We were living in Park City, Utah at the time. I have been told that living at high elevation is what saved my life. I was pregnant, and we were visiting Portland, Oregon (sea level) when I learned our baby no longer had a heart beat. That day I spoke to my Utah OBGYN, who assumed the baby would pass normally and to be safe, gave me some warnings.
We made our way to lunch with a college friend, who we had not seen in years, and his wife. My husband and I were seated before they arrived. I had already been to the bathroom twice, soaking my pad. My cramping felt like childbirth. Our friends arrived. We ordered. Sweat pooled on the back of my neck. As each excruciatingly painful built up and passed, I remained still and smiled as if nothing was wrong. Our food arrived. I felt another gush. I excused myself from the table. By the third time I needed to excuse myself from the table, I had soaked my clothes. Now I needed to excuse my husband. He had the car keys and I needed more feminine hygiene supplies. How do you tell your friend that you haven’t seen in years and his wife that you just met, “Um, so I have bled through my protection four times since arriving. Every time I go to the bathroom the fetal tissue expelled is greater than the time before?” You tell them vaguely what is going on and then you leave.
Once in the car, I called my OBGYN. I wanted to make sure I was not overreacting.
“If this does not settle down in two hours, you need to go in.” She urged.
We waited, the bleeding increased and we made our way to pick up our sons, who were with Dave’s best friend.
Trying to keep my mind off of things and knowing I would have to break our OMSI Science Museum date, I asked our children if they wanted to get ice cream from Ruby Jewel. “Of course we do!” Our youngest giggled, “Mom, do you know this will be the sixth time we have gone to Ruby Jewel since we came to Portland?”
“That’s absolutely perfect.” I responded.
We made our way over to the Mississippi Avenue neighborhood of Portland where we enjoyed our delicious ice creams. Then I paused to share our news.
“Ok guys, you know last night I think we lost the baby, well, now things are getting a little weird so we may go get things checked out at the hospital.”
I saw the concern and fear wash over them: “Mom, we want you to be ok.”
We made our way to the hospital. This was before Roe was overturned, and furthermore we were in liberal Portland, Oregon, a politically liberal city. My husband dropped me and my older son off. “You come with me.” I said. I grabbed my son’s hand while Dave parked. I checked in and then talked with the nurse. She took me seriously and quickly admitted me. Calm. I was calm. I was assigned a male nurse. When he talked to me, I maintained my steely Midwestern composure. “I am bleeding a lot. I’m from out of town and my doctor recommended I come in.” I asked him about D&Cs and what they could do.
“Oh, we don’t perform D&C’s at our hospital.”
“Really?” I pushed.
The kids had made their way to my room. They were understandably bored, hungry and my youngest kept asking, “Mom, when will this be done? When can we leave? I am hungry.”
“We are not leaving until we know what is going on with Mom.”
Hours passed. I urged my husband to take the boys and leave. “They need to eat.” They left and I walked myself to the bathroom. I could not believe all the bright red blood. It was coming out of me. “How can I still be standing with this much blood?” I thought. As I sat on the toilet, a clot the size of a plum, flipped out and landed on my ankle. I stared at it transfixed. I grabbed some toilet paper to use to pick up the clot. I cleaned myself up, lifted my IV bag off the hook and walked back in my room as a sweet young med tech tried to get my attention. I felt another gush. It felt like someone had just broken my water. My legs were soaked in blood. I saw the blood on the floor.
“Um, I do not know what is happening. I think I need some help.” I stood there motionless as if my not moving would make it all stop.
“What do you need?” She asked.
“I think I need to go to the bathroom again. Will you help me?”
“Of course. Whatever you need.”
I kept apologizing and blood kept gushing. “I do not know what is happening. I do not understand.” Fruitlessly, I tried to clean off the blood. We walked back to the bathroom. The tech pulled up my blood-soaked gown so I could sit on the toilet. There was no urine, just more blood. The tech helped me stand.
I was back in my hospital bed and texted my husband, “The bleeding is worse. I am afraid.” I felt like I was going to pass out and then another uterine bursting cramp and a gush.
I needed the bathroom. I was delirious and completely covered in blood. We made our way to the bathroom again and I wondered if I was going to die.
Back in my room I found the ultrasound tech. Maybe she can help me live. “Please. Please. I do not know what is happening.” She asked me what I needed.
“The bleeding won’t stop. There is so much blood. I need to use the bathroom again,”
“Whatever you need.”
In those moments my husband came rushing back to the room, leaving our kids in the car. “What do you need?” He asked.
“I don’t know. Help me. Please.”
I did not know. What I knew is that the lower half of my body was soaked in blood and like a fast flowing river the bleeding would not stop.
The ultrasound tech inserted the ultrasound wand. “Ouch! Shit! That hurts!” I screamed. The pain was otherworldly. Dave held my hand. For several minutes and from every possible angle, she viewed my uterus. Like a faucet turned on full blast, blood continued flowing out of me. I whimpered. I did not cry. I pleaded and kept asking her what was happening. “Oh honey. I know. I know. I know what you are going through. There really is a lot of blood.”
I was, in a way, giving birth. She pointed and showed me the gestational sac on the screen. There was no baby. I felt the air leave my body. Even though I was bleeding, even though I was completely covered in blood, somehow I had convinced myself that maybe my baby would beat the odds and as a result would be hiding, waiting for all the bleeding to stop. Nope. My baby was gone.
