2-2-09
As Mr. Crud and I are driving to my latest appointment with the dreaded ultrasound machine I say, “You know, I haven’t even prepared myself for bad news. I’m not worried at all.”
“Can you ever really prepare yourself? Does worrying really prepare you for anything?”
“Nah I guess not.”
Mr. Crud turns the car, our family-perfect Subaru station wagon, onto the curving uphill road that improbably leads to the hospital where I hope to give birth someday. During the recent snow-fueled clusterfuck I frequently thought of the pregnant ladies destined to give birth at OHSU. Were they totally freaking?
“We should aim for a due date not during the winter,” I say. “This hill is outrageous.”
“We got a lot more important things to think about,” he says.
I sense that he’s felt the gravity of this appointment, which I have dubbed my uterus-scape, more than I. This morning I realized that I hadn’t even googled the procedure I was about to undergo. I’m getting soft.
As is our way, we are 25 minutes early for the appointment. We check in, peruse the Sam Adams sex scandal-laden paper and pretend that we aren’t dreading the dark room and the ultrasound screen with its Rorshach blobs.
In the tradition of our past ultrasound appointments, the doctors are running behind. We have some seriously bad ultrasound karma. More Sam Adams. More staring at the backwards baseball-capped guy with the “Ice Ice Baby” ringtone.
Once we get into the examination room and I am half-undressed and raring to go, my pulse rises. “God, I hate ultrasounds.”
“I hear that one good one erases the bad ones,” Mr. Crud says.
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh really?”
“Well not erase but fade.”
A perky blonde lab-coated lady does some preliminary ultrasounds, taking pics of my lovely uterus, my charming ovaries, and those devilish fallopian tubes. She says “Sorry” when the wand jammed up my hoo-ha needs to be rotated in weird contortions. I appreciate her care. The most painful part about the procedure is my trapped right leg. I feel like it may spasm and kick her so I concentrate my efforts on keeping it safely in the stirrup. I watch the blobs on the screen until I flashback to my first ultrasounds. I look away. I keep expecting her to read from the ultrasound technician’s script of bad news, “I’m not seeing what I expected. I need to get the doctor.”
She leaves without incident.
“At least there aren’t pictures of Audrey Hepburn and Julia Roberts up in here.” I say.
“Yeah, what IS up with that?” Mr. Crud says.
For my next ultrasound in that hated room in the Center for Sadness and Disappointment, I will uncover the mystery of the black-and-white photos of actresses. Bad news or good.
The red-haired, jean-skirted Dr. German—named for her accent, so clever—gives me the rundown of the procedure with all the risks. Perforating the uterus is on this list of risks too. I feel like a grizzled veteran, a stream of cigarette smoke seeping out my nose, “Perforated uterus? Yeah, I know from perforated uteruses.” Basically they’ll be injecting a balloon and a saline solution into my uterus via a catheter. It’s uncomfortable but not painful. If a doctor ever tells you something is going to be painful, run. Or demand good meds.
A second doctor with curly brown hair and a name neither the doctor nor the technician is sure how to pronounce enters the room. She is the HBIC. She shakes my hand and then Mr. Crud’s.
“Is there any way that you could be pregnant?” She asks. “I thought I saw something.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Mr. Crud and I look at each other. If I am pregnant, that sperm had some serious work ahead of it. Or else I am shitty at counting.
“When was your last period?”
I rattle off the date. I’ve grown accustomed to keeping track of my LMP. Guess-timation will no longer do.
“Okay, probably just a cyst then.” Dr. HBIC says. “Ready?”
Dang, another missed opportunity for an immaculate conception joke.
The room remains dark as the doctors and Ms. LabCoat crowd around my nether regions and inject the balloon and saline. Dr. German aims a flashlight between my legs and I so want to make a spelunking joke, but I resist. The urge to be inappropriate in these situations is so strong. I bite my tongue and stare at the ceiling, waiting for the next visit from the discomfort fairy. I don’t wait long. I feel a pinch inside me and then cramps.
