Taking a stand (very quietly, in the corner) November 29, 2009

So, yesterday. Yes. We were supposed to be going down to my mother’s place for a gigantic shindig, in our role of *cough* ‘willing’ slaves who will unfold folding tables for food.

I was not keen. I was even less keen after having been back at work for two (tiresome, tiring) weeks and having been In-Lawed the previous weekend. General preference not to speak to anyone anymore about anything, thank you, building to a strong desire to scream ‘Fuck off and leave me alone!’ by Friday afternoon.

And anyway, as I mentioned, the numb, ‘ah, feck it,’ stage of grief was wearing off, like lidocaine. I was horrifically aware of just how angry and miserable I was about the recent miscarriage, and, infuriatingly, about Pikaia’s miscarriage (what? Haven’t I got over that? Umm, apparantly not. Heigh ho). Had stopped sleeping, was whiling away the midnight hours by bickering with H or chewing my nails down to the quick again.

I was not at my most sane and collected.

By lunch-time, also known as leave-to-catch-train-time, I was having a meltdown (naked, in the shower, for added class). (The shower was on and there was shampoo in my hair. Does that help?).

By the time I had removed myself from the bathroom and put clothes on, I was a weeping hysterical mess, and had lost my glasses, and was about to throw furniture at H for mentioning the fact we had to go and catch the train.

By 2pm, I’d stopped sobbing, and we’d decided H would go to the shindig, as he’d been looking forward to it and because my mother had enrolled him as Court Photographer. I would stay at home all by myself and knit and read books and do my creative writing homework and blow my red-raw nose as many times as I felt the need to, and hey, maybe, even stop crying. We both agreed that me spending the shindig locked in the upstairs bathroom doing any of the above would… not be so good. As well as inevitable. So H went off to catch the later train (complete with the only tube of toothpaste in the house, oops), and I made myself yet another cup of tea and put Lord of the Rings in the DVD player.

Dear Readers, it was bliss. Sometimes, what a person really, really, needs, is, in fact, for everyone to fuck off and leave her alone for 24 hours.

I told H he may as well go for complete honesty, so he did, and reported back that everyone, at least, everyone whose opinion who I gave a stuff about, was fine about it, merely sending messages of love and condolence. No one made a big stupid deal of it, and no one said anything objectionable, at least, not in H’s hearing.

I shall have to show my teeth and not go to more family parties. It seems everyone actually does like me and respect me for it, even if they tend not to tell me that to my face.

I’m not over it because I haven’t gone into it yet. November 28, 2009

Eventually, the shocked, tingling, freshly-slapped unreal feeling wears off.

And a few weeks after that, the dreary numbness wears off.

And only now do you realise that you are a boiling cauldron of rage, despair, terror and grief. Not when it happened, but now, weeks later. A whole month later.

Naturally, you’ve already arranged to spend the weekend at your mother’s.

Snarling noises off November 21, 2009

I am, sorry, but I am, in a fucking foul mood at the moment. I need not to be, as it is H’s birthday on Monday, and his parents are coming to stay for a couple of days, and I took time off work to (don’t tell H) (H, don’t read this bit) go shopping for him, which was niiiiiiice, and I’ve been to a couple of quite seriously good concerts and a dinner out, in the company of lovely people, and you’d've thought I’d be quite chirpy now.

I even got a really good mark for my Creative Writing assignment, which startled me (I thought it was pants), and which made H point and laugh, because, really, he always cheerleads me on, telling me I’m marvellous, and I always spend the entire essay/dissertation/story/poem/shopping list vapouring about my extreme rubbishness, and tah-dah! It was fine (again) and I was being silly (again) and H gets to point and laugh and so he should. Not that it’s a habit I can shake (You do know, don’t you, that you’re not really enjoying my blog at all, and it bores and irritates you in equal measure? That you’re not laughing at any of the jokes, in fact, you hadn’t realised there were jokes, and any minute now the clouds of delusion will lift and you will all realise this and briskly delete me from your feeds, turning to each other in embarrassment and saying you can’t believe I conned you all into sticking around for so long. Right? Anyone?).

Back on Planet Bitter McTwisted, Infertility Edition, I was jolted into rather an overshare at work on Thursday. Up until that point, all my colleagues were being rather sweet and discreet about my massive three-week absence. Probably gossiping like meerkats in my absence, but still, splendid lack of awkwardness. Until Thursday. Tech Guy (who is a sweetheart, really) came wandering in, and did the whole ‘hey, May, lovely to have you back! How are you! Better? Excellent!’ thing, which was gratefully received. Alas, on receiving this unwitting encouragement, he launched into a really quite intense ‘So! What happened to you then? We were all quite worried! Three weeks is a long time off sick, you know,’ (yes, I do know, thank you). ‘Was it swine flu? No? Normal flu? Not flu at all? It sounds serious! Tell me about it!’ (I wish I was shitting you, but I’m not) ‘Ohh, an accident, you say? What sort of accident? Did you have to go to hospital? Oh, you did? Why? Blood loss? You lost a lot of blood, you say? Ohh, dear. How did you…’ And at this point, thank arsing fuck, someone else popped their head round the door and said something had gone horribly wrong with the printer, and Tech Guy assured me he’d catch up with me later before sprinting off (shit).

