I am completely overwhelmed with the continued support that I receive from the magnificent people out there in the blog world. I suppose a one year update is in order, and no, there are no miracles over here at Julianna’s abode.
The worst years of my life were when I was undergoing infertility treatments and so, in that, I want to thank everyone again who held my hand along the way during that very difficult time, I will always be eternally grateful for all of the love and support from so many people around the world. Perhaps, it is because I was always so lucky in life that my fertility failures wobbled my world so much. My core beliefs have changed, I now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I cannot always get what I want, no matter how much I try and how hard I fight. Having a family is such a core desire and one that I never thought would tumble my life.
Even as a small child, I knew that my life’s desire and happiness revolved around a family. I loved my baby dolls and couldn’t wait to be old enough to baby-sit. My mother was the youngest of nine children and I always loved that huge family dynamic, at family reunions, it is not uncommon for 150-200 blood relatives to attend. I adore huge families. I even chose my college major because dental hygiene was one of the only careers that paid a good sum of money and allowed for a 1-2 day work week when I did have children. I knew that I always wanted my children to spend more time at home with me, than at a daycare center. That was the major factor in my decision to choose my career at the age of eighteen.
All I ever wanted in my life was to be a mother.
When we didn’t get pregnant in our first year of marriage, I really felt that if we tried hard enough, went to the best doctors, had the most aggressive treatment, kept at it, we would succeed. After enduring numerous procedures and spending well over a hundred thousand dollars, I finally had to wave the proverbial white flag.
I suppose I have gone through many of the steps of recovery: anger, denial, depression, resentment but it’s not like what I thought, I find all of the steps to be like a continuing escalator and although I may have stepped off of one, it will come around again.
I ride the waves better now and my lows are shorter in duration. I am finding ways to jump off that step when I happen upon it.
My mother used to always tell me that “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop” - that comes from the Bible somewhere so it is not her original quote but we heard it over and over and over again growing up.
I have been keeping busy and I have been getting happier. I find that I am much more sad when I have an idle mind.
I joined a golf course and have been actively playing and improving my golf game. I am a pigeon-toed, clumsy, un-athletic, prissy woman who can somehow, miraculously, drive the ball 200-240 yards. My short game is getting much better and thus, my handicap is improving. I am a happy person 90% of the time I am on a golf course.
I am very active with our local winegrower’s association and have been on the board of a local tourism, hospitality and culinary foundation that provides scholarships and fund raiser’s for youth. Most of my days are rich with assignments and meetings and as much as it becomes stressful and hectic sometimes, I am forever grateful for the lack of an idle mind. In order to continue to stay away from that ever-revolving depression escalator step, I know that I must keep busy.
So, I am doing well. I am still trying to come to grips with “never being a mother” and that failure still saddens me on a daily basis. Honestly, what gripes me the most is when I hear of all of the famous actresses who are pregnant later in life, the statement seems to be that “they sought fertility treatments” and thus, they succeeded. They beam, they glow, they are beautiful and they feel so blessed - where are the women who sought treatment and failed? Sometimes, I feel like I am the only person in the world who is left childless after aggressive and numerous treatments.
I still have my empty nursery room that is chock full of all of the nephew hand-me-downs and baby books. I can’t seem to do anything about it, even after all this time.
All in all, I am lucky. I am extremely blessed and very healthy and have a wonderful, loving family and so, for that, I am eternally grateful. Sometimes, I feel like slapping myself when I get down or sad because so many people have had much more difficult mountains to climb.
In all this time, I still cannot imagine how someone goes on after losing a child. If they can carry on, then surely, so can I.
The joy of my life is my adorable little Sophia Loren Scarlett O’Hara:
Yes, I am “one of those” obnoxious pet owners.
Sophie is a delight and a sweet little angel pie. My flickr account is chock full of her pictures and I am forever bragging about her prowess. She will never take the place of a child, but she has helped me with my desire to be a mother.
In other news, I entered some of my oil paintings in the fair. I was nervous regarding the certain embarrassment and failure exposed but I forced myself to be vulnerable. Imagine my complete surprise when every single painting that I entered won an award.
My “bowl of cherries” painting won the coveted “Best Originality” award which encompassed all of the fine arts (including professionals) and all of the photography and sculpture submissions. I was beyond ecstatic, humbled and overwhelmed. My sunflowers won for “best floral” which also included professionals.