Mr. Crud holds my hand. I listen to the doctors and try to decipher what their words mean, what the spaces between the words mean. Does “move to the right?” actually mean “something is totally fucked over there on the right. Shit, she doesn’t even have an ovary left.” Again I turn to the screen and try to make something familiar out of gray blobs. If someone had pointed at one of the blobs and told me it was a heartbeat, I would have nodded in agreement. Of course. I’ve never seen an ultrasound of my own that resembled anything but a bean. They inflate and deflate the balloon. Snap pictures. The cramping comes and goes.
Dr. German asks if I am hurting. “No, it’s okay. I’ve experienced much worse.”
Dr. HBIC looks me in the eye. “I know.”
I almost tear up at that. I feel that she does know, that she has read my story and understood it. I’m glad that I have dropped the cheery good patient façade for a moment of understanding.
Dr. HBIC removes the wand from my lady parts. She points to one of the square photos on the screen. “That’s your uterus. If there was a septum, it would be here.” She draws a pen along the center of the black blob. “But there isn’t.”
Mr. Crud and I exchange a glance before turning back to the screen. “Everything looks fine,” she says. “Your anatomy does not explain your loss.”
“That’s good, right?” I ask.
“I think it is. Sometimes we find things that aren’t so easy to correct.”
Mr. Crud asks a few more questions, logistical ones about if she’ll be doing anymore analysis, when we’ll hear more news. I feel relieved and glad that I didn’t waste any time fretting over this appointment.
Dr. HBIC leaves us with a smile and handshake. “Good luck.”
Dr. German pauses at the foot of the gurney. “On a personal note, this happened to me and I now have two beautiful daughters.”
I tear up again as I do whenever I meet a sister-visitor to miscarriage world. Words get caught in my throat. “Thank you for telling me,” I say.
“It’s happened to a friend of mine. She has children now too. Just relax. It will be okay,” she says.
I feel like I want to say either too much or too little. Ask for every detail of her miscarriages or pull myself into a tight ball and mutter thank you. I thank her again. The perky technician closes the door behind Dr. German as they exit.
“Wow. That was really cool of her to share that.” I say, pulling on my pants.
On our way out the technician wishes us luck. My uterus is officially not funky. I feel ready to tackle the remaining tests so we head down to the Center for Sadness and Disappointment. I talk Superbowl with the phlebotomist while he fills at least 10 vials with my blood.
As Mr. Crud and I navigate through rush hour traffic, I feel my confidence returning again. It will work this time. I know it. But how do I know it and is that part that knows it the same part that detected nothing wrong the first two times?
The not-so-fantastic voyage continues.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Practice Makes Perfect
1-22-2009
I curl over the toilet seat for the third time in as many hours. 4:30 a.m. I am supposed to be sleeping. It is Mr. Crud’s birthday. We are supposed to be celebrating with meals at our favorite restaurants, martinis (for me), gin and tonics (for him), and all around good cheer. Instead I am puking my guts out and cursing shellfish.
I am dying.
I better lose some fucking weight if I don’t die.
I’m glad I’m not pregnant for this barf-storm.
I wonder if breastfeeding women must stop if they come down with the flu or, as in my case, food poisoning. Can the toxins be transmitted to the infant via breastmilk? I have my next random question for my doctor when I hear back from her.
Mr. Crud and I have decided to ditch the genetic tests for now and go with the ones recommended by Dr. Awesome: thyroid, thrombosis, and the saline sonogram. The sonogram will be a more detailed look at my uterus, a uterus-scape in fact, to see if I have any stray membranes that might have suckered an egg into attaching to it although it doesn’t have adequate blood flow. I look forward to regaling my visiting in-laws with tales of my uterus. I am the dark artist daughter-in-law. Also the potty-mouthed daughter-in-law as evidenced by my mother-in-law’s reluctance to speak of the copy of my zine I once gave her. I have a rep to uphold.
My plan to get blood drawn the next workday hits a snag thanks to the revenge of the paella that Mr. Crud and I are suffering. No matter. Throwing up the entirety of my being hasn’t left me feeling very sexy. Or in the mood to do something that will make me nauseous 24-7. We are recovering from our bout with food poisoning but still wary of food. I call Mr. Crud to make dinner plans.
