Bad, but could be worse October 27, 2009

So. We’re back from the hospital, at last, after spending six hours or so in a holding pattern in various waiting rooms and consultation rooms. And now we know, or hope we know, what’s going on.

The Good – it’s not ectopic. There was a ‘cystic mass’ at the distal end of the fallopian tube, which panicked the ultrasound technician into fetching the Head Consultant, but it turned out to almost certainly be a rather impressive corpus luteum or maybe a luteal cyst. It will go away by itself. To be completely sure of this, we had to wait for the blood test results, which took hours and hours and hours, during which H and I were bored, terrified, miserable and furious all at once and used a great deal of very black humour.

The Bad – it is a miscarriage. There was nothing in the uterus except a vague blobby smear which could have been the remains of a pregnancy, or possibly just a vague blobby smear. The blood test confirmed I had been pregnant recently, but my HCG was so low it must have failed days ago. Less than 20. More than 5. There was something briefly there. Shit shit shit shit shit SHIT SHIT.

The Ugly – the cramps. Ramping up all day from ouchy to miserable to curling-up-in-a-ball. One of the doctors got me some co-codamol eventually, and it worked, and I feel so much better. If stoned. I don’t suppose the next few days will be much fun either. Heigh ho.

The Uglier – The sweet, sweet doctor who got me the good drugs also wants me to be referred to their gynaecology clinic again. For repeat miscarriages. She thought that, despite the fact that I’ve only had two official ones (though there’s always the one possible chemical back in August) my age and other issues meant it would be worth getting the ‘situation looked into’.

I had thought I was an anovulatory PCOS girl who couldn’t get pregnant. Now, all of a sudden, I’m a multiple miscarrier instead, and getting pregnant is only the start of my worries.

Did I say shit? Good. I shall say it again.

Shit.

A nastier kind of limbo

Yesterday was rather a trial to the nerves. I felt crampy and was spotting (pink and brown) during the day, but by the time I got home from work (where, incidentally, I was not concentrating) I, err, wasn’t. And I felt a little sick and I still had the olfactory powers of a blood-hound (walking home, my poor nose was screaming ‘garbage! Cat pee! Fried chicken! Salad-dressing! Cut grass! Dead leaves! Cigarettes! Deodorant and sweat! Curry (bleagh)! More garbage! Double bleagh!’ as I passed each front door).

So, I made a point of not drinking much and not using the loo for a few hours, and then, feeling nicely concentrated, I unwrapped a F.irst Res.ponse Early Result test (carefully crafted from 24-carat gold and seed-pearls, given the price). And then I sat and watched it. And within two minutes, a faint second line was forming.

Aha!

I took the stick to H, who was quietly minding his own business – in fact, I think he was tidying the kitchen. H looked at the stick. H looked at me. H took the stick and peered hard at it.

‘How long ago did you use this?’ he asked. For, oh, he is wise in the ways of the pee-stick now.

‘Less than three minutes.’

Cue hugging each other in a sort of trembling delighted panic.

And then, because we are almighty geeks, H photographed the Golden Pee-stick so I could blog about it.

And then, and then, in the small hours of the night, the cramping and the spotting (now red, damn it, damn it, damn it) returned. And have not gone away. Bitter McTwisted now feels perfectly justified in her extremely bad attitude to the whole saga. I don’t know what she’s done with the Positive Thinking Fairy, but all I’ve seen of her since last night is a crumpled spangle and three blue feathers.

Anyway. Plan for the day. Do not go to work (because seriously. Miscarrying in a toilet cubicle at work? I do not think so). Go and visit the GP – not because I think medical science can do anything at all one way or another, but because it’s be nice to know when to panic and why, and also, to get a sick note because seriously, if this goes tits up I am going to need some time off work because I will be having a melt-down. Also, I’d like to know what painkillers I can take when, in case this gets really ugly. Come home. Chew nails to bone. Try not to keep batting my lovely internet people about the head with panicky gloomy updates on the half-hour.

Hope. Which is the closest an atheist can get to prayer.