I love everybody who reads my blog.

I love everybody who posts sweet nothings to me in the comments.

I love that half of you are almost as whacked as I’ve become; it makes me feel like less of a total freak and more like I’m quasi-normal.

I mostly want to say, “I’m not worthy.”

It’s amazing how helpful it is to read, “I know what you mean, that’s happened to me before.”

I think I am so self-involved that it truly amazes me that the things that happen to me have happened to other people before and I never even knew it.

Smootches!

I just had an hour-long panic attack, right here in my own office. IN THE MORNING. (I usually enjoy adrenaline hell in the evening, in the privacy of my own home.)

I had to leave my desk and walk around the block. I poured out almost a whole latte and filled my water bottle instead. While I interacted normally with everyone who came to my desk, I was experiencing a hidden fear that THIS one would indeed become a REAL heart attack.

My nervous system has totally gone to shit. Fuck this noise.

Panic Attacks and Anxiety is a good article (even though a paragraph about actual fibrillation made me have to get up and walk around the office for a bit because I was overcome with a wave of intense fear) and the doctor’s understanding of how people can resist thinking they’re “just” having panic attacks is heartening:

“People often resist or deny a diagnosis of panic attack. Some people cling to their physical symptoms, convinced that they are pointing to a heart problem or something similar. They have trouble believing that it’s actually the nervous system that is causing the symptoms. They may feel that there’s a stigma attached to the diagnosis of panic attack, as there often is to mental illness — that it’s somehow humiliating or implies cowardice, moral failure, or weakness of character. They’re afraid I’m telling them that it’s all in their mind.”

(That’s because there’s lotsa literature out there that says, “It’s all in your mind.” !!! In fact, there’s an amazing amount of shit on the web that says it’s from bad parenting or the stress of living in the city. Total bullshit. It may start as a mental disease for some, but for most I think it’s a learned fear reaction to a suddenly and very fucked-up nervous system.)

“But it’s not really like mental illness or delusion — it’s as if your whole body were being jolted with electricity, with nervous impulses gone out of control in a kind of short circuit or feedback loop. It’s like an involuntary discharge of the autonomic nervous system — a strictly physiological response that is not subject to your mental control or caused by your thinking process. In fact, people sometimes say that they were feeling very calm before an attack, or not thinking about anything particularly stressful or emotionally jarring. Sometimes they protest that it can’t be “nerves” because they weren’t really under stress that day. But it doesn’t necessarily take a stressful incident to set off a panic attack. Rather, stress to the nervous system builds up gradually, over a long time, and finally reaches a limit and spills over in a sudden overload.

“A similar thing can happen in some people with heart problems — a nerve network in the heart muscle can suddenly start to generate amplified signals, in a kind of neurological feedback loop. This can go haywire and cause fibrillation: the heart stops beating rhythmically and just vibrates.

“Panic attack is a true physiological syndrome, which people should accept and take constructive steps to correct.”

Constructive steps, sadly, include becoming a total roo: cut the toxins, period. Caffeine, sugar, alcohol. NICOTINE. Junk food.

I know you all know this already, but I don’t want to know it. I come from a loooong line of drinkin’, smokin’ rednecks, and I don’t want to be a delicate goddamned flower. I don’t want to be afraid that going to the bar on New Year’s Eve will give me complete neuro-chemical meltdown, I don’t want to eat at Noodle House (the food SUCKS!), or wear Arctic-rated coats in April because I’m weak and timid and so c-c-cold, I don’t want to pop suppliments every day because there’s something wrong with me, and I don’t want to be one of those people that people like me look at and think, ‘she should have a damned drink and relax already!’

You’ve often wondered how spoiled I am. The answer is: “rotten.” Behold my Christmas gift list!

– iPod
– light blue jammies
– 4 pairs of wool/angora socks
– a groovy cheese tray with a glass dome
– 2 salsa dishes with little feet, like at restaurants
– a spatula
– 2 whisks
– a big squishy brown blanket
– 2 pictures of Miss Parker, my new and only niece
– a killer wool sweater
– a Nissan thermos
– beaded picture frame
– coffee mug and “red hat” figurine
– yummy hot chocolate mix with mini-mallows
– $50

Like, damn, right? Whee!
——–

FOR THE HELL OF IT, laughing heartily after reading the comments on the previous post, I googled the string “fuck Daryl Hall” to see if I could find some other 30-something woman’s blog entry on that oh-so-fine blond subject, but instead I found a fairly interesting article on Tupac and generation gap in terms of how “kids” relate to music and rap… and there was this amazing quote at the bottom:

“If love truly is going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each other’s objects of reverence. I thought it was Iggy Stooge, you thought it was Joni Mitchell or whoever else seemed to speak to your own private, entirely circumscribed situation’s many pains and few ecstasies. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis’s. But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won’t bother saying good-bye to his corpse. I will say good-bye to you.”
– Lester Bangs, August 29, 1977

(from: Bad Subjects magazine: Pour Out a Little Liquor For Tupac)

Today sucked.