“Let’s play it by ear. Like when you were pregnant,” he says.
“Guess we should start practicing.”
The post-food poisoning nausea is different from pregnancy nausea. When I was pregnant I felt like my gag reflex was on high alert. The slightest whiff of burnt beef from Chipotle sent me reeling. My current nausea flavor is more subtle, more of a burning in the gut.
My personal night of living vomit had me wondering if maybe, maybe, I could be pregnant, if this was a sign of things to come. (Dehydration has been known to play games with ones sanity.) Yoga buddy Jan mentioned that her current pregnancy felt different than the miscarried ones. Maybe that period that I got a few days ago was a hoax. That uterus of mine is tricky. She likes to prank.
When Mr. Crud came down with my symptoms, I knew for sure that this was all the fault of some rogue microorganism and not a miracle spermatozoa. I’m waiting for a more complete recovery before the hike down to the Center for Sadness and Disappointment for my blood draw. Mr. Crud is coming with me. At least our return trip won’t involve any horrible news. Yet.
I curl over the toilet seat for the third time in as many hours. 4:30 a.m. I am supposed to be sleeping. It is Mr. Crud’s birthday. We are supposed to be celebrating with meals at our favorite restaurants, martinis (for me), gin and tonics (for him), and all around good cheer. Instead I am puking my guts out and cursing shellfish.
I am dying.
I better lose some fucking weight if I don’t die.
I’m glad I’m not pregnant for this barf-storm.
I wonder if breastfeeding women must stop if they come down with the flu or, as in my case, food poisoning. Can the toxins be transmitted to the infant via breastmilk? I have my next random question for my doctor when I hear back from her.
Mr. Crud and I have decided to ditch the genetic tests for now and go with the ones recommended by Dr. Awesome: thyroid, thrombosis, and the saline sonogram. The sonogram will be a more detailed look at my uterus, a uterus-scape in fact, to see if I have any stray membranes that might have suckered an egg into attaching to it although it doesn’t have adequate blood flow. I look forward to regaling my visiting in-laws with tales of my uterus. I am the dark artist daughter-in-law. Also the potty-mouthed daughter-in-law as evidenced by my mother-in-law’s reluctance to speak of the copy of my zine I once gave her. I have a rep to uphold.
My plan to get blood drawn the next workday hits a snag thanks to the revenge of the paella that Mr. Crud and I are suffering. No matter. Throwing up the entirety of my being hasn’t left me feeling very sexy. Or in the mood to do something that will make me nauseous 24-7. We are recovering from our bout with food poisoning but still wary of food. I call Mr. Crud to make dinner plans.
“Let’s play it by ear. Like when you were pregnant,” he says.
“Guess we should start practicing.”
The post-food poisoning nausea is different from pregnancy nausea. When I was pregnant I felt like my gag reflex was on high alert. The slightest whiff of burnt beef from Chipotle sent me reeling. My current nausea flavor is more subtle, more of a burning in the gut.
My personal night of living vomit had me wondering if maybe, maybe, I could be pregnant, if this was a sign of things to come. (Dehydration has been known to play games with ones sanity.) Yoga buddy Jan mentioned that her current pregnancy felt different than the miscarried ones. Maybe that period that I got a few days ago was a hoax. That uterus of mine is tricky. She likes to prank.
When Mr. Crud came down with my symptoms, I knew for sure that this was all the fault of some rogue microorganism and not a miracle spermatozoa. I’m waiting for a more complete recovery before the hike down to the Center for Sadness and Disappointment for my blood draw. Mr. Crud is coming with me. At least our return trip won’t involve any horrible news. Yet.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Hurry!
1-15-09
The cramps began early this morning, awaking me from my dream where Max and Kathy Crud had recently welcomed their second child into the world, a cherubic boy named Purvis. I bounced Purvis on my knee, wondering even in dream-world if I would ever give birth to my own Purvis. (Who, for the record, I would not name Purvis.)