My colleague S, who sits at the next desk, had been getting an unavoidable earful of this, and could see that I was flustered. She asked if I was OK. I nodded. She (quietly, not at the top of her healthy young lungs, colleagues take note), then told me she hadn’t asked me many questions because she didn’t think it was really her business, but she did want me to know that she did care and had been worried too. Never be kind to a flustered person. I sort of blurt-whispered ‘It’s just that, you know, I had a miscarriage, and it’s not that I mind people knowing, but I find it really hard to talk about it, especially in front of the whole office.’ And S said instantly that she was so, so sorry. And, did I have to go to hospital like I said. I said yes, that bit was perfectly true, as was the blood loss bit, and she looked quite miserable for me. And she asked how H was doing, which in my book earns her a Small Gold Star Certificate for Having Empathy And Intelligence.

Anyway. After a few minutes, people started coming back into the office, so we both coughed and stared casually out of the window or back at our computer screens and probably looked exactly like teenagers caught passing notes in assembly.

It’s true, though. I don’t mind people knowing one little bit. I just don’t want to be the one doing the telling. I most certainly don’t want to be the one answering questions or explaining next steps or trying to enlighten the unenlightened as to karyotyping or factor V Leiden, and also why, under the circumstances, it’s quite important that I absolutely don’t relax and go on vayyyycayyyyytion. Relaxing and vacationing might just work (hey, they sort of did in Switzerland, as I conceived about a week after we got back) and that’d be a great blog fodder anecdote. Hello! I nearly bled to death in a bus station in the Algarve! Also, I don’t speak Spanish!

My, I’m all unicorn ballet and rainbows today.

Anyway, part of the glumness is because on Sunday H and his dad are going out to do Manly Father-Son Bonding and I will be doing Girly Night In with my MiL. Now, she tried quite desperately to talk to me ‘about it all’ when I lost Pikaia, and I equally as desperately DID NOT WANT and became very good at changing the subject and/or if necessary volunteering to do the washing up. It was easy, because the rest of the family were milling about on most visits and MiL was clearly not prepared to broach things in front of *gasp* men. Not even my FiL or my husband. (I, personally, find protecting the Squeamish Sex from the realities of the massive and sometimes horrible sacrifices women make to keep the human race going, offensive both to their intelligence and our experience, but still…). A whole evening in, just the two of us, and a fresh new disaster to discuss? Oy vey.

I absolutely know in my heart her motives are the best and most pure. She is sad and sorry and wants to sympathise. She had a miscarriage herself, between H and his brother. It’s not like she’s going to say or think anything too clueless and irritate me that way. And this is her family, continuance of. And she has wanted to be a grandmother since H and I moved in together last century, and she has had the decency to more or less shut up about it. On points, she wins a total victory over my own female relations, who never shut up about anything at all ever.

But. But but but. You knew there was at least one but, didn’t you? The but is, as I said, that I just do not want to talk about it with people who need things explaining to them. And the other but is, MiL is a sort of emotional sponge. We all know people like this, don’t we? Unlike emotional vampires, who suck you dry, or emotional shit-stirrers, who like creating high drama for their own warped amusement, emotional sponges can’t hear a tale of woe without it becoming their tale of woe. They feel everything so intensely, they can’t separate out their own distress from the distress of the person concerned. MiL is prone to anxiety and sadness anyway, and is always taking the weight of the world on her shoulders, even about situations which she can’t possibly have any real responsibility for or interest in. My case is definitely meaningful for her and close to her heart. I feel awful because I know she already feels awful. I feel awful because she gets upset about the very idea of hospital visits and tests (I can’t cope with that. As far as I’m concerned, the up-coming visits and tests and hopefully answers are the only thing keeping me from booking a hysterectomy). I feel awful because it awakes bad memories for her. I feel awful because I’m part of a series of shitty things that have happened to H’s side of the family these past few years, and I feel I am adding to her burdens (regardless of whether it’s sensible of her to take on these emotional burdens or not, she does, and I’m hardly going to be able to magically change that for her with three well-chosen pieces of assvice).

And I feel awful because she has tried to say ‘I know how you feel’. And I can’t really sit there and say: ‘no, you don’t. You had a kid. You had one miscarriage. You had another kid. As for the grandkids thing, H has a brother, I’m not your only freakin’ chance. What you felt/ feel is in no way ‘less’ or ‘better’ than how I feel, but it is different. Because you never, not for a minute in your entire life, had to sit and face the possibility of never becoming a mother. And I have been doing that for the past four years. You probably had a far more realistic view of parenthood and what, exactly, you had lost when you miscarried H’s little sibling. You knew that loss, that grief, in a way I never could. I wouldn’t dream of telling a woman who had living children but lost the next pregnancy that I knew how she felt. I don’t. My beautifully idealised picture of my children is just that, an idealised picture. The weight that reality, practical understanding, can give to grief, I don’t feel. But similarly, a woman with at least one living child before her first loss cannot feel the bitter hopelessness of nothing but losses. She may understand, or empathise, but she cannot feel it.’