Today my body stopped being in crisis mode from blood loss, and decided it was time to acknowledge pregnancy loss. AF is here and with her comes all her attending CRAP. I’m a big purple bruise emotionally. I really need a fucking shower. And… and… and I just feel bad.

Oh, and my fucking hormones decided I was perimenopausal again, so I had my own special brand of almost-panic attack: rapid and uneven heartbeat, adrenaline, sweating, temperature swings from fever to freezing, and fear. Fear. FEAR. Fear for my fucking LIFE.

And it went on for four or five hours. Because clearly I haven’t had a bad enough week and need to be punished additionally. Bah!

That I know these fits are ‘merely’ chemical, and not truly the Big Bad Wolf come to EAT MY ENTRAILS WHILE I LIVE, doesn’t make them much easier to bear. The knowledge that it’s ‘just’ some hormonal/glandular/chemical malfunction simply makes me feel shittier, somehow.

There would be so much more grace in actually being at death’s door. I could be theatrical, at the very least, and command satisfying attention.

NOTE: This is a story about bleeding, a LOT of bleeding, and two hospitals. It’s pretty graphic. There’s an OBGYN in it and an exam and everything. YHBW.

So yesterday my body finally decided to have that long-awaited miscarriage.

I woke up early, bleeding. Had cramps, then had worse cramps, then had pain. I asked Brett not to leave for work quite yet.

I was bleeding heavily. Then my water broke. Then I started hemorraging (filling a pad every ten or fifteen minutes). Called “the hospital,” which is how I think of JCH because I lived in Fairfield too long, and told the nurse I was miscarrying and hemorraging and asked if I could come there or not. She argued with me for awhile and then finally she said yes, I could come. So Brett took me there against his better judgement, because I was totally freaked out and that’s where I’d said to take me.

It would have been cool if she’d said, “You need to go to a hospital with an Obstetrics department,” but she didn’t. So we went there.

When we got there, they put me in a gown and onto a gurney. The nurse took my heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature. The doctor came and talked with me for about two minutes. Then I sat there and bled for awhile.

I had to ask the lab technician who came to draw me to get the nurse to bring me pads. The lab tech took four vials of blood. I mentioned that that bugged me, considering that I was fucking hemorraging. She said it was in case they ordered tests later, so she wouldn’t have to draw me again. (She was really nice, and I guilelessly – ha! – told Brett how unbelievably gently {name removed} drew blood, and I think it spurred her to her most professional level. I barely even felt it!)

The tech left and relayed my request to the nurse, who took twenty minutes to find pads, “because they were in stores.” She said I could go to the bathroom if I wanted and stood ready to help me.

Again, it would have been cool if at some point they’d said, “You need to go to a hospital with an Obstetrics department because we can’t help you,” but they didn’t.

I’d been laying there for well over half an hour by then, so my pad was triple overfull. I told her I’d bleed all over the floor if I stood up in that ridiculous hospital gown, and that my pad, underwear, and legs were dripping with blood. When I stood up (using a gurney pad as a sort of diaper) and she saw the pad I’d been sitting on had a blood stain a foot and a half wide on it, I think she finally got that when I said I was having a miscarriage at eleven weeks and that I was hemorraging, I wasn’t fucking joking. Of course she couldn’t do anything, but she at least became solicitous.

The ER doctor was insufferably full of himself. He spoke with me only twice during the hour I was left in the exam room. He asked me if I smoked, and when I didn’t lie and actually said yes, he was awful and condescending. He stood leaning against the counter with his arms crossed and vaguely indicated that we were waiting on getting an ultrasound.

This is how much I was bleeding: when I went to the bathroom, there was a clot of blood that would overfill my two hands cupped together. I can hold a cup of water in my hands. I had left a CUP of my own blood in the fucking bathroom toilet, and the staff was gossiping in the corridor. And that was only the blood that had managed to clot, and not the blood soaking into everything else. I was scared, but trying to convince myself that if I was in real danger they’d be doing something.