Over the last week my desire to “try this bullshit again” as I told, Kelley, my massage therapist and (fingers crossed) doula-to-be has gone from trickle to waterfall. Last Friday I had a moment to talk to Jan*, the pregnant yoga buddy who has endured 2 miscarriages, each about a month before mine. I dropped off my mat then stepped up to her office door.
“Congratulations,” I said, peeking around the corner.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “How are you?”
“I’m good, really good,” I said. “How are YOU?”
“I’m good too.”
She gave me the montage version of her miscarriages. The first came quickly after the positive pregnancy test. The second was an experience similar to mine—ultrasound of doom at 9 weeks after already having a positive ultrasound at 6 weeks. She and her husband did the full battery of tests: blood draws, an ovary stress test, sperm tests, the whole work-up. The news was mixed.
“We decided to give it one month, one more chance, before doing in vitro and—“ she cradles her belly. “I still don’t believe it, but it’s getting pretty hard to deny.” She laughs.
I ask her about the anxiety, if she can relax, why she stopped doing yoga for two months. The questions flow in a giddy rush. In part, I will be late for work if I chat too long, and in part, I need to hear good news, to pretend for just a moment that her experience will be mine.
“I am relaxing. We’re having a boy. After a positive ultrasound experience, I could relax,” she says.
She stopped the yoga on doctor’s orders after she started to bleed. “But the bleeding was probably caused by the ultrasound or the progesterone. They didn’t tell me that of course.” She snorts. “I had to stop longer than I wanted, but it was okay. I did hatha and it was fine. Of course I’m not where I used to be.”
But who is in ashtanga world? Sometimes it feels like we are in constant recovery from past injuries or keeping a wary eye on those creaky body parts for injuries on the horizon. Do I require drama in all aspects of my life? Even yoga?
“The doctors said that yoga wouldn’t cause a miscarriage.”
Every time I hear those words, I am almost rushing to hear them again. Like Lenny and his rabbits, I need to be told daily that nothing I did caused my miscarriages, especially not yoga.
“How about you?” Jan asks.
“We’re thinking about getting going again,” I say, tears glistening in my eyes. “I’m terrified, but what can you do?”
“I’m praying for you,” she says. We hug.
“But I won’t ask if you’re pregnant. You can tell me whenever you’re ready.”
“I’ll probably tell you first thing. I’ll need the support.”
Walking to my office, I feel lighter. The possibility of having a baby is no longer an impassible mountain.
I email my doctor with thanks for her calls, her card, and all her kindness. We set up a phone appointment for the following Monday. Then, Sunday, Mr. Crud and I stop by the bakery before yoga class. Seconds before walking in my spidey senses tingled. I dismissed my intuition as hopeful thinking.
I buy us bread—a 7-grain carrot roll for me, a short skinny for Mr. Crud—and we step towards the door. Dr. Awesome (her newly coined PPC2 name) spins around, her son on her hip.
“Hey!” We say in unison.
The woo-woo side of me goes into overdrive. Despite all my anti-meant-to-be propaganda, I still feel like coincidences are more than the sum of their parts. This is a sign! First Jan, now Dr. Awesome. We must skip yoga class and commence to making Peabody 3 despite the fact that I am a week past ovulation.
We chat, we meet Dr. Awesome’s hot-chocolate mustached son. “You growing a mustache?” Mr. Crud asks.
I smile at Dr. Awesome. Isn’t he good at this?
We confirm our phone appointment and head off to yoga class, my baby mania quelled by the promise of restorative poses.
“So, what are your questions?” Dr. Awesome asks the following Monday morning.
I shut my office door and tell my student worker that I’m going into brief seclusion. He can hear through the window that separates my office from the front reception era but I don’t care. I’m less and less worried about my coworkers knowing about MC#2 these days. They can know. I just don’t want to talk about it.
“Can you go over what happened one more time? I was kind of in a fog right after it happened.”
She consulted the genetic counselor before calling. MC#1 remains a mystery. MC#2 was caused by Trisomy 22. Trisomy 22 is the second leading cause of chromosomal miscarriages and has nothing to do with my old lady eggs or Mr. Crud’s sperm.