I am now working on a large painting of a country porch with rocking chairs WORK IN PROGRESS!:
So, I have plenty to keep me busy. Plenty to be proud of and even more to be grateful for in my life.
I am learning to focus on my blessings and in so doing, I am coming to realize that my happiness revolves around my ability to appreciate all of the positive and the good in my life. I will always fear that sadness and failure escalator step but am forever hopeful that I can have the strength to step off in a timely manner when it is sure to round the bend. Through my husband, I am forever grateful for a sense of humor - he makes me laugh and he gets me like no one else on this earth.
Thank you again for all of your amazing support and I truly hope that all of your lives are rich with health and happiness.
Entry Filed under: Jumping The Shark
January 26th, 2008 05:16pm
Julianna
It was a year ago that my final IVF failed miserably and left me in the gutter of despair. I changed the name of my blog to “Finding The Next” in the hopes of coming to some sort of resolution with my sad state of affairs.
I have learned to try to roll with the punches, to be a good sport, to look on the bright side and appreciate what I do have but it still does not make the broken bits of my heart go away. I ache for a family and am coming to realize that I need to adjust to my fate. Of course, I still pray for a miracle but am more aware of another plan that I have resisted. I have learned that no matter how hard I try or wish or meditate or fight, some things are just not meant to be and are out of my control.
I really used to think that I could succeed at anything if I put my mind to it and tried hard enough. I have learned a very ugly lesson these past few years, to never give up does not guarantee success. I am much more jaded now. Truth be told, deep inside of me, at my core, I am still bitter about everything that I went through and the past several years have been the worst of my life.
Why is it when IVF is featured on television, it always works? Hell, a couple will get two good embryos and get pregnant with twins. They never show the women who produce eggs a fish would envy with fortunes wasted for one failed cycle after another. When you go to interview with an RE, he tells you that your chances are 20% and even that leaves the patient with false hope. I remember thinking that of course it will work for me, I never heard of it NOT working. I suppose no one likes a loser and that is why stories are only written about the successes. If 80% of IVFs fail, fair and balanced reporting is in order. A friend of mine is getting ready to start her first IVF and is asking tons of questions and she has that “I know it will work for ME” innocence that every novice enjoys. I get the feeling that she really thinks that I am somehow damaged goods, they just never found the cause, and she will be different. Good for her that she knows me, because everyone I know in real life who suffers from infertility does indeed get pregnant, and it usually happens with the IUI or clomid cycle just before IVF and then they go on to have two more children. I should start selling little bags of fertility good luck charms…hmm….perhaps a lavender sachet that I have spit in…kidding……………..kind of.
I don’t know how people survive the loss of a child. The emptiness and sadness that I feel for my imaginary child, that fairy tale life where I change my babies diapers and teach him how to walk and he learns to anticipate the garage door indicating his father’s arrival and the excitement that would follow and even the teenage years and college and grandchildren and holidays when I am old. Every vision I have had of myself since I was a small child has been altered by my lack of ability to have children. I cannot imagine feeling that loss with the tangible experience of being a mother. My heroes are the women who survive that kind of real loss and are able to carry on. Surely, I can buck up and have a productive life after the loss of my imaginary children.
I am hell-bent on being a happy, healthy person and am climbing that ladder with a vengeance.
I smile more, I ohh and ahh at babies again and I sense a lightness that I hope keeps getting brighter.
I still adore not working and have been volunteering. The battered women’s shelter was too depressing for me. I felt that I was in a dark gutter and subjecting myself to horrible events that did absolutely nothing for my mental health. My psyche suffered which surprised me. I really thought I would feel better about myself and my life by being involved in that way but I couldn’t have been more wrong. My last miserable job was roses and lilies compared to the way I felt working at the shelter. It was awful for everyone involved and because I am no Mother Teresa, I now volunteer for the local winegrower’s association and am much happier there, no surprise! They even want me to become president and I leave those meetings feeling excited and motivated. There is a huge function coming up that I will be heading up and I am rejuvenated and active on a daily basis with many goals and projects to complete. I was proud to volunteer for the battered women’s shelter but it took it’s toll on me, the winegrower’s association suits my needs in a very simple and shallow way. Salute’!
