Fantastic Voyage

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.