“It’s a sporadic variation. Something went wrong when the cells were dividing.”
I jump in, always ready to flog myself. “So could anything I was doing have interfered with normal cell division?”
“No. It’s a mystery why it happens. It just does.”
Ah, the double-edged sword of mystery talk. I wonder if Dewey’s cells were happily dividing when all of a sudden I swung into triangle pose, causing a chromosome to hop to another cell.
“So tell me about the tests.”
Genetic tests. “They can tell you if you are at a higher risk for this happening again, but they can be expensive and insurance might not cover them.”
Thyroid tests. “We sometimes don’t know if something is wrong with the thyroid. It’s not likely, but it’s good to be sure.”
Thrombosis test. “This will tell us if you have a clotting problem. It might explain your first miscarriage if this is the problem.”
Saline infused sonogram. Dr. Awesome needs to consult with the doc who performed my D and C to see what we can learn from this. “Likely it will tell us if the embryo is having a hard time attaching to your uterus because of fibroids.”
Dr. Awesome tells me that most of these situations are treatable. The thyroid with drugs; the clotting with baby aspirin. She and the genetic counselor agree that the genetic tests will likely turn up negative.
Now for my silly question. “Should we wait until we get the test results to start trying?”
“Probably, but if we find out the results early enough in your pregnancy then we can start treating you.”
I decide to consult with Mr. Crud before canceling the genetic tests. I know he will be disappointed. He’s been itching to get his blood drawn. I suspect he’d even be psyched to have to give a sperm sample.
I calculate the date of my expected period. Getting the test results before the fun times of fertile days will be a tight squeeze. I’m in a devil-may-care-fuck-it-let’s-try phase, but I’m alone. Mr. Crud still gets the jittery “eeeee” face when I bring up the possibility.
Purvis’ cousin-to-be will likely be on hold another month. At least.
* Not her real name.
The cramps began early this morning, awaking me from my dream where Max and Kathy Crud had recently welcomed their second child into the world, a cherubic boy named Purvis. I bounced Purvis on my knee, wondering even in dream-world if I would ever give birth to my own Purvis. (Who, for the record, I would not name Purvis.)
Over the last week my desire to “try this bullshit again” as I told, Kelley, my massage therapist and (fingers crossed) doula-to-be has gone from trickle to waterfall. Last Friday I had a moment to talk to Jan*, the pregnant yoga buddy who has endured 2 miscarriages, each about a month before mine. I dropped off my mat then stepped up to her office door.
“Congratulations,” I said, peeking around the corner.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “How are you?”
“I’m good, really good,” I said. “How are YOU?”
“I’m good too.”
She gave me the montage version of her miscarriages. The first came quickly after the positive pregnancy test. The second was an experience similar to mine—ultrasound of doom at 9 weeks after already having a positive ultrasound at 6 weeks. She and her husband did the full battery of tests: blood draws, an ovary stress test, sperm tests, the whole work-up. The news was mixed.
“We decided to give it one month, one more chance, before doing in vitro and—“ she cradles her belly. “I still don’t believe it, but it’s getting pretty hard to deny.” She laughs.
I ask her about the anxiety, if she can relax, why she stopped doing yoga for two months. The questions flow in a giddy rush. In part, I will be late for work if I chat too long, and in part, I need to hear good news, to pretend for just a moment that her experience will be mine.
“I am relaxing. We’re having a boy. After a positive ultrasound experience, I could relax,” she says.
She stopped the yoga on doctor’s orders after she started to bleed. “But the bleeding was probably caused by the ultrasound or the progesterone. They didn’t tell me that of course.” She snorts. “I had to stop longer than I wanted, but it was okay. I did hatha and it was fine. Of course I’m not where I used to be.”
But who is in ashtanga world? Sometimes it feels like we are in constant recovery from past injuries or keeping a wary eye on those creaky body parts for injuries on the horizon. Do I require drama in all aspects of my life? Even yoga?
“The doctors said that yoga wouldn’t cause a miscarriage.”
