forgot the bad bit, which is fucked up, and also, where are my congratulations, then? I do not know which of these possibilities is the actual. None of them make me happy. I daren’t ask my mother, because she is doomed to have her ear screamed right off whatever she says.

Item: There will be a Giant Family Get-Together at the beginning of July.

Item: I need to rewrite the ‘about’ page on this blog, don’t I?

Oh, look, there on the horizon. Normality. June 16, 2008

My plan was, go into work this afternoon, sort out the inevitable mess in my in-tray and email, hand over my ‘oops, sorry, I’ve not been here’ paper-work, sort out my reeeelly quite enormous library fines (a librarian! With library fines! Again!), check in with my tutor, collect my case-study notes, come home, and lie down. And then I could go into work properly on Tuesday and, you know, work.

No one at work has got back to me about this. Grrrrrrrrr. Shall I go in anyway and startle them?

I have a bunch of emails from assorted friends who Do Not Know, one or two of whom are even Long Lost, all wanting to know hey, wassup? Also, do I want to go to the pub? Also, what’s with the radio silence? I really ought to answer these emails. Doing this will suck, whether I go for the sunshine-and-flowers of euphemistic under-carpet-brushery, or for the ‘it sucked this much’, or for the brusque two sentences of necessity. It depends which friend I want knowing what about my emotional state in what context given assumed venue and alcoholic nature of next encounter. It’s like playing chess.

We decided not to go and stay with H’s parents last weekend. We both felt like boiled underpants, and whereas I was perfectly prepared to use my boiled-underpant-status to get out of doing or answering anything at all I couldn’t be arsed with, H is rather less cantankerous by nature, and didn’t think he could bear much social interaction and gentle enquiry. He certainly couldn’t bear watching me leap up and run out of the room at half-hourly intervals and then have anyone turn to him and say ‘Is May alright?’ as the only truthful answer would be ‘No she sodding is not and neither am I.’

So we stayed at home, and E came over for pizza and movies (Beowulf) and we all talked involved nonsense about the best available translation of Beowulf and whether they had the Anglo-Saxon available and which was morally preferable in a translation, verse or prose? That was very nice. I fear I may buy another book.

Fun, fun fun, fun fun. June 13, 2008

Rita tagged me! Being tagged is fun!

A-Z All About Me

A – Attached or Single: Attached. Very. In fact, excuse me for a moment – I simply must go and fling my arms around H’s ankles.

B – Best Friend(s): Dear sweet V, who H and I have both known since we were all 19; E, the one man prepared to talk solid Renaissance Drama with me for four hours without drawing breath, and who has been doing this unflaggingly for the past 11 years; My Internet Nutcases – they know who they are.

C – Cake or Pie: Pie. Pecan pie, lemon meringue pie, Mississippi mud pie, Banoffee pie, the baked cheese-cake pie thing my mother makes… mmmm. Pie. Also, pie comes in Steak and Guinness flavour as well. Try doing that to cake.

D – Day of Choice: Friday. Because it’s just the one more day of work, and we all go a little nutso by lunch-time, and then I have a G&T when I get home. I look forward to it all week. Rituals are grand.

E- Essential Item: a book. I panic if I find I have left the house without one, and, in dire cases, I will have to stop and buy a whole new one. Why yes, we do run out of bookshelves every six months or so. However did you guess?

F – Favorite Color(s): Red. I got married in scarlet. I heart red that much.

G – Gummy Bears or Worms: Urgh. Neither. Sweets have to taste of liquorice, chocolate, or peppermint to get me even vaguely interested.

H – Hometown: The Great Wen, also affectionately known as Nodnol, the capital of this Sceptred Isle, smells faintly of chip-fat at all times.

I – Indulgence(s): Chocolate. Ice cream. Pie. Knitting yarn. Books. Seven library cards, which I defend by pointing at the books thing.