I have lost my IVF weight, I have really blonde locks that I adore and I have a tanned glow to my skin thanks to my new BFF: L’Oreal sun bronzer. I finally feel like I look better and more alive. I have been redecorating my house, doing intensive spring cleaning and I also bought a new wardrobe. I still love oil painting and I am getting back into yoga again. I miss playing golf and now that the weather is getting gorgeous, I am hopeful to get out on the course soon.
I have spent so much time away from my computer and my blog friends. There were so many times the past two years that I spent way too much time on the internet. I really do believe in the blog addiction theories but there is also a camaraderie here that I would have never experienced had it not been for the generosity of so many bloggers out there in cyberspace. I feel a bit of guilt for my absence but I really needed to get out amoung the living in real life and I hope that I have not hurt too many feelings by pulling away in this way. I suppose people go out with a bang or a whimper. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of the tremendous support and I hope to still stay in contact and even update occasionally. I find myself wondering about people who I used to read and are gone now, I wonder how they are, what their life is like and if they are happy and I treasure being able to catch up on the people who are still blogging.
All I have to blog about these days is my new look, my new furniture, oil painting, wine functions and my travels to the South which give the illusion that I am “GREAT!” and I’m really not, I’m managing okay but I have a long way to go before I would consider myself healed. I am still looking for my next and hold onto the pipe dream that somehow, someway, someday, I will get a miracle.
In the meantime, I will continue to put one foot in front of the other and soldier on.
Entry Filed under: Jumping The Shark
March 13th, 2007 10:56am
Julianna
My cousin and his wife are fun and funny. They never wanted children and they have a great life. They seem to have been able to grab life by the horns and ride it well. Tonight, at dinner, we were discussing our most treasured gift. Our guests both agreed that their recent purchase of a second home (a condo in a beach resort area near Charleston) was their best and most favorite gift to each other.
I had a difficult time naming one gift so I said my wedding ring (which I lost two years ago and have yet to replace) and then I mentioned the ipod M gave me for value and daily use and then I thought of so many other things that I treasure and it soon became difficult to really name just one so I just went on and on and on.
It was then my husbands turn to name his favorite gift and I expected him to opt out of the conversation.
We have a family game called “high/low” and when we are on vacation or have guests, we will often take turns naming one low and one high of the day. We end with the highs to keep it on a positive note but believe it or not, the lows are generally the most enlightening. Like when my sister and her friend were here, one night while playing “high/low” I said that the low of my day was when I was ugly to my sister in the elevator of a San Francisco hotel because she wasn’t “mashing the floor button fast enough” and so it was a good way for me to acknowledge my bitchiness and apologize and she said that her low of the day was the same incident and I embarrassed her in front of a man who was standing beside her in the elevator and I made her feel stupid. To my defense, we had to use a key card to get to a certain floor and she had exactly one floor’s distance to insert the key card and get access to the floor, she was waiting for everyone to enter the elevator and the door to close before she inserted the card and pressed the button, hardly enough time for one floor’s distance. At the end of the day, we both had acknowledged the reality of the day and made the appropriate apologies and moved forward.
M hates the high/low game and usually rolls his eyes and doesn’t participate so I was expecting the same reaction when his turn came at dinner to name his most treasured gift.
He was last so he had plenty of time to come up with something if he chose to participate. I was fully expecting him to say he wasn’t going to play and then we would then all move on to another topic.
Color me shocked when M began speaking…
“The greatest gift that I have ever received is when Julianna tried so hard for us to have a family”
I would have expected something like that had it ever worked, if we had succeeded in having children, it would be predictable…”the greatest gift was our children” but I never, ever expected to hear that my effort to have children is the greatest gift.
For me, the absolute worst thing that has ever happened to me is my repeated attempts at IVF and the subsequent failures that resulted. If it had worked, it would have been the most wonderful thing but it didn’t so it doesn’t and it sucks.
My high for the day and the week and the year and most possibly my life is my husband. He will never read this and never really understand how profound his statement was tonight.
I so adore him for being with me and supporting me in my journey to have a child even though I failed miserably.
He is my granite and the love of my life.
Tonight, at this very moment, I am lacking nothing.