Every time I hear those words, I am almost rushing to hear them again. Like Lenny and his rabbits, I need to be told daily that nothing I did caused my miscarriages, especially not yoga.
“How about you?” Jan asks.
“We’re thinking about getting going again,” I say, tears glistening in my eyes. “I’m terrified, but what can you do?”
“I’m praying for you,” she says. We hug.
“But I won’t ask if you’re pregnant. You can tell me whenever you’re ready.”
“I’ll probably tell you first thing. I’ll need the support.”
Walking to my office, I feel lighter. The possibility of having a baby is no longer an impassible mountain.
I email my doctor with thanks for her calls, her card, and all her kindness. We set up a phone appointment for the following Monday. Then, Sunday, Mr. Crud and I stop by the bakery before yoga class. Seconds before walking in my spidey senses tingled. I dismissed my intuition as hopeful thinking.
I buy us bread—a 7-grain carrot roll for me, a short skinny for Mr. Crud—and we step towards the door. Dr. Awesome (her newly coined PPC2 name) spins around, her son on her hip.
“Hey!” We say in unison.
The woo-woo side of me goes into overdrive. Despite all my anti-meant-to-be propaganda, I still feel like coincidences are more than the sum of their parts. This is a sign! First Jan, now Dr. Awesome. We must skip yoga class and commence to making Peabody 3 despite the fact that I am a week past ovulation.
We chat, we meet Dr. Awesome’s hot-chocolate mustached son. “You growing a mustache?” Mr. Crud asks.
I smile at Dr. Awesome. Isn’t he good at this?
We confirm our phone appointment and head off to yoga class, my baby mania quelled by the promise of restorative poses.
“So, what are your questions?” Dr. Awesome asks the following Monday morning.
I shut my office door and tell my student worker that I’m going into brief seclusion. He can hear through the window that separates my office from the front reception era but I don’t care. I’m less and less worried about my coworkers knowing about MC#2 these days. They can know. I just don’t want to talk about it.
“Can you go over what happened one more time? I was kind of in a fog right after it happened.”
She consulted the genetic counselor before calling. MC#1 remains a mystery. MC#2 was caused by Trisomy 22. Trisomy 22 is the second leading cause of chromosomal miscarriages and has nothing to do with my old lady eggs or Mr. Crud’s sperm.
“It’s a sporadic variation. Something went wrong when the cells were dividing.”
I jump in, always ready to flog myself. “So could anything I was doing have interfered with normal cell division?”
“No. It’s a mystery why it happens. It just does.”
Ah, the double-edged sword of mystery talk. I wonder if Dewey’s cells were happily dividing when all of a sudden I swung into triangle pose, causing a chromosome to hop to another cell.
“So tell me about the tests.”
Genetic tests. “They can tell you if you are at a higher risk for this happening again, but they can be expensive and insurance might not cover them.”
Thyroid tests. “We sometimes don’t know if something is wrong with the thyroid. It’s not likely, but it’s good to be sure.”
Thrombosis test. “This will tell us if you have a clotting problem. It might explain your first miscarriage if this is the problem.”
Saline infused sonogram. Dr. Awesome needs to consult with the doc who performed my D and C to see what we can learn from this. “Likely it will tell us if the embryo is having a hard time attaching to your uterus because of fibroids.”
Dr. Awesome tells me that most of these situations are treatable. The thyroid with drugs; the clotting with baby aspirin. She and the genetic counselor agree that the genetic tests will likely turn up negative.
Now for my silly question. “Should we wait until we get the test results to start trying?”
“Probably, but if we find out the results early enough in your pregnancy then we can start treating you.”
I decide to consult with Mr. Crud before canceling the genetic tests. I know he will be disappointed. He’s been itching to get his blood drawn. I suspect he’d even be psyched to have to give a sperm sample.
I calculate the date of my expected period. Getting the test results before the fun times of fertile days will be a tight squeeze. I’m in a devil-may-care-fuck-it-let’s-try phase, but I’m alone. Mr. Crud still gets the jittery “eeeee” face when I bring up the possibility.
Purvis’ cousin-to-be will likely be on hold another month. At least.
* Not her real name.
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