The story of my first miscarriage is quite lengthy and complicated. So strap in and hang on...
In August of 2011 my husband and I were living in Greenville SC. Jeremy just finished working at an aviation company that he had help to start and he was looking for the next step in his career (as I look back this was a huge blessing as he was available for the subsequent trips we would be making). We had planned to go on our first vacation since our honeymoon in Jamaica back in May 2010. Our plan was to go to OH to stay with his parents; he was going to take me to the Amish country for the first time and we were also going to visit Cedar Point. We were to make a stop in Pittsburgh on the way to visit my grandparents whom we hadn't seen since our wedding. Once we got to Pittsburgh our plans completely changed. The day before we got there my grandfather was hospitalized because "something wasn't quite right." It was thought that his pacemaker may have been out of rhythm but after a week of tests he was diagnosed with Lymphoma and they found a tumor on his pancreas. We did not end up going to OH but spent that week taking my Grandma back and forth to the hospital and bringing him home on hospice as there was nothing that they could do for him. Hospice is not something that I had much experience with as a registered nurse at that time, though I had extensive experience with the elderly. Being on the family member side of hospice helped me see the need and ministry of it and is actually what led me to currently be a hospice nurse. We spent several sleepless nights sitting up with him as he was very sickly and confused, but I would not change those times for anything. One night I remember especially because he was confused and wanted to get up and go somewhere (with my hospice experience I understand now that he was actually talking about the end of his life and leaving this earth), but I was able to get him to sit on the side of the hospital bed and we just sat there together for awhile. I rubbed his back (he had become so very skinny by then due to the cancer) and talked to him. I don't know if he understood what I was saying to him and I don't even remember all of what I said but it is a sweet memory.
My vacation time ended and we had to go back to SC so that I could go back to work. One of the hardest things I ever had to do was look my grandfather in the eye and tell him goodbye knowing I would never see him alive again.
Hi-Ho Hi-Ho off to work I went. With everything weighing on my mind and heart I didn't think much of anything when my cycle was a few days late. I snitched a pregnancy test from the pre-op area (I was working in the operating room at the time) and took the test the next morning. The test showed an extremely faint positive line. At the time I thought "If it was truly positive it would be POSITIVE and there would be no doubt". Well if I knew then what I knew now I would have treated it as a true positive and not disregarded it. To further confuse matters I started bleeding that day. This cycle seemed different than any others that I had previously but I didn't pay much attention to it until I saw the tissue. Then the puzzle pieces started coming together and I started to question what was really happening. I called the Drs office that evening and they told me to go to the ER which I was not going to do because it would cost us $1,000 out of pocket which we did not have at the time. So I waited and went to the Drs the next
morning and they took my blood to see what my HCG level was. The test came back with no indication that I was pregnant so I figured it wasn't really a miscarriage.
That all happened within a two week period.
The next Monday morning I got a call from my Dad saying that Grandpap had passed away. Another whirlwind trip to PA for the funeral along with a side trip back to OH so that hubby's parents could keep the dog while we were attending the funeral.
After we got back I went back to my Dr; she confirmed my suspicions that it had been a miscarriage due to the chain of events and all of the evidence. She explained that I had been very early on, likely only 2-3 weeks. By the time I had gotten the blood test i had already been bleeding for a couple of days and likely it was negative because my body had already rid itself of the pregnancy.
That is the story of how our first child came into our lives so very briefly.
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