Entry Filed under: IVF#4 3/4
February 7th, 2007 09:49pm
Julianna
One of the best things about living in such a wonderful place is that I get visitors who are in a good mood and full of anticipation for the Julianna Marathon Vacation Tour. My sister and her dear friend recently left and faster than I could change out the bed linens and clean the guest bathroom, my cousin and his wife have arrived from the East coast. They are here for a well known golf tournament at Pebb1e Beach so it is likely that I will be carving a path to and fro the golf course for the coming week. No sooner than that ends does my girlfriend from Los Angeles come for a long awaited visit so I don’t know how long I will be out amoung the living and not inside the computer.
In other news, it ends up that my doctor did speak to a group of hospital big wigs and the heads, they did roll. I got two phone calls - one from the head of the emergency room department and the other from the CEO of the hospital, both men were extremely apologetic and expressed their outrage at my care. I am feeling more like my old self again and for that, I am grateful.
Thank you everyone for your kind words and emails. I do look forward to catching up with the many blogs I have missed for so very long.
I hope all is well with all of you.
Entry Filed under: Jumping The Shark
February 4th, 2007 10:15pm
Julianna
I have had the pleasure of meeting some very fine women in real life after corresponding through our infertility blogs. The few times that I have met bloggers in person, I was always nervous. It is so very odd to know someone so intimately and not know who they are on the street.
So many of us have shared our innermost fears and anxiety and unbearable heartbreak to strangers through our blogs. I know that I have been comforted in ways that I never imagined by people who were with me through whatever journey I had just endured.
There is one person who not only read and comforted me through my infertility hell journey but she was almost always on the road with me. I think we had three IVFs almost at the exact same time and shockingly, we kept having the same dreadful outcome. My infertility was unexplained and of course, age was a factor because when “they don’t know, it’s the old” but Amanda was in her twenties. She had a diagnosis that IVF should have cured. She responded well to the medications and always got nice looking embryos, much like me. As much as my failures devastated me, I didn’t know how Amanda stood it. It should have worked for them, if not the first time, definitely the second time.
I remember when her husband changed jobs and they were struggling financially like most young couples enduring infertility and Amanda had to drive several hours to and from her RE’s office, they had just moved and her RE was in her previous hometown. There was a terrible storm and flooding and I remember Amanda blogging about being scared to drive back and forth but she had to do it. She was afraid of getting caught in the storm and she needed to see her doctor again two days later, if Amanda made it to her RE’s office okay, she really needed to spend the night in a hotel so she could be sure to keep the following days appointments. Anyone who has experienced IVF treatments knows there is never an option of rescheduling an appointment. Amanda had to be able to see her doctor during that storm, come hell or high water. I believe this was Amanda’s last treatment, hell, she had so many IVFs, I can’t keep them all straight.
Anyway, I did a very tacky thing. My heart hurt for her so much, I felt like I would if my sister was in a bind. I wanted to help. I sent Amanda an email through paypal and asked her to please accept it as a gift and stay in a hotel, I couldn’t imagine her getting there in that storm and turning around and driving back again. She returned the email and said that she could not accept and that she would be okay. My husband travels a ton and we have thousands and thousands of Hy@tt points so I asked if there was a Hy@tt near her doctor, there would be no money exchanging, just stupid hotel points. Amanda refused. She did end up staying in a hotel and she was fine. I hope I didn’t insult her by offering to help, I just love her. I really do love her.
Amanda is the one of the kindest, gentlest souls on the internet. After her seventh and final try, Amanda finally got pregnant. She has been holding her breath, scared to death, afraid of the darkness that only that kind of heartbreak can bring and she has hung in there. I am so very proud of her and my heart is exploding with happiness and anticipation at the thought of her finally bringing home her baby.
If I was ever in Texas and had the chance to meet Amanda, I think I would be a sobbing, blubbering bumbling fool. My IVF sister.
Amanda is in the hospital today, she is being induced and she is all I can think about.
I pray that she will bring that baby home and everyone will be okay. She is so scared and I am scared for her. Women have babies every day but women like Amanda don’t so this is a very special day.
Her husband will update her blog when he can.
Sweet, sweet Amanda. I wish I could hold your hand.