But I can’t say that. It’s not kind. And my MiL deserves kindness as much as I do.

Here’s to courage, and a stiff upper lip, and to iron bands around the heart. One day I’ll be able to take them off and go into hysterics. But, please, not this weekend.

I don’t know, what? November 15, 2009

I had an odd, inconclusive visit to the GP on Friday afternoon. Doc Tashless was not available, so I took whoever was available, and ended up speaking to an extremely nice, sunny woman who, get this, had actually read my notes before I came into the room, and one of the first things she said to me was ‘oh, you have had a rough time, haven’t you?’. Wow. And I smiled demurely and just about managed not leap to my feet, punching the air and shouting ‘YEESSSSSSS!’ (Incidentally, why the hell did I smile demurely? That’s so… British).

Anyway, I had gone to get my blood test results. And I got a result. Singular. I thought Doc Tashless had asked for tests on antiphospholipid antibodies, cardiolipin antibodies and Lupus antibodies, but all I got back was my Anti-cardiolipin antibody level. Apparently it’s under 10 iu/mL, and apparently that’s good. Which is good. But seriously, what the hell happened to everything else? Are they all the same test? Were there supposed to be three different tests? Sunny GP said that that was all they had in the results file. The original paperwork, of course, went off to the lab along with the sample, so we can’t find out, no, wait, I can’t prove, that Doc Tashless wanted all three things.

It was a bit of an impasse, to be honest. I was a leeeetle peeved about the missing results, and Sunny GP was reassuring me over and over again that the RM Clinic would do all the tests very carefully, including all the clotting and bleeding disorder ones, and not miss any out, which was sweet of her, but was not answering my actual question, and my asking of the actual question was somewhat bollixed because I couldn’t remember the word ‘antiphospholipid’. Agh. In the end I politely caved and dropped the subject in favour of one very dear to my heart.

Painkillers! Yes! For the periods from hell! I have proven to my own satisfaction that mefenamic acid is about as much use as a fart in a punctured space-suit. I pointed this out, less colourfully, to Sunny GP, and she said she was very sorry but as I wanted to get pregnant all they could offer me was pain-relief. I said I was aware of this. She said, in that case, would I like a prescription of co-codamol? And I said, with possibly unseemly enthusiasm, ooohh, yes please! Because they gave me that stuff for surgery and when I was miscarrying, and it really helps and also, whooooooooooooo I is stoned, giggle giggle. It really helps, by the way, because it is a freakin’ opiate. Opiates! Like Samuel Taylor Coleridge used to take to get his freak on and write Kubla Kahn! Oh, yes, and it also contains paracetamol. There’s nothing glamorous about paracetamol.

(NSAIDs and I are clearly having a bit of a hate-hate relationship these days, as I’ve worked my way up from aspirin to ibuprofen to naproxen to mefenamic acid and however effective ibuprofen is for a nasty headache, my uterus sneers at them all. (Except possibly diclofenac but that makes me feel even more stoned than the co-codamol and also gives me stomach ache, and anyway, diclofenac hard to come by unless you’ve spent a night on a surgical ward)).

So. I still have no idea what is wrong with me, but at least now medical professionals are a) taking it all very seriously and b) giving me opiates. Score.

Roll on 7th of December.

Tomorrow I go back to work, for the first time in nearly three weeks. I feel very shy and nervous about this. I mean, c’mon, I was away for three weeks. People will want to know. I have rehearsed my answers over and over again (‘No, I wasn’t on holiday, I was ill. Yes, I’m much better, thank you. It’s kind of you to be concerned, but I’d prefer not to talk about it, thank you.’). Last time I was completely blind-sided by one chirpy colleague gushing ‘Ooh, May, you’ve lost weight!’, and had to spend 20 minutes sitting in the loo with my head in my hands. God knows what it’ll be this time.

Tomorrow I also have another acupuncture appointment. Shit, but it sucks telling people all about it face-to-face. And last time I saw her, it was only a few hours before I got that poor, doomed little second pink line. And I told her my period was late but I hadn’t had a positive test and I didn’t know what was going on at all at all at all, so she for once did not set fire to me, and did very gentle acupuncture instead, just in case. Arse. Damn. Etc..

Meanwhile, Satsuma had had enough of being ignored, and over the past few days has staggered back into action. No idea if any of this action is conclusive yet, or if she’s just messing about because she’s bored. I can feel her aching and fussing, and *ahem* fertile signs are occurring *ahem*. H and I had a sad little discussion about sex, performance of, sans or avec rain-coats, and I got a little unreasonable at the very idea of missing a possible chance (nope, can’t shake the ‘anovulatory’ label. Still believe it’s true, despite hay-stacks of evidence to the contrary). But I’ve also rather gone off sex (yes, I know! Me! Off sex! I’d've been less startled if they’d told me Richard Dawkins was an Episcopalian). So in the end, I decided if we felt like it, we’d do it totally nekkid, and if we didn’t, we wouldn’t do it at all, and therefore let the tenor of our desires dictate just how ready to try again we were. Since when, we’ve done it, but I’ve been rather depressingly unenthusiastic and participating in a spirit of ‘just in case’. Which is not quite what I meant. Damn and blast and damn all over again. What do I mean, anyway? What, for that matter, do I want?

In that case, I shall have a whinge. So there. November 12, 2009

I can’t touch a bloody thing without it breaking at the moment. First my lap-top blue-screen-of-deathed me *sob*, then the oven went into a frenzy when I turned the grill on and blew every circuit in the house, and now, the blown fuse-box/ power surge from the oven’s demise has done something drastic to the main house hard-drive (why yes, we back up. H is a computer type. We totally have an external hard-drive) and this is messing with the brains of H’s computer (which he is kindly letting me use until I can sort the effing, blinding lap-top out). I am now absolutely convinced I am carrying a dark static cloud of electronic death about with me. I’m nervous even writing this in case something else goes kablooey. Perhaps I’ll delete the entire internet when I press ‘post’. That’ll be fun.

I’m very close to my extended-due-to-life-being-shit deadline on my first creative writing assignment and I am doing very badly. I was writing a jolly little short story about swimming lessons. Eh. H asked me yesterday how it was all going.

‘I wrote a poem,’ I said.

‘Excellent!’ he said, ‘That’s really encouraging! What’s it about?’

‘Dead babies.’

For some reason, this struck us both as hilarious and we laughed like owls for minutes on end.

Anyway, the jolly short story is rubbish, and I know it rubbish, and I shall have to submit it anyway, and I have never felt so like covering each page in footnotes and footnotes of excuses before in my life.

For I do have my footnotes, pace Pain Olympian Gold Medallists. They’re only footnotes. I’m not trying to claim them as the main thesis of my existance. Anyway, I’ll share them with you. Chiefly because they are going round and round and round in my head and this is interfering with the creative writing. And slightly because I may only be a bronze medallist, but hey! Bronze is shiny too!

You see, whenever I am trying to, in the old-fashioned phrase, ‘improve myself’ educationally or careerishly (lost cause, that last one), something always goes spectacularly shit-tastic in my personal/family life. To whit:

• Just before my GCSE’s (exams of national importance taken at 16, for non-British and puzzled readers), I broke my arm, and had to take half my exams with a cast on.
• During my A-levels (extremely important exams that university attendance is decided on, taken at 18), I started fainting on a regular, weekly basis. I was also in agony a lot of the time, and rather under-weight. It was all blamed on my periods, which were going to be just fine after I’d had a kid or two (such a sensible thing to say to a 17-year-old). I actually had a) glandular fever (infectious mononucleosis/ Epstein-Barr), b) a nicely developing eating disorder (in that, I didn’t) and c) a gigantic teratoma that eventually ripped my left ovary in half. I collapsed and was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I always talk about my ovaries and fallopian tubes in the singular.
• During the third year of my BA, my sister Trouble had a turn at being extremely ill. So ill that at one point she weighed less than 6 stone (80 lbs). Eventually she was diagnosed and got surgery and is now a skinny but reasonable 8 stone, so all was well, but at the time, we were all scared to death.
• At the end of my MA, when H and I were living together for the first time, H lost his job, because of some rather disgusting office politics, and we were both forced to go and live with my mother until we could find new jobs. Yes, my MA suffered (I went from Golden Girl guaranteed a distinction to Slight Embarrassment lucky to pass at all).
• During my PhD (which, thanks to the MA erk, my tutors were now a bit iffy about), my mother developed breast cancer. I took a year off to nurse her. My mother (thank God) recovered. My PhD didn’t.
• During my second MA, I lost my first pregnancy. Did quite well in my dissertation. On reflection, would have preferred it the other way round.
• Now I am doing a creative writing course. Jesus Christ, Universe, I was only doing it for fun.

There. I whinged. And now I shall stop whinging and go find some blessings to count.

If you are reading this, then I did not kill the Internet. Hurray!

Notes on recovery November 9, 2009

I’ve even left the house a few times.

I know, big hairy deal.

Except, actually, it is a bit of a big deal. The one thing I can’t shake is this endless sense of exhaustion. I stopped spotting altogether a week ago, so it’s not continuous bleeding. I finished the whole course of antibiotics on Thursday, so my bowel function (sorry, but antibiotics play hob with said function) is returning to normal, and I am eating sensible healthy meals and taking my vitamins and iron supplements. I’m even sleeping quite well. What more can I do? I have been signed off work until next week, so this is in no way a vital or pressing question. I am just. So. Fucking. Tired. So I am very proud that I went out, walked about, and came back. Especially so as I got to meet Womb for Improvement for hot chocolate (squeeeeeee!)

