Sometimes I feel like I'm sitting cross-legged in the middle of a field smack in the center of a tornado brewing around me. My mind has been trapped in this stationary position the past two months and so often I can literally see the world flying past me. Since I've been MIA for the past week or so, I'll backtrack a little and catch you up to speed...or shall I say...get Kristin connected.
Let me start by saying if my loss of pregnancies have been competing with each other in the "Which One of Us Can Make Her Have Unbearable Pain the Most", Number 4 takes the W, hands-slap-down. (Side note: since all 4 haven't technically been "miscarriages", I like to be fancy and call them "My Loss of Pregnancies".) Two weeks ago, I kept having majorly serious pain in my lower right side--no blood, though. This was very different from the first 3 because of the location of my pain. Everything I read screamed "tubular pregnancy" so after the third day of not being able to stand up straight, we went to the ER. Per usual, my stay at Johnston-Willis was top notch yet inconclusive. It was actually pretty fantastic because we had a room with an actual DOOR this time. Mike and I agreed it was only because I had my "Miscarriage Frequent Flyer Card" with us so they went ahead with the upgrade. After being sent home for a few days and multiple trips to the hoo-haa doctor with no progressing pregnancy showing in the uterus--but my hormome levels still shooting up--I decided I couldn't take the pain anymore. Plus, I had started bleeding and it was ridiculously gross. A week after my first trip to the ER, I found myself curled up in my bed in excruciating pain, contemplating a second trip. I'm used to miscarrying so the pain's usually "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" then gone. (Much like the situation that got me where I was in the first place...whomp, whommmmp.) This pain though, was like "wham, bam, thank you ma'am, I think I'll stay and chat awhile".
Bless my man's heart, I knew I couldn't call him home from work because of this mess again because let's face facts, the poor man had missed work a month earlier because his mom had a stroke and he'd already missed the week before because his wife was potentially miscarrying (but apparently I like to fake myself out...one day I'm pregnant...one day I'm not). So I did what any young adult would do when desperate times call for desperate measures: I called my mommy. An hour later, the doorbell rang at my house and, to my utter surprise, there was Mama, Lynn, and Ryann waiting to haul me away. I knew, I KNEW! the minute I opened that door that I would be completely and totally distracted from the pain (both physical and emotional) that I was going through because those 3 were with me.
Mama went to the back with me and after being stuck, IV'd, questioned, yada yada yada, I was finally able to focus. I wasn't allowed up to that point to take anything for pain except TYLENOL (which is pretty much the equivalent of poppin' gummy bears to me) but my nurse brings me a shot a straight morphine almost immediately. HOLLA. Even though my room the second time around only had curtains, they punched my MFF card and upgraded the painkillers from the week before. An ultrasound tech comes to take me away. Once I get to the room where I have to show my cookah (for the umpteenth time to some random person who is not my husband in the last week), I realize that I need new panties. Like, yesterday. I get back to my ER room and I tell Mama to text Lynn so they can go get me some 'draws. In between watching Modern Family on the mini TV and scoping out the paramedics/firemen delivering patients (by the way, TOTAL waster of time!), Ryann sends Mama a text that says "we're gonna head over to Broad Street". I meerkatted out of the bed from a flat position. (See below if you don't get the reference). They weren't fooling anybody. If you go to Broad Street from Midlothian in my family...you are going for one reason and one reason only. KRISPY. KREME. Those heffas! I made Mama relay a text that said something along the lines of "oh $3!! no, give me another shot and I'll be good to go". See, it doesn't take much to get me motivated.
Shortly after, my ultrasound results came back and I was pretty much just given a boatload of pain meds to help me deal. Basically, after a quick jaunt in the hospital for the second time with a diagnosis of, "you had an ectopic pregnancy, it's going to hurt, you're not going to die", we head to the parking lot. I settle in and Lynn says, "So what am I doing walking around with underwear in my pocket?" We all start laughing until I turn around and look at her in the backseat. I am a big fan of boy shorts so that's what I requested they get me from wherever they were going. I would've worn $1 panties from Dollar General at that point, so when I gazed upon THE most random item of women's lingerie on the planet, I lost my bearings and laughed hysterically, ignoring all the cramps, soreness, and shooting pains coming from down under. I don't think I've even heard the name "Ninja Turtles" since I 1991, much less seen their faces sprawled out all over the piece of bikinis I was going to have to slip on.
They are truly classics and I wish I didn't have to use them that day or I would've framed them. They remind me that no matter how low I find myself, I always, always, have family to reach down into the rock bottom where I'm at and pull me back out. Thank you, Ninja Turtles. And thank you, purchasers of said Ninja Turtles, for not letting me take residence in the place where my mind has so often found itself lately.