Entry Filed under: Miscellaneous
January 10th, 2007 01:41pm
Julianna
I have learned that the holiday season is a terrible time to fall ill and I am so very grateful for having a day like yesterday where I felt no pain and I had a normal temperature for the first time in ages.
Thank you for your lovely emails and kind words after “the terrible incident”.
Even I begin to sigh and get lost at the ridiculousness of the emergency room clusterfuck (thank you Susan for my new favourite word).
I have seen four different doctors this week and they seem to all agree that the cyst was filled with bloody, gelatin-like ick and my body is fighting to get rid of it. I am on heavy duty antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory which is really messing with my wine consumption. The bottle says my stomach may bleed if I drink alcohol and well, that would not be good.
On Friday, my OB/GYN wanted me to come into his office for another ultrasound and BP/temperature check. He asked me about my emergency room visit while he was preparing the wand. He is very active on their board and I can only assume that he asked because they are having problems at the local hospital. I was laying on the table naked with a sheet of paper covering my bits and a condom draped wand readying for action which is probably the least likely vision I had of myself spilling the clusterfuck beans.
I surprised myself by suddenly becoming so overwhelmed with the fuckiness of the clusters of clusterfucks that I just said, “you don’t really want to know“.
(going for a record here with my NFW -new favourite word)
He said that he did want to know and I said it was such a long, drawn out, ridiculous, hard-to-believe story.
After the exam (fluid still present/diminishing - BP starting to stabilize - temperature normal - see me in 2 weeks - continue meds as prescribed), he asked me to get dressed and come into his office. He pulled a little yellow post-it from it’s holder on his desk and wrote a number 1 and circled it and said, “Okay, tell me about the emergency room“.
Well, I’m looking at his little sticky note and all I could think about was how I was having a difficult time organizing my thoughts on a single piece of typed business paper and he was expecting to get the gist on a post-it note? There was a sense of dread that surprised me and I just wanted to say “oh, nothing” and go home. Really. It does get so very ridiculous and I just pictured myself looking like a crazy ass for trying to remember everything and I knew I needed to say it in such a way that it was credible and not emotional and dramatic.
He encouraged me, saying, “I really want to know everything.”.
So, I started with triage idiot nurse and her views of IVF and “find a baby in a dumpster” comment and how I just tried to ignore her. She was from Tennessee, that is all I knew - unfortunately people like her give people like me a bad name - country bumpkin and all.
The doctor didn’t seem to be too surprised and then wrote a number 2 and circled it. I told him about the morphine and no check for 40 minutes and my BP was skyrocketing. Still, no reaction, he just wrote abbreviations and notes.
Well, then something happened. I got lost in that night and those moments and I said everything step by step by step. He kept with his circled numbers and kept grabbing more post-its and sticking one on top of the previous one until he had about five stickies on my chart.
He seemed most outraged at the amount of medications in a short period of time and commented that the hallway nurse probably didn’t write that injection down in my chart immediately and the male nurse didn’t ask or know that she had given me an injection of pain medicine and he probably didn’t believe me when I said a nurse gave me a shot in the hallway. Obviously, the nurses didn’t write my latest blood pressures either so the doctor didn’t know, that, or God forbid, he didn’t read my chart.
I told Dr. RunningOutOfPostitNotes that I was scared to go home that night. I knew I wasn’t stable and was afraid that I would do something dreadful like blow up and die.
He told me, “It always comes down to survival and that it is another lesson in no matter where you are, always trust your instincts and it always comes down to the fact that you are always ultimately responsible for your own survival.“.
How many nurses would I have let come into that room and give me shots? How many would my husband have allowed? It reminds me of that old experiment with the “lab coat researchers” who got participants to administer lethal doses of electricity to strangers on the other side of a wall. I should have looked after myself better. I’d like to think M. would not have allowed another cluster of fucks but hell, we did get dressed and go home for me to die so who knows. We both knew that I was hardly stable.
So, I lived.
I am woman hear me roar.
Looking at the notes of fuck ups pile up on my chart on my doctor’s desk, I said, “oh yeah. They sent me home with my radiology report. My husband read it to me when he put me in bed. Enlarged uterus, No fetal pole, no heartbeat………I grabbed my report, wondering why they didn’t tell me I was having a miscarriage and then I saw the name Maria S….o at the top of the page“.
My doctor looked at me extremely perplexed. He wasn’t writing notes anymore, he was just looking into my eyes. He had to have seen that I was completely serious because he stood up immediately and started walking out his door and I was only left to follow, he said “That’s it! I don’t want to hear anymore.”
I kept a steady pace two feet behind him and said “that poor lady was in the emergency room the same time I was...”
He turned and looked outraged “She probably went home thinking she had a ruptured ovarian cyst. That’s enough. I mean it. I don’t want to hear anymore.”
I thought of the famous Jack Nicholson line “You can’t handle the truth!!!” after being chided to spill his beans.
Further proof of my theory that there is only so much that one can comprehend.
I’d like to call it the Clusterfuck Theory.
To review:
The four fundamental forces of nature are:
1. Gravity - the force due to mass
2. Strong- the force that binds the nuclei together
3. Weak- the force that dictates radioactive decay
4. Electromagnetic- the force due to electromagnetic charge
I would like to submit for approval a fifth fundamental force of nature:
Clusterfuck- The force that causes matter to break down due to its fucked upedness
Entry Filed under: Miscellaneous
January 7th, 2007 02:51pm
Julianna
Paris was lovely, the emergency room was not.
My dear husband surprised me with a new set of luggage to be opened immediately and then presented me with airline tickets and our agenda for the coming weeks. He was going to France on a business trip the week before Christmas and arranged for me to accompany him. I would have thought my first blog entry would be about comings and goings and pictures of the Champs-Elysées lit up for holidays. But alas. My digital camera erased every single picture when I changed the batteries - nice. Very nice. At least I have the memories in my mind and I am even more appreciative of the opportunity for such a lovely trip should I die of unknown causes.
I would love to say that I am glad that my ovary decided to rupture upon my return to the United States, but given my horrendous medical care in the emergency room, I would have been better off in a foreign country in which I did not speak the native tongue.
My husband tells me that the entire emergency room staff hated me towards the end of my stay and demanded my immediate departure, in spite of me telling them that I was hardly stable. They didn’t care.
I must preface this by saying that I am still groggy, they gave me enough narcotics to kill an elephant and in spite of that, I was still conscious enough to keep calling them on their incompetence. If not for my husband being my witness, I would have truly thought I was going insane because of being gaslit so much.
It started with stabbing, sharp pains in the area of my left ovary in the middle of the night. I was startled awake several times and thought that perhaps I had twisted my ovary while sleeping on my side. Oh, why the hell not. It sounded reasonable at the time and I took some motrin when I woke up. The stabs increased with frequency throughout the day and of course at 5:15 p.m., just after my doctor’s office had closed, I decided it was time to seek medical attention. My temperature was almost 100 and the motrin was no longer putting a dent in the stabbing pains. If not for the pause between stabs, I would have been unconscious.
I checked into the emergency room without much ado and was immediately sent to the triage nurse who ended up being the biggest idiot on the planet but hey, I needed to be nice because, after all, my life was in her hands and I do sometimes know when to shut up.
I have to warn medical staff of my low blood pressure because it averages 100/60 and can sometimes go lower - a reading of 95/50 would not be too unusual for me. Even before all of IVF treatments and egg retrievals, they checked my history of low blood pressure and usually remarked about it.
Imagine my surprise when the triage nurse asked how long I have had high blood pressure - acting as if she did not hear a word of my LOW blood pressure warning.
“I have LOW blood pressure. Not High” I responded, thinking she misunderstood me.
“You have High blood pressure”, “It’s 147/110“, she said.
“Well, that’s impossible. I’ve never had high blood pressure in my life“, I said.
“You’re probably just nervous. Scared we’ll put you in the stirrups and someone you don’t know will be examining you.” she said.
“No, I’m not nervous. I have undergone four IVFs in less than five years and have had many strangers looking at me through the stirrups” I said.
“You’re probably nervous“, she said again as if I spoke to no one there.
I then repeated about my multiple medical visits and surgical procedures that never revealed a high blood pressure reading. I wanted her to take that seriously, I wanted to prove to her that something was very wrong. I wanted her to believe me.
She then went into some bullshit tirade about how ridiculous it is that people do so many IVFs when they could just adopt a baby and I swear to all that is holy that that lady told me to go to a dumpster, that I could probably find a baby that someone disposed of in a dumpster.
Like I said, I felt she was my window to help and I shut my mouth. I may have even managed a fake smile.
She immediately put me in a room - this room had doors, not curtains like most ER rooms. She said it was the OB room and she got my husband so that he could be with me. M. does not do drama and is really very quiet. When the nurse left I told M. what a fucking idiot she was and that she told me to go find a baby in a dumpster. He looked at me as if he didn’t believe me. Like, perhaps, I was delusional. HA! He soon would witness far worse and was my reality check amoungst all of the unbelievable events that followed.
The doctor came in and seemed nice enough. He said they would run a panel and order an ultrasound and he mentioned an ectopic pregnancy or ruptured ovarian cyst. I told him that with five years of infertility and no pregnancy, “an ectopic would be highly unlikely and frankly, it would be a huge pisser“. He was not amused. He said that he would order a shot of morphine for the pain.
Triage idiot nurse gave my shot of morphine at 17 after the hour, I watched those minutes ticking on the wall clock, wondering when I would get relief. I told M. that I was getting sleepy but my pain was still very intense.
A new shift female nurse came into the room at 10 till the hour and took my blood pressure. It was 180/120 and I started to cry. I told her that something was terribly wrong and that I was groggy but I was still feeling the stabs and my blood pressure rising was really scaring me. She said that I should have been getting relief from the morphine and would give me something else. She left the blood pressure cuff on and my husband watched it fluctuate between 188/128 to 175/119. She said my high blood pressure was because of the pain.
The ultrasound tech came into my room to roll me to the ultrasound/radiation area of the hospital. M. followed and the new shift nurse came and asked for us to stop so she could give me another injection in the hallway before the ultrasound tests. She said that I would be asleep when I returned to the ER.
I am told that I was entertaining myself during the ultrasound. When the U/S tech asked for my birthdate, I followed it with a resounding “IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD” and because I thought that was so funny, I kept repeating dramatically “IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD!“. Apparently, I am the only one who found me amusing.
When I returned to my walled ER room, a male nurse came in and gave me another shot. When my husband asked what it was for, he said for pain. I told him that I had just received a shot in the hallway and he looked at me as if I was making it up.
This was followed by the new shift nurse coming into my room 10 minutes later and asking me if the shot had taken effect. I told her that the last shot had just been administered and although I was groggy and having a difficult time speaking, I was still very much feeling the stabbing pains. She said that she was the last person who gave me a shot and that was 30 minutes ago. I told her that a male nurse came into the room, he gave me a shot. She said “no, no male nurse gave you a shot“……..
Thank you sweet Jesus that my husband was with me and my sane witness. He said that a male nurse had indeed just given me a shot.
Obviously, they missed each other in the communication and although I could not speak clearly, I documented my stabbing pain by putting my hand in the air and pinching my thumb and index/middle finger as if a lobster claw to indicate the times I was feeling the stabs. I remember wishing I had a clicker. M. said that I kept saying that even though I may not be able to speak, it doesn’t mean I am no longer in pain. I said that they just wanted me to shut up about the pain, that’s what the shots were for.
The doctor came into the room and said that an ovarian cyst had ruptured, my abdominal cavity had fluid, most likely blood and the inflammation from that is what was causing the pain and he said that I could go home.
I told him that I was hardly stable, my pain had not decreased in spite of massive doses of pain medicine and that my blood pressure is steadily sky rocketing. He said that I don’t have high blood pressure.
I looked over at my husband. He told the doctor that I did have high blood pressure. The doctor said 147/110 is not really considered high and when M said it was up into the 180’s, the doctor rolled his eyes and said he would order another BP check. The male nurse came in with an attitude and took my final blood pressure that was onefiftysomething/oneteensomething.
The doctor returned with the female nurse and said that I was being discharged and she began stripping my gurney. I told the doctor that I was afraid that I would go home and blow up. He said I wouldn’t and I haven’t, so I suppose, he was right in that.
I’ll probably regret writing all of this. I don’t feel like spell checking etc…
I will offer as proof, in case I die of an overdose, the discharge slip with the shots that were administered:
Morphine
Demerol
Phenergin (sp?)
Teradol (sp?)