Last time I miscarried, I was very emotional. Devastated. Heart-broken. Raging and inconsolable. This time I feel, chiefly, tired and bitter. So far at any rate. We shall see what spectacular outbreaks I come up with as time goes by. Because, oh, yes, H and I got into a deeply, deeply pointless fight last night, based on the sort of infinitesimal misunderstanding we’d normally clear up in seventeen placid seconds. It then occurred to me that we went through this sort of stupid blow-up and resultant disproportionate fury from last time. It’s like misery-induced paranoia, as if there was no possible way anything could be meant in all innocence. The universe is, after all, a heap of shite, right?

I personally attribute the lack of immediate devastation to:

• a) Denial. It’ll smack me upside the head at some point. Heigh ho.
• b) I’ve already lost my miscarriage virginity. The first time, I knew intellectually that shit happens, but, in my innocence, thought getting pregnant was the hard part, and that I had, therefore, paid my ‘hard part’ dues. This time? Feh. I am comfortably tucked into the box marked ’shit happens’.
• c) By the time I knew I was pregnant, I had already been cramping and spotting. I knew it was doomed. I had no chance whatsoever of getting attached, or invested, or whatever. Actually, I suspect that this will be the part of this loss that will come back to haunt me most. Me, watching the second pink line coming up on the pee-stick, and thinking not: ‘hurrah, I’m pregnant!’ but ‘oh God. This isn’t a wonky period. This is a miscarriage. Oh, please, no. Not again.’

H also seems more resigned. He is also more communicative (yay for counselling!), and we both seem to find the fact that we’re being taken very seriously and sent off to specialists reassuring. Last time, we were adrift on a vast ocean of confusion and loss, and nobody in the least bit interested in hauling us in to shore. Contrary to popular (medical) belief, there is nothing in the least bit reassuring or comforting about the diagnosis ‘It’s just bad luck, it almost certainly won’t happen again.’ Statistics may say this is so. We, the couple sitting before you, are not statistics. Statistically, any given couple should get happily, innocently pregnant in one year of banging away. We have already flicked the V at statistics. We can’t possibly feel that statistics apply to us any more. The unreasoning, meaningless diagnosis ‘bad luck’ is also the unreasoning, meaningless diagnosis ‘there’s fuck all we can/will do for you. Now bugger off.’

*Momentary pause while I feel some sympathy for doctors saddled with having to give the diagnosis ‘bad luck’, and the powerlessness they get to ‘enjoy’ too.*

And now all is onwards and upwards. Take more blood. Do more tests. Test both of us. Find a cause. Treat it. We may turn out to be in a shitty-bad place, but at least we won’t be lost in the dark anymore.

At least, I hope so.

In which I lose all self-respect October 29, 2009

Hello, I’m back, I’m writing this in the comfort of my very own armchair, drinking flat ginger ale out of my very own glass, wearing (thank God) my very own pyjamas. Aaaaaand…. breathe.

Well, that sucked. As H said, yesterday I was sitting about at home, minding my own very gloomy miserable business, when I noticed the bleeding getting more-so. Fair enough, I am having a miscarriage. The pain is getting more-so too. Only to be expected. Only, hang on, surely, this is just a little much? This pain, this bleeding, a bit fucking much? And at the point where I collapsed on the bed sobbing and howling in a manner that makes me feel quite pink with embarrassment to recall, H decided, that is enough. And started calling in medical assistance. I have no idea who said what to whom about what and when, as by this point I was kneeling on the bathroom floor with my head in the toilet. Oh, joy. And then there was an almost-pleasant-in-comparison interval while I lay on my face, thinking ‘holy hell, when did I last mop in here? This floor is disgusting‘ while H ran about finding clothes to stuff me into and books and keys and phones and a bag and whathaveyou while waiting for the ambulance.

The gas and air in said ambulance was very nice, by the way, once they’d solved the air-lock in the feed which had the mouthpiece making a hideously funny farting noise every time I sucked on it. The pain was still going on, but it was happening to some other poor unfortunate woman just over there, so that was all right (I remember pethidine having much the same effect on me). I was aware that my undercarriage was very very wet, downright soggy, even, and possibly this was cause for concern, but hey! gas and air says relax!

When the ambulance driver was helping me roll from their trolley-bed onto the hospital trolley bed she said ‘oh! You’re actively bleeding, aren’t you!’ and I was alas too stoned to say ‘nooooo, I’m definitely passively bleeding… I’m just lying here getting you to do all the heavy lifting…’ Then the gas and air wore off (the cruel brutes were taking the cyclinder back to the ambulance with them, as if anyone else needed it more than me, HAH) and I realised that in the 30 to 40 minutes we’d been in the ambulance (they were taking us back to the hospital that released me the day before, hence long drive), I had bled through a super-duper heavy flow pad, the track-suit bottoms H had shuffled me into, the thick towelling dressing-gown ditto, the ambulance blanket, the sheet, and onto the trolley.