Once I accepted that my baby was really gone, I was acutely aware of every sound, smell and sight. The room was bright. The machines were loud. The air smelled like death. I felt naked. I saw the red. I felt the liquid. I was lying in a pool of my own blood — blood I have only seen in really bad horror movies. I wanted to run. I was weak and kept bleeding. My blood pressure kept dropping.
Finally, really, finally, after he took a long lunch break and completely vanished for hours, my male nurse came into my room. That is when my lovely Ultrasound tech insisted,
“She really needs something for the pain. You need to help her!”
After confirming with the doctor, the nurse gave me a shot of Dilaudid. Until then I had not been given an IV, nor had I been continuously hooked up to the blood pressure or oxygen monitors. I have no idea why. I asked the nurse if he would take my blood pressure. “I feel dizzy and I do not feel right. Please. Please take my blood pressure.” He handed my husband a blue plastic barf bag, slipped a blood pressure cuff on my upper left arm, and cautioned my husband, “If she throws up, come find me.” I felt the pump, pump, pump of the cuff and watched my blood pressure go down, down down to 54/33.
“I don’t think that is ok.”
The nurse lowered my bed and said, “Oh, it’s fine.” Once my bed was lowered, my pressure went back up to 77/33. I know enough about blood pressure to know that once it goes too low that the body starts shutting itself down. I knew if I kept bleeding and my blood pressure kept dropping that we would have a bigger problem. After the nurse left we texted our doctor friend. When we shared my blood pressure numbers with him he insisted,
“Push your call button now!” And this is an ER doctor dude who does not scare easily.
Again I whimpered. Then I cried. I could not believe the intense and constant pain. The pain medicine was not helping. That is when I asked my husband,
“Am I going to die?”
“No. No. You are not going to die. You are going to be ok.”
I already had these two beautiful and amazing children. I needed to fight for them. Unfortunately, my body had a different plan. My blood pressure did not stabilize. They kept switching IV bags for another IV bag. We stopped counting at around ten bags of Packed Red Blood Cells (an IV where Plasma has been removed from the Red Blood Cells). Repeatedly I heard the phrases “this hemorrhaging needs to stop and low blood volume.” Yet through it all the doctor kept saying while simultaneously being freaked out,
“You are so healthy. You should have already had a transfusion. Wow. Living at high altitude and now being at sea level is saving your life. I cannot believe this.” I couldn’t either. Because I live at 7,200 feet (yes, that’s right) and was now at approximately sea level, I had extra hemoglobin.
Immediately before surgery I was able to change out of my second completely blood-soaked gown. I asked the med tech if things were bad and she shook her head. That is when I saw a lake of blood on the bed. “Only really bad head wounds or gunshot victims have this much blood,” I thought. She and my husband helped me remove another bloody gown. I saw blood on the floor, blood on the bed, clots stuck on the fabric of my gown and the heavy red stains making up the baby I had just lost.
Let me be clear, it took until I was on the precipice of death before the ER would call a surgeon. When we met with the surgeon, they said,
“We need to do a D&C. We need to stop the bleeding. The only way the bleeding will stop is if all the fetal material is removed.”
Under general anesthesia I had the surgery. Once they performed the D&C, which removed all the fetal material, my bleeding stopped. I was able to go home in the middle of the night.
—
About Women’s Healthcare.
Here is the deal: The deck is already stacked against women. By the time the mother’s life is in danger, every second counts. When there are really severe penalties to medical care, time is wasted trying to decide if a doctor can and or will intervene, which only adds extra dangers to an already dangerous situation. Even if there is no heartbeat, with these total abortion ban laws, medical professionals actually cannot intervene, or better, may not choose to intervene in enough time fearing risk of breaking the total abortion laws.
Keep in mind, one in four known pregnancies result in miscarriage. Now please consider miscarriages and the caution doctors already take to perform life saving D&Cs. Any additional legal friction such as a TOTAL ABORTION BAN will arguably lead to significantly more deaths. Further, many anti abortion laws do not have a carve out law that protects the mother in cases like mine, and even those that do require already-cautious doctors to be even more risk-averse because of their draconian penalties. Even in a place where abortion is legal, even in my case, which was during Roe, the medical establishment was very cautious about making interventions.
In the end, here is why I am speaking up again. Recently, I opened up about my miscarriages and the D&Cs I received as a result. I have been challenged, bullied, attacked and told I have no idea what I am talking about regarding how doctors treat a miscarriage or how easily a doctor will perform a D&C.
I have the unique and traumatic experience to know more than most how and when a D&C is performed.
If you think my experience is rare, think again. Other data suggests, 10 – 10% of all recorded pregnancies end in miscarriage. If you are shaking your head because you somehow think a Trump presidency will make things easier for pregnant women, women who have miscarried, you are misguided!
You have not walked in our shoes. You have not been near death, and because legal liability and fear of malpractice is already such a colossal deal, you have not experienced the caution medical professionals already take to perform life saving D&Cs. You have not experienced a time when the health of the mother is the last thing a doctor is able to consider. Yet, somehow you have convinced yourself that a GOP who will take away these rights with a TOTAL ABORