Before and after my first diagnostic laparoscopy
Before 1/7/19: It’s the night before my first diagnostic laparoscopy aka my first EVER surgery, so let me just get this out of the way… AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!1! Okay. Now that that’s out of my system… Who am I kidding? With less than 24 hours until my surgery, I know for sure I will break down crying at the hospital. I can take pain pretty well. I’m not worried about pain. This will be my first experience with anesthesia and that’s what I’m worried about. My rational side says I won’t even remember it, but my anxiety has had me on constant alert since I made the appointment last month. So my high pain tolerance is part of why I’m getting the surgery in the first place. I’ve been living with a 5cm paratubal cyst outside my right ovary in my Fallopian tube since 2014 or 2015, I can’t quite remember. It’s also the same side I had my ectopic pregnancy on, so when the doctors are in there, they’ll be able to see what’s really going on in there. The fact of the matter is that unless someone cuts you open to examine your uterus, you can’t really tell what’s going on in there. It’s the only way that conditions like endometriosis can be diagnosed and effectively treated. I don’t know what kind of state they will find my right tube to be in. There could be scar tissue remaining from the pregnancy, they might even say that it’s useless and take it out. I don’t know. But I do know I’m ready for this pain to be gone. Ever since high school, I’ve had problems with cysts. They’d go away after a while, but this particular one in my tube didn’t. I was pretty scared and confused when they told me it was in my tube because 1) Ow? 2) Why is it growing there and not somewhere else? 3) Could it be more than just a cyst? The good news is that it’s probably not, and it’s just filled with clear fluid like an ovarian cyst. I’m ready to get rid of it because the pressure has been getting to be a bit much this past year. It didn’t used to bother me like this at the beginning—I could only feel it if I squatted down very deeply. Now, I can’t really twist my torso as far as I used to, still can’t squat too deep, can’t do any lower abdominal exercises, and in the middle of my cycle (when I may/may not be ovulating) it gets really bad. It feels like pressure, and once it got so bad that I started crying in the middle of my shift when I worked in Tomorrowland. My cyst made me CRY while I was working at Disney World, the most MAGICAL place on Earth. So yes, I am glad to see it go. I’m hoping for less or no pain or pressure, and maybe even some answers to explain away my unexplained infertility. After 1/10/19: It’s been two days since my surgery. I feel really hazy still from a combination of the little bit of anesthesia still wearing off and pain meds side effects. It hurts to bend over, I’m waddling everywhere very slowly, I’ve cried multiple times because I’m not able to do things for myself. I think the worst is not being able to sleep on my stomach 🙁 One thing I didn’t expect to hurt so much is my throat. It’s very irritated from the tube they stuck in there to help me breathe during surgery. Or to inflate me with gas to help them see. Not sure which, but I hate the feeling in my throat so much. Also, I was really nervous to go under, but it was waking up after the surgery that ended up being scary. Every now and then I’ll have sleep paralysis episodes, but I used to have them very frequently when I was younger. It makes sense that waking up felt like a sleep paralysis episode, but it was even scarier because it was actually happening in real life. I couldn’t move and I couldn’t really see—it felt like no matter how wide I opened my eyes, everything stayed blurry. After a few moments, I was finally able to move my head side to side, but then nothing came out when I tried to make a noise. I tried as hard as I could to make a loud noise but only tiny peeps came out. I probably sounded like an injured puppy. Only when I wiggled my toes and tried to move my legs did I realize that I’d already had the procedure done. If you’ve never had sleep paralysis or don’t know what it is, it’s like waking up from surgery. It sucked. 1/22/19: It’s now been two weeks since the surgery and I feel completely back to normal. I’m taking both dogs out now, I can bend over, haven’t been taking pain meds for a week, I can lift things, and I’m sleeping much better. My incision areas are no longer tender and my doctor says they healed perfectly. I had my post-op appointment today, where my doctor explained everything they saw and what they did. The cyst was thankfully benign, and it was almost as big as my uterus (WHAT?). The reason for my pain was because it was twisting and my tube wrapped around it. I thought back to the time the pain was so bad I cried while working onstage at Disney. No freaking wonder. The combination of it being twisted and the scarring from my pregnancy led them to remove part of my tube that was connected to my ovary. Only one of my tubes is functioning now, which means it might take longer to get pregnant. I was extremely disappointed when my doctor told me he was going to remove it before the surgery. And then at my appointment today, he said that the cyst was likely obstructing that tube
Can I be honest for a moment?
For your TL;DR needs, have a depiction of the overall sentiment of this post. Let me just start by saying that this isn’t me asking for advice. Let me tack on another disclaimer to the above disclaimer that this isn’t me being rude. I hear your well wishes, your prayers, your assertions that God’s will be done. And I’m not upset when I hear them; they are very appreciated. Please understand this from my point of view. Some days, I’m okay and happy. Even though I miss my family, my home, like crazy each and every day, we’re doing good. Seriously—we both have good jobs, we have food in our pantry, a roof over our heads, a warm bed to sleep in, two pups to cuddle, etc, etc. Some days, most days, I ache. It seems so easy for everyone else. Yet the countless forums and subreddits I stalk tell me otherwise. I should count my lucky stars I don’t have a need for hormone therapy or IUI or IVF treatments. Yet. And then I always find myself stuck in the middle, no matter what. No surprise/accident baby. (“At least you get to plan ahead.”) No decade-long struggle. (“It could be worse.”) I know it could be worse because the worst has already happened. I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that bringing a child into the world was not going to be easy. And it makes me sad-laugh because I’m constantly telling my husband that his negativity exhausts me. “You know it really drains me sometimes hearing you complain so much about every little thing,” I’ll tell him. And yet this is how I’ve gotten about this whole “trying” thing. This is what loss has done to me. I can’t be hopeful. I can’t be calm. I can’t relax. I can’t “just stop trying”, that’s the exact opposite of how this works. I’m hungry to once again feel the joy that stupid little blue line brought me. I’m longing to love our little someone with everything I am. I know it’s selfish of me to want and want and want and want and want and want when so many people have less. But I’m still allowed to be sad. “If you have sex, you’ll get pregnant,” that’s what we’re told. Who knew making a baby would be this hard? Anyway, I just needed to get this off my chest. It gets lonely all the way over here, especially with matters such as this. Like I said, most days I’m fine. But today is October 15th—Pregnancy & Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Today, as well as every day, I hold our little Micah in my heart. It’s been nearly three years since my loss and, as you can see, some days it’s okay. But most days, the ache wins.
Elation to Grief: The Story of My First Pregnancy
2/5/2016 On Wednesday, January 20th, 2016 at around 6:15 in the morning, I found out that I was pregnant. Was that vertical blue line actually there?? Was that REALLY a positive pregnancy test I had just rested my tired eyes on? My heart leapt out of my body, my knees gave and I sank to the ground, and I erupted into the happiest tears I have ever cried. Three years ago, I was worried that my body was just so messed up that I would be cursed with infertility for the rest of my childbearing years, and I would never get to look into the eyes of my beloved children. That affirming pee-stick on my bathroom sink was telling me that in less than a year, I would be a mother. I would finally be who I know in my heart I was always meant to be. In those few seconds, I thought of the rest of my pregnancy, giving birth, cradling someone that looks like me and the love of my life in my arms and never ever letting go. How did Anthony react? Well, let me just say that when I imagined telling my beloved that he would be a father, I had all these cute scenarios planned. But in the heat of the moment, I weepily asked him not to be scared before I presented him with the positive test. He pulled me in as I began to cry again, and said, “We’re going to be okay.” I knew he was scared anyway. But he also knew what this meant for me and for us, so I’m glad that he tried to show me that he was happy. This is one of the endless reasons I love him. So, I resolved to tell my parents as soon as possible. I knew that they wouldn’t be too upset and I wanted to have them for support. Telling his parents would have to wait because we thought they would be a little upset before they could be happy, so we decided to wait until we got pictures from our first ultrasound. Either way it would be a long time before we saw them next. My estimated due date would be September 23, which is my mom’s birthday and the day after my future mother-in-law’s birthday. I whipped up a cute little design on the computer and made this adorable onesie. I’d present my parents with this and the pregnancy test, and his parents would get the onesie with ultrasound pictures. I went over to my parents’ house that weekend. Before I got there, I wanted to pick up a few more pregnancy tests to see if the line would get darker. I’m a very anxious person and I figured that if they got darker, my mind would be put at ease. So (TMI warning) I went to the restroom before I picked up the tests, and when I wiped, there was a good amount of bright red blood. I instantly panicked. Now, I had been spotting brown since the day before I found out, which I figured was normal, but still. I called my best friend (who bled plenty of times when she was pregnant only to give birth to a beautiful, healthy girl) for reassurance. She did her best to calm me down and told me that it was probably just my body getting rid of the last of my old blood. The whole day, I was confident and excited to tell my parents. When my dad answered the door? Not so much. My heart raced as I asked my mom to join my dad in the study. I shakily handed her a small, purple gift bag and told her, “Anthony and I got you an early birthday present.” My mom replied, “Birthday?????” My dad added, “Why so early??” I asked her to open the larger bundle in the bag. She unwrapped it to reveal the little onesie, and as she read it, she started squealing and crying and she showed my dad what it said. “You’re gonna be a grandma?” he laughed as he stood to hug me. My mom opened the smaller bundle, which had the test in it, so she continued to squeal and they both huddled around me while I cried. I shared my concerns about the bleeding with them and they, of course, told me not to stress. This was easier said than done since the bleeding didn’t really stop that weekend. It was never strong enough to be a flow, and it only showed up when I wiped. Otherwise, I spotted brown for most of that weekend. When I got back home, I managed to get an appointment scheduled for Monday. I had an ultrasound and blood work done. The ultrasound absolutely shattered me. The doctor couldn’t find anything in my uterus, and only found my cyst in my tube and another cyst in my ovary. They insisted that I was probably too early and the embryo would be way too little to see if it had even formed yet. I went home and cried for the rest of the day. I cried harder when I got a call saying that my levels put me at around 2-3 weeks, because that just didn’t make any sense to me. I was sure I was miscarrying at this point, which my doctor said I should be prepared to deal with. Two days later, I got more blood drawn and I got happier news back: my levels were going up, but not as much as they would have liked. I had another ultrasound and more blood work scheduled for the following Monday. I didn’t make it to then. Sunday night, Jan. 31, I had the most severe cramps I had ever had in my entire life. It got to the point where I couldn’t get comfortable no matter what I did. I felt extremely bloated, and when I walked, I couldn’t put weight on my right