After an hour of my sitting on the gurney bleeding, Brett reached his time limit. He went out and started interacting with the folk loitering in the hallway. He spoke with the doctor and got him to admit that the radiologist wouldn’t be in until noon, or maybe two, so they couldn’t give me an ultrasound to see if there was retained tissue. After some prodding the doctor also revealed that even if there was retained tissue and I needed a D&C, they didn’t have an Obstetrics department so they couldn’t even perform the procedure I needed. (??!?!?)

Honestly, it hadn’t occured to me that a hospital – any hospital – wouldn’t be able to perform a D&C. I see now that I knew no one has babies there any more so they probably don’t have any doctors in obstetrics, but I figured a D&C was something any competent surgeon could do. My midwife assures me that it is a procedure any competent surgeon can do.

But this doctor’s plan was to stand in the ER hallway at the desk and gossip with nurses and orderlies while I bled to death on the gurney ten feet away. I was filling a super maxi every ten minutes. I’d wager one of those pads soaked holds at least six ounces. My bleeding was so not minor, and waiting until two was no option.

At that point, after I was dressed and leaving because Brett couldn’t fucking stand it any more and had said, “Get your clothes on, I’m taking you to a REAL hospital,” the idiot ER doctor finally asked me how much I’d been bleeding… because I’d asked HIM how much was too much… and then the bastard admitted I was bleeding “too much” and that he’d prefer to send me to Ottumwa in an ambulance!

“When?” Brett asked. “When were you going to do that? She’s been lying here bleeding for an hour! You’ve wasted my time – and my wife’s blood – fucking around here today. Come on, we’re leaving.”

I signed the sheet to check myself out “against doctors orders,” (I couldn’t focus enough to read it, which is totally unlike me) and Brett drove me to Ottumwa Regional Health Center in about 21 minutes. (I called Kathy on the way and told her what had happened at JCH and she literally sputtered with indignation and disgust. I so love her. Hearing her say she was sorry heartened me because by then I was well and truly scared.) At ORHC, he parked in a reserved dialysis space right in front of the admitting door and escorted me into the hospital.

I stopped at the first bathroom I passed and destroyed it just like I had the one back at JCH. I was bleeding so much I got blood all over the toilet, the floor, my legs, and even my socks while trying to change my pad. I tried to clean up, but it probably freaked out the next person to go in there.

When I came out of the bathroom, I saw that I’d left a few perfectly round red spots on the linoleum in the hall.

We went to radiology because that’s where the idiot from JCH had said to go, but they weren’t expecting me. They called OBGYN and they were expecting a “Melissa Morgan from Fairfield.” (!!!?!) (JCH couldn’t even call my name in right?!) The radiology nurse asked me to sit in the lobby for a minute, but I leaned into her little glass enclosure and told her I’d ruin the upholstery if I sat in one of those chairs; that I was hemorraging and would be dripping blood on the floor in about a minute and a half. Her eyes widened and she said, “Stay right there,” and scuttled off.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was dizzy. I thought it was probably stress more than anything else, and I believed that the whole rest of the day yesterday. But now that I’ve slept on it, I realize I was dizzy and unfocussed from blood loss, not anxiety.

In about four minutes the radiology nurse reappeared with a wheelchair padded with those ubiqutous absorbent hospital pads, and she rolled me to OBGYN personally. I was thankful I hadn’t had to walk. It was far enough that I didn’t have enough pads left to make it without leaving a trail on the linoleum.

At OBGYN they checked me in rather quickly and I was taken back to an exam room the minute the paperwork was done. The nurse asked me a quick series of questions and asked me to strip from the waist down and get on the exam table.

The doctor tapped on the door immediately: THAT’S how long I didn’t have to wait at ORHC. He came in with a nurse, asked me some succinct questions, and started a pelvic exam right away.

Brett stayed in the room because I’d been hemorraging for about two hours by now and he wasn’t about to allow one more moment of bad care. So he saw the doctor change gloves three times because they were so bloody. He saw “the huge mass” of clots and tissue the doctor removed from my body. He saw the whole damn thing and he didn’t even pass out: what a freakin’ trooper. (He told me more about my exam than I’d known myself, really. I’d been telling the tropical poster on the ceiling that I was “pretty uncomfortable, oh I don’t really like that. Damn that’s not comfortable,” during most of it while the doctor and nurse murmured to each other. Seriously, it helps to keep a running commentary so you don’t focus too much on how weird it feels.)