Yes, I know. Yuk. Exactly.

Anyway, this sort of thing gets the attention of the A&E doctors fairly sharpish, and I was being peeled out of my sodden clothes and put into a hospital gown in short order. My blood pressure had dropped, not catastrophically (or I suppose they’d've been ripping me open looking for internal bleeding), but definitely, so they got a drip in – the poor nurse had to dig for a vein, what with mine all being half-empty and pathetic, and I even noticed that it bloody hurt despite Cute Ute ramping up the hysterics. And then the on-call gynae doctor turned up, and she was very nice, and announced she was going to examine me internally, at which point H firmly announced he was going outside to find a glass of water. I think he’d had about as much gore and sobbing as he could take, poor lamb.

Cue unpleasant episode with speculum, swabs, tweezers, and so on.

Gynae doctor finally explained that she thought a piece of pregnancy tissue had got stuck in the cervix, and all the massive cramps, bleeding, vomiting and horrible horrible blood-clots where the Cute Ute’s attempts to get it out (cervixes are fussy like that). It had gone now, anyway. And finally, here was some codeine to make it all better, and a bed in a private room to feel all better on. And poor H, who had reappeared when the exam was over and had been holding my hand and carrying bags of my blood-stained clothes about, was allowed to go home.

Today started quite well. The sweet doctor who had diagnosed the not-ectopic-after-all reappeared, and there was talk of scans and second opinions. I felt… OK. Sore, but OK. I read my book. I dutifully used bed-pans so the nurses could check the amount of fluid coming out of me was matching the amount going in, and (urgh urgh urgh) keep an eye on the blood-clots to make sure I was passing pregnancy tissue, as they kept calling it. I was. Urgh.

By lunch time everything was going tits-up again. The sweet doctor and the nurses had got all at cross-purposes, and no-one knew who was doing what with me when, or, at least, certainly not bothering to explain it to me. H called the ward at midday to ask after me, but they didn’t bother to tell me that, and I was wondering where the hell he was. They told him I had had a scan (I so had not) and a second opinion was needed (actually, sweet doctor wanted a second opinion to decide if there was any need to do a scan). H called back at 2, and no one told him that I was asking for him, ohh, no, and then no one told me that H said he’d be along at some point later that afternoon, so I was getting quite stressed on the ‘where the buggery fuck is my bloody husband?’ scale. This was all compounded by the fact the pain was back, in spades, with added burningness and tenderness, and by the time I drew the nurses’ attention to this and she finally got around to finding some more codeine, I was having a ‘pain peak’ in the cute phrase of the sweet doctor and neither codeine nor diclofenac could control it.

In short, gentle readers, I panicked, and cried. Again. Which sucked.

Luckily, sweet doctor had been collecting together all my blood and urine test results and had found her second opinion and came back to find me tear-stained and dishevelled (thank GOD for the private room, eh?) and in need of reassurance. So she gave it. The blood test (the Beta, you call it in the States) was under 5, and the pee-stick was negative, and there was no danger of a lingering ectopic they’d missed. The cramps were certainly caused by the passing of the ‘pregnancy tissue’ and would get better over the next few days, as should the bleeding.

As for the rather extreme nature of the pain I was in? Umm, well, it would seem I had managed to pick up a urinary tract infection on top of everything else. The burning pain? Err, that was that. Made worse by pressing on a wildly cramping uterus and all the general prostaglandin excess in the area.

The indignity of it. A feckin’ UTI. I cried like a terrified six-year-old over a UTI. I will now burst into flames of shame. *foom*

And, naturally, having discovered that the reason I was feverish, with a racing pulse, cramping and aching horribly, and feeling like I’d been run over by a small-to-medium sized tractor, was a mere UTI (oh, and some mere serious blood-loss), and not internal bleeding or a ruptured ovary or John Hurt’s Alien heading for fresh air and daylight, I cheered the fuck up and felt much much better. And then H turned up, and I felt better still. So much so that they agreed I could go home, with a big pile of antibiotics and pain-killers, and lots of warnings about coming straight back if I got worse again (or panicked myself into hysterics again. Hah hah).

Embarrassing, really, to discover just how much you can aggravate your own physical pain by being terrified and miserable. Also, my famous posh British stiff upper lip? I’ve lost it. I shall have to make do with a fake mustache.

Anyway, Gentle Readers, I love you all. Thank you a thousand times for the support and comments.

Smell of burning October 20, 2009

I am cold. It is cold. But I am cold, in that my temperature was down (aaaaaaaagh) this morning. Positive Thinking Fairy is pointing out that I had a temperature dip about this time on the One and Only Pregnancy Cycle, hurrah hurrah. Bitter McTwisted, who is, I think, a sensible woman, points out day 10 is about time my temperature starts slowly tumbling back towards normal, to meet the rising Crimson Tide.

*sigh*

I had an anxiety attack at work, you know. I made a teeny weeny simple mistake, realised I’d made it within five minutes, corrected it (which took, ooh, 0.2 of a second), and carried on with no one else in any way affected or in the least aware of it. And then spent my entire tea-break talking myself down of the Ledge of I-Am-A-Cretin-And-Don’t-Deserve-To-Be-Employed. For a mistake the like of which I make at least once a week and usually correct but no-one cares if I don’t. For a mistake over which I normally don’t so much as waste the bat of an eyelid. Yes. Indeed. That’s what I thought.

(I wish being anxious didn’t make me feel so… contaminated. Ahh, me and my hang-ups).

Anyway, I am frazzled to buggery (less fun than it sounds) over work, writing course, almost certain lack of indwellers, uncertainty regarding almost certain lack of indwellers, course (did I mention course?), and suddenly highly active and entertaining social life (I have a social life? How the hell did that happen?) giving me very little time to work on writing course, aaaagh first assignment due in next week aaaaagh, oh, and the bathroom needs cleaning.

The smell? Is my brain melting. Disgusting, isn’t it?

PTSD October 12, 2009

OK. Let’s talk about this.

Since the miscarriage, I have had about nine? ten? periods/provera-induced bleeds/whateverthehells. (The ones on provera were not nearly as vile as the ovulatory ‘proper’ periods, but yes, they were vile too. Vile is not binary). Anyway, as they have come, stamped up and down on my belly in spiked rugby boots, and gone, I began to notice H was being a little… off. Not quite H-ish.

You see, H’s normal reaction to an unwell May is to tuck her up in bed and bring her tea and stroke her hair, while May bats him crossly away and demands to be left in peace for God’s sake. But during a period (I hate the word ‘period’. I really do. Not as much as I hate ‘Aunt Flo’ or ‘The Painters’ or ‘That Time of the Month’, admittedly, but still), H would, in fact, leave May alone. He would bring tea and refill hot-water-bottles, but having delivered them he would scarper. Admittedly, I’m not a good conversationalist at these times and about as easy to cuddle as a brass elbow. It was quite a big deal for both of us when, on one particularly shitty night in a hotel in Zurich, H sat up at about 2 am and massaged my feet in a kindly attempt to distract me from the cramps in my thighs, back, belly, buttocks and jaw (from teeth-clenching). It was such a big deal, in fact, that it made me think about the fact that the normally very huggy cuddlefest that is H on a compassion bender, doesn’t touch me when I have my (ugh) period.

Oh, hey, part of me is saying. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t touch me either. Also, usually, when I am not well, I don’t actually like being touched or asked how I am in a worrity little voice. Just keep the tea coming and pass me the TV remote.

The miscarriage has changed everything, though. The whole I’m-all-disappointed-and-hejeebuz-but-this-hurts-too-much thing? Now I want to be stroked and cuddled. It doesn’t have to be all cuddle all the time, you know. Tea is good, too. And I am aware that while sleep becomes that Vanished Good of Golden Yore for me, at least until the Cute Ute shuts the fuck up, other humans will be and deserve to be blissfully unconscious between 11 pm and 7 am. But, some cuddle? A little cuddle? Mini-cuddle? Cuddle if you ever want a blow-job ever again?

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, in my best wifely, concerned, caring way, I got H in a headlock and threatened to tear his ears off if he didn’t talk right now this minute as to WTF was up with the distant no-touchy thing during the Visitation of the Red Menace. Eventually I had to let go of him as his replies were rather muffled, but when he repeated it all, I gathered that, basically, my periods are so fucking awful that they remind him of my post-miscarriage collapse. And that scares and upsets him, as it was a (yes, really!) scary and upsetting experience, and he deals with it in the way he usually deals with horrible shit, i.e. he puts it a box, tapes the lid on with gaffer tape, puts the box in a locked filing cabinet, and then buries the lot under a deserted cross-roads at midnight. In other words, avoidance tactics. In practice, this means he pretends I don’t really exist until about day 4 of said period, when I am clearly feeling a lot better and have become a cushiony armful of yumminess again.

H did not realise this would be in any way a problem because I am usually so keen on being left alone (only, bring the tea) when not well.

I agree it might have helped if I had said, look, yes, normally, but when I am menstruating, I need cuddles, OK? Only, and this is a stinger, this is pretty much exactly what I did say several months ago. Hence, you see, the need for head-locks. What? I’m not normally violent.

H admits I did say that. It’s just, when faced with me rocking back and forth in foetal position, communicating in grunts through clenched teeth, with the sweaty complexion of a good stilton, he panics. Any intelligent memories of a (pink, comfortable, upright and voluble) wife saying, ‘remember, a back rub would be nice at this point,’ are swamped by fear and grief, and therefore, you know, the whole ‘box, gaffer-tape, spade, if anyone asks, I’ll be down at the old cross-roads’ routine kicks in.

Self-defence. And for exactly the same reason I want the cuddle. It’s all too like the miscarriage, and the aftermath of the miscarriage, and we are both upset and disappointed and dealing with crappy memories, and it really, really is a bit fucking much that I have to do a live-action re-enactment of the whole sodding thing just to prove that I’m still not pregnant, and I want to deal with it by hugging and being treated like a super-special snowflake, and H wants to deal with it by, well, not dealing with it.

We both promised to do better at the communication lark. Well, no, I actually promised I would be promising to do better if I hadn’t already done better, thank you. H promised to, well, get over himself and rub feet.

The thing that really annoys me, however, is that from the very day I lost Pikaia, yea even while lying in my hospital bed feeling like road-kill, I was worried about how H would deal with it all. And H spent quite a few months denying that it had any kind of permanent or traumatic effect on him at all, why should it have, I mean, he was sad, obviously, but, it’s all over now, onwards and upwards. Hah, I say. Hah.

You remember we went to a counsellor about my (our! It was supposed to be our!) inability to get over it and cheer the fuck up. We did do lots of useful work on communication and acknowledgement of each other’s feelings and more communication and that it’s normal to feel crushed to pulp by years of embarrassing medical shit topped off with infertility and a dollop of miscarriage. But I am actually quite annoyed, then and now, that the one thing we never discussed at length was H’s feelings, because H was always denying he even had any. Yeah. He does have a remarkably elaborate burial ritual going for these feelings he doesn’t actually have, doesn’t he? And denial is in Egypt.

PS I am well aware you are all staring at me in disgust because H is obviously an angel in chinos. Tea, hot-water-bottles, and now I want foot-rubs? Just how special is this super-snowflake?

Flab October 3, 2009

I tried to buy a bra today. God knows why, as I am perfectly aware trying to buy a bra invariably kicks me into the Slough of Despond and then pushes me in deeper with a broom-handle.

I was standing, naked from the waist up, in a cubicle, with mirrors on every damn side. It is hard not to observe one’s bulges curves under the circumstances. In a spirit of good-will and great cheer, I began the observation by reminding myself I had lost more weight, yes, and was about half a stone away from IVF weight now, I am so very good and clever, and so I should be looking noticeably slimmer. And I was. Am. Really. I look noticeably slimmer, noticeably even to sour-puss Bitter McTwisted ol’ me. (Also, now, none of my trousers or belts fit properly).

But, arse and bugger and damn, I do not look good. I have stretchmarks on the backs of my arms, fer Chrissakes. I have a belly like over-risen dough. And muffin-top. I still cannot force my hearty peasant calves into knee-high boots (I cannot wear wide-fitting knee-high boots because I have skinny feet and ankles. Why, yes, I do look like I stand on pig-trotters. It’s a fab look, dontcherknow). My breasts, which are DD, are sliding veerrrryy slooowwwwwly down my ribs, and to my peeved and jaundiced eye, no longer look in the least bit cute or interesting, at least, not without the aid of a Very Good Bra Indeed. We shall not discuss the thighs. I did not take my trousers off. I was trying on bras, also, I have some sense of self-preservation left. I look, in short, like a collapsing soufflé. I hate it.

I hate that even all the weight-loss in the world won’t make me perky again. I hate that the stretch-marks are permanent. I hate that even if I do get all the way down to a dainty BMI of 25 or something, I will never have a flat stomach. I will have loose skin. I’ve been too fat, too long, and anyway, the scars on my belly have rather interfered with the way my skin arranges itself.

(I could add a very self-pitying and snivelling paragraph here about how most women who look like me, look like me because they’ve had at least one kid, and if I had a kid, I’d wear the sag and flab and scar with, if not pride, exactly, then at least with the resignation of someone who knows that there was a point to it all, even if said point is currently eating his own ear-wax in the middle of the super-market aisle. But I shan’t add such a paragraph because I never never snivel. What, never? No never! What, never!? Well, hardly ever).

Coupled with the infertility thang, it all gains enough momentum to feel like a smash in the teeth. I can’t like my body for nurturing or feeding another human, because it bloody hasn’t and seemingly won’t. I can’t like it for giving me an easy ride through life because it prefers to hurt me or go wrong in complicated surgical ways. I can’t admire it for its ornamental properties because appears to be made out of suet. What the hell am I supposed to do with it? What the hell have I done to it? What did I do in a past life? Who did I piss off or fail to sleep with? Why can’t I go back in time and tell the 20-year-old me to a) eat salad rather than chocolate and b) fucking do some fucking exercise already?

And then H tells me my ears are pretty, and I want to cry, because he has such faith in my attractiveness, he believes I’m cute, an I’m sure this is based on his mental image of me aged 20, the days when I had great legs and a teeny tiny waist, and I am terrified he’ll suddenly decide to take a really good look at me one day, and think ‘oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’ And then all the pretty ears in the universe won’t help.

Also, none of the pretty bras fitted properly, and I went home with a bath-sponge and a pair of tights instead. Go me.