Oh yeah. Upon arriving home to blow the fuck up, my husband was reading my discharge notes. He asked what a fetal pole was 8 weeks gestation. Still, in my drunken haze, I knew that something was terribly wrong. This is what they sent home with me, my radiology report:
You can click it and enlarge it if you wish. It really is quite amusing.
Because we never got that far, my husband never heard of “fetal pole”, you’d think reading “no heartbeat” would have clued him in.
I grabbed the piece of paper and read it, not believing my eyes and really, wondering if I had finally lost my mind.
Then I noticed the name at the top of the radiology page, “Maria S….o”
They sent us home with someone else’s results.
Fuckin’ people. I tell ya.
It’s a wonder I’m still alive.
Entry Filed under: Miscellaneous
December 29th, 2006 06:21pm
Julianna
A very quick “Happy Holidays” to everyone in the blog world.
See you after the new year!
Entry Filed under: Miscellaneous, Jumping The Shark
December 14th, 2006 11:52pm
Julianna
I am still deep in the throws of trying to finish my painting escapade. This is the first time that I have painted an entire furnished house and it will be the last. I suppose I should say “I had people paint” because it took a crew of eight men four days to finish. I hope to have everything back in it’s place by this afternoon so that means I need to think of another project because the holidays are going to suck this year. The “a” word is not looking feasible for more than a few reasons that I cannot go into here - all that I can say is that I will most likely never be a mother.
Sometimes, I just cannot believe that yet another Christmas is coming and I have no child to adore. When I think of what my life would be like had we had children, I feel a deep void and could get very sad if I let myself. It helps to keep busy but sometimes, nothing helps. I was walking the other day and saw the neighborhood children playing with toys and riding Barbie jeeps and G.I.Joe hummers, I wondered what my children would have been like, would I have bought them things like that? One girl really sticks out, she is probably four years old and loves her pink Barbie jeep, it seems so decadent, but seeing how much that little girl adores driving that little jeep around and around on their cul-de-sac, I would have probably bought one for a child of mine.
When I think of our children, I always imagine them as adorable, smart, funny and fulfilling. I imagine baby years and adolescence and college and grandchildren. It is always rosy and peachy and perfect. In that fairytale, my husband and I are overwhelmed with gratefulness and ooze of happiness - we glow.
Instead of visualizing a prissy little adorable blonde daughter and a super bright little boy, I think it may help me cope this holiday if I think of how having children can be a nightmare.
Going on a show like “Changing Spouses” would be great for me. If I swapped with a family with ridiculously bratty children, I would come back to my quiet home a much more grateful person. I can picture the split screen, me going crazy with a house full of hellions and their mother being bored to tears in my silent house. Better yet, perhaps she would never want to leave my house and she would give me feedback about how thankful I should be for my like-new freshly painted walls because they will most likely stay that way for years.
It also might help me cope if I start to google things like “children who ruined their parent’s lives”, “siblings who went on to ruin the world”, “children who grew up to be murderers”, “children who murdered their parents”, “children who murdered their grandparents” …. ohhhh………..i don’t know…………..i’m sure i can come up with some others but the murderous thoughts bring me the greatest comfort.
Entry Filed under: Jumping The Shark, Adoption
December 10th, 2006 11:34am
Julianna
I am deep in the throws of getting quotes from painters and door people to finally do some much needed renovations. Funny that every single construction worker who has come in here seems to think that they are also an interior designer. The last people on the street that I would pull aside to ask for decorating advice would be construction looking men. I want my walls painted the color that I picked and I want the french doors that I said I wanted. I’ve waited four years for this green light, I’ve had plenty of time to contemplate my choices.
I am getting every single wall in this house painted which means that I might as well move. My husband’s only request is that I get all of this done when he is on a business trip. Next week is D week - when he gets back in town, not only will every wall be painted, there is a very good chance that the furniture will be rearranged which is sure to send him over the edge. He doesn’t do change well. Let’s be real, he doesn’t do change at all.
My husband is starting to worry about what this house will look like when he returns.
When he commented about my dreadful manicure and pedicure, I told him that I was trying out the new wall color on my nails to see if it suits me.
Be Very Afraid.
Entry Filed under: Jumping The Shark
December 1st, 2006 11:24am
Julianna
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