I’d expected a quick internal exam and then a trip to an OR for an emergency D&C. Instead, the wonderful Dr. Haas solved the problem quickly and without fucking around: the exam was uncomfortable AS HELL because he pulled out the placenta and other ‘uterine products’ (such medical-sounding terms for a failed baby) right there on the spot, examined them, and sent them off to the lab with the nurse. To my great discomfort, he left the speculum in long enough to see that removing this retained tissue slowed the bleeding significantly. I can only assume that my cervix was dilated enough for the miscarriage itself (they’re usually pretty closed, btw) that he could pull out the tissue which was making me bleed to death. He also pushed on the outside of my uterus so I get the impression it’s pretty dang tidy in there now.

God I dislike internal exams! Eeech!

Anyway. When I sat up, the exam tray looked like a murder had been done on it. There was standing blood on the tray. By then I was freaked out and dizzy and relieved I might not die, and so all I said was, “Wow. Now that’s a mess.”

The doctor said, “Ah, not too bad,” and proceeded to talk to me like an actual human being! (I love Dr. Haas.) “I removed what I think is the remaining placental tissue. It looks right for eleven weeks and I don’t think there’s anything left. It’s been sent to the lab and they’ll probably say ‘non-viable uterine tissue,’ which we already know, but we’ll get it checked anyway.”

While he was talking, my stoned self noticed the good doctor’s shoes. I was so spaced out. They were smooth slip-ons, like boat shoes, only they looked warm and waterproof and like they might not even squeak on hospital floors. I thought to myself, ‘Now how can you not like an OBGYN who wears such excellent shoes?’

And seriously, I didn’t even realize I was dizzy until today. That’s how dizzy I was!

He continued, “After I removed the placental remains, the bleeding slowed down significantly. I think you’ll be all right and that you don’t need a D&C. I’m going to have to ask you for a blood test, but when that’s done you can go home and rest. You’ve lost a lot of blood today, so drink lots of liquids.”

“JCH left her bleeding in their ER for an hour,” Brett said.

The doctor just sort of blinked and slid past that, as if he were too professional to acknowledge it, but later Brett told me he got the vibe it wasn’t the first time that particular doctor had heard such a thing.

“So the bleeding is caused by retained tissue, and getting the tissue out lets the body clot?” I asked.

“Exactly,” he said. “Now get dressed and they’ll take some blood across the hall there.” He left me with towels to clean up with, and Brett helped me up so I could get dressed.

After getting another cotton ball band-aided to my other arm (“Hey,” I told the lab tech. “Now I match!”), I stopped to check out and pay a very reasonable $80 for services rendered. I have a check-up on January 12th.

On the way out of the hospital we stopped at a vending station to get some juice (I had cotton mouth like you WOULD NOT BELIEVE) and the chick from radiology popped in and asked for an update, which we happily and giddily gave her.

When Brett told her about JCH, she couldn’t believe it. She looked at me. “They let you sit there for an hour? And didn’t even tell you they had no OB?” (She was suitably disgusted for us. We liked her a lot.)

“Yeah,” Brett said. “Apparently their plan was to let her bleed until noon, do an ultra sound, then send her here by ambulance.”

“Oh my God!” the radiology nurse exclaimed.

JCH was populated with lax, dull people who thought we were stupid. In contrast, every single person we dealt with at ORHC was professional and friendly. I’m so grateful I could fucking cry.

We were home by 11:30.

Brett left to work the afternoon, and Tahmi came out to “babysit” me, with a bag full of treats from the store. Her aunt was also in town, as it were, so we enjoyed a very female afternoon of movie and chocolate and cheesy poofs and good girl bonding. I love that Tahmi!

Today I’m less dizzy but I’m taking it easy, and I’m drinking lots of liquids and am gonna eat something more nutricious this afternoon than cheesy poofs. Honest!

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Edited 3/31/05: to remove the hospital’s name and replace it with its initials.
Edited 4/5/05: to add meta name (“robots” content=”noindex”) to get the page off of search engines.

I have one! I have one! OH MY GOD I have one! And it’s blue, and it’s wonderful, and Mr. Brett gave it to me because he’s totally superior in every way, and I love it!

It’s my brand new Apple iPod mini, and YES IT IS every bit as tiny and geeky and cute as you’re thinking it is! Oh joy and happiness! I’m in heaven!

(Yes, we realize you’re supposed to wait until Christmas to open gifts, but hell – we’re both over 30 and we don’t care. Whee!)