J – January or July: January. I am as happy as a clam with woolly socks, mittens, sweater, hat, scarf and nose-warmer on. In summer, I melt, and can’t sleep, and am disagreeable, and get hay fever, and am even more disagreeable.

K – Kids: To make a hollow laughing. Gravida 1 Para 0 was not exactly top of the list of things I wanted written on my medical record.

L – Life is incomplete without: Books. The books thing is now officially out of hand.

M – Marriage Date: March 2005 (but we’d been sharing the bathroom sink since 1997).

N- Number of Siblings: Eight. Yes. And my Mum was one of seven and my Dad was one of eleven. I am the family mutant freak.

O – Oranges or Apples: Cherries. It’s all about me so I get to be awkward.

P- Phobias or Fears: Slugs. Heights. Enclosed spaces. Pot-holing would probably kill me.

Q- Quote: ‘Who would write, who had anything better to do?’ – Byron.

R- Ring size: Wha? Why, are you planning to buy me jewellry? In that case, British size M. Which I think translates as smallish but in no way minute.

S- Season: Spring. I get a little Wordsworth about snowdrops and daffodils and birds’ nests and catkins and such.

T- Tag 3 Friends: Ooh, I get to tag people! You’re it! Hee hee! Seriously? How could I choose? Don’t make me choose. Three of you, for God’s sake, do this meme and say I tagged you.

U – Unknown fact about me: What, dear reader, could you possibly not know about me? You even know how many ovaries I do not have. You know about my cervix. *Thinks madly*. What would you like to know about me?

V – Very favorite stores: Book shops! Yay!

W – Worst Habit: I have bazillions. I bite my nails. I am the most untidy humanoid on this planet. I am a maddening know-it-all who talks incessantly through documentaries on TV. I am addicted to caffeine (this last month sucked a little in that regard. Cold Turkey! Comin’ atcha!). I leave my shed hair on the side of the bath. I leave knitting projects, complete with needles sticking out at all angles, in strange secretive places like ninja porcupine guerillas, poised to attack the unwary. I talk too much. I procrastinate. I write poetry. Did I mention I talk too much? I clearly type too much too.

X-ray or Ultrasound: I am getting very good indeed at ultrasounds. Very very practiced.

Y – Your Favorite Food(s): Lasagne. Tiramisu. Sashimi. Cherries. Not tripe or brains (yes, I have, and yes, it’s horrid). Everything else.

Z – Zodiac: Gemini

Yea verily, hell is other people June 12, 2008

Edited for typos. (To think I used to proof-read for a living. Where can I put my face etc.).

One more moan, and then I swear I shall cheer the fuck up already.

List of people who were arses, and who made a horrible weekend in hospital just about as horrible as possible:

1 – H has already mentioned the stupid nurse who didn’t read the notes in A&E and started her treatment of me with the cheerful phrase ‘You’re seven weeks pregnant’. Grr. She was perfectly kind, but she followed that one up with sending me off to collect a urine specimen when I felt able to get up and shuffle to the loo – fair enough – but when I’d returned it to her and she’d tested it she felt the need to tell me in a concerned voice that there was blood in the sample. Err. Yes. I am bleeding vaginally. It is very hard to collect a blood free urine sample under those circumstances. I pointed this out. She said ‘oh!’ and then, get this, THEN started to tell me it was perfectly normal, under the circumstances, for the sample to have blood in it and I wasn’t to worry. Oh good. So glad. I shan’t then. Except, may I be slightly concerned that my nurse appears to be a Grade A 24-carat moron?

2 – I mentioned Cow Nurse who failed the ‘appropriate tone to use when refusing the sweating, jaw-clenched patient pain-killers’ test.

3 – The woman in the bed beside mine. I don’t think she was a Real Arse, but she was annoying. First, she had an enormous family, including what appeared to be about seventeen teenage daughters, who stayed with her until well past visiting hours and talked their heads off and had to be refrained from playing their stereos out loud by the nurses. Second, she had been told not to eat on Sunday night. Later, they decided that she could eat after all, and as she’d missed the official supper, her family went out to get her some dinner. They brought her a vast takeaway curry. Curry smells strong. Also, I firmly believe it is perfectly possible to eat even a vast stinky curry without making noises like a vacuum cleaner extracting marbles from a bucket of custard. The delicate, stoned, sore, and woozy lady in the next bed found all this quite trying. Thirdly, her mobile phone rang all the time. The nurses asked her to turn the ring-tone off, as it was loud and obnoxious. She said she didn’t know how to. She also talked at the top of her voice at all times, even at midnight. We could hear every single word doctors said to every other patient on the ward, so I know she was admitted with pain and bleeding in week 11 of her pregnancy, and they thought she was miscarrying and would need an ERPC. The scan showed the baby was till alive, still fine, and not the source of the blood. Her reaction to this news was strangely unimpressed and uninterested. Of course, everyone processes everything differently and I am being grossly unfair, but my own recent history made me quite bloody silently furious with her for quite some minutes.

4 – Now this was the real arse. I shall call her Fag Butt. Fag Butt was in the bed opposite mine. Fag Butt wasn’t a gynaecological case at all. Fag Butt was only there with us because the hospital was stretched for beds. This somehow made it worse. Fag Butt was having surgery on a dental abscess. Fag Butt was 22, smoked like a volcanic crater, and had controlled her diabetes so poorly that every single vein in her body blew as soon as a phlebotomist even looked at it. Her abscess was also caused by smoking and uncontrolled diabetes. Her toe-nails were beginning to show signs of fungal infection and damage. She was 22. You don’t normally see such a crap-shoot in diabetic patients until they’re over 50. Also, Fag Butt was whiney. She was rude. She was self-centred. She cried and wailed all night the first night, because she wanted her surgery to be over, and she wanted a glass of cold water (she was on nil by mouth), and she wanted a cigarette. She threw an almighty fucking tantrum, including throwing a drip-stand at her father, on the second day, because she’d just come round from anaesthetic and her blood sugar was worryingly low and therefore the nurses wouldn’t let her get up and go outside for a cigarette. Her relationship with her parents was horrible, and they argued and shouted at each other the entire time they were there. She cried her eyes out because the doctor wouldn’t let her come off the glucose drip, again, because her blood sugar kept crashing and soaring. She lied to the nurses about how much insulin she took how often. She refused to take her medication because ‘it tasted nasty’. She refused to take her medication until she got iced water to take it with. She actually drank the water she was given to rinse her mouth with when she was still on nil by mouth and promptly threw up all over herself, the bed and the floor. She swore and cursed at the nurses who wouldn’t take her off the drip so she could walk about easily. She swore and cursed at the nurses because the doctors had come round while she was off out having a cigarette and she wanted them to come back right now. She cried and phoned her mum because the diabetes nurse had come up from a different hospital to see her while she was out having another cigarette, and refused point blank to come back. Eventually the doctors did come by while she was in bed and gave her the scolding of her life. So she phoned her mum and then every single friend she had (she had friends? Good God) to cry about how mean and nasty everyone in the hospital was.

5 – The receptionist in the EPU. Enough said.

Meanwhile, the fourth lady in our bay of the ward had also just had a miscarriage – she had, in fact, collapsed bleeding profusely and had to have an emergency D&C/ ERPC to control the haemorrhage. Naturally, she was feeling very weak and faint. She and I gave each other a lot of sympathetic glances, especially when Fag Butt was kicking off, and after my throw-up-a-thon, when I was shuffling to the bathroom to brush my poor teeth, she asked if I was OK. Of course, she would have known exactly what was wrong with me just as I knew exactly what was wrong with me. I wish, I SO wish, I had had more of a chance to talk to her. I think she would have understood. We spend months getting pregnant, we cherish ourselves like precious jewel-caskets when we get there, trying so hard to be healthy, to look after ourselves, for the sake of the baby, and it’s all taken away anyway. And meanwhile, some silly bitch not only sees taking care of her own health as a vast imposition, she sees everyone else’s efforts to take care of it as mean and unfair and can’t look beyond the instant gratification thing. I worry that Fag Butt will be dead by 40. She is so young. She will get to a point where she will realise what she has done to herself, and her heart will be broken and horrified, and there is nothing any of us can do to save her from it.

And I think Fourth Lady and I could have done without that, when we tried so hard to save ourselves and still couldn’t.

Do not read this post. It is completely disgusting June 11, 2008

I’m also working on a post on my delightful room-mates for those two nights I spent in hospital, don’t worry. But this post is rather heavy on the gore and ick. Also, snot and weeping. Heigh ho.

Dear readers, I do hope very few of you have had a miscarriage, and of those of you have had, well, statistically only 2 to 3% will have developed an infection, according to Doctor Google. Doctor Google, however, is a little coy about symptoms and recovery times and, you know, quite important things like that. I can expect pain, yes, done that; fever, yes, a slight one, dealt with with all the paracetamol and antibiotics; and bleeding with ‘foul-smelling discharge’ – this last one freaking me the heck out and I can ASSURE you, gentle reader I have had nothing of the sort. I am bleeding, in a watery, pinkish, feeble, spotting sort of way – ah, by the way, I have now been bleeding practically without surcease since the 17th of May, and is this fair? Is it buggery – but haven’t bled heavily since the operation. Nothing particularly foul about it. I promise. Is this right? Is it good? Is it not good? The NHS doctors seemed to be of the opinion that I get at least another week of bleeding. Harrumph.

Also, I was utterly panic-struck yesterday. I was feeling very crampy, which was beginning to upset me. I was pacing about the living-room in a slightly wobble-kneed way, huffing, and along with the cramps I was feeling a bizarre sensation of pressure and almost squeezing. Very unpleasant. I interpreted this as my possibly needing a pee, so I went into the loo, sat down, and suddenly something slid out of me. I caught it on the toilet paper, and promptly shrieked – I mean really, avert your eyes, and why are you still reading this? – because I’d just passed a lump of, of, flesh, the size of my thumb, and it was disgusting, and it was NOT a blood clot (I know, ohh, I know blood clots). I grew up on a farm. I was there when the cats and the dogs and the sheep and the cow gave birth. This was worryingly placental.

What I did next, I agree, is mentally unstable. I wrapped it up very firmly in a plastic freezer-bag, and, um, I put it in the freezer. It’s still there.

And then I was outraged for quite some time. Please regard your thumb. Please regard your uterus – no, wait, not so easy. Please consider your uterus. An empty uterus is the size of a fist. In an object the size of a fist, how could you fail to spot an object the size of a sodding thumb? How could they have told me there was nothing left in there? How could the surgeon have told me the ERPC had ‘got everything’? Argh, foam, gibber.

Rant.

Hiss spit.

Ach.

Anyway. I think that is why I couldn’t flush it away. Part of me was determined to march straight back down to the EPU and demand an explanation. And when they reiterate that on the scan, they saw nothing left, throw the sorry little packet down on the desk and yell ‘What the hell is that then, a lamb cutlet?’

But then I remembered the bit about the 8mm endometrium. I am willing to bet that if I fished the sad little object out and measured its width, it would be about 8mm thick. So so far I have not stormed the EPU with an axe. Soon, in fact, I will get rid of it. Soon.

Yuk.

So – incidentally, it’s safe to read again – so, what other horrors can I expect? And for how long? Please? I am such a freaking freak now, apparantly. I can’t think who on earth else has been through this.

Edited to Add: Ooh look, I’ve passed several more nasty lumps. Rather smaller ones, you’ll be pleased to hear, and I pressed flush on all of them. Urgh. Ow. Urgh. Yuk.

And to think I agreed to the ERPC because a) it would reduce the risk of infection and b) would mean I wouldn’t have to pass the sorry remains myself, slowly, painfully, alone in my own bathroom.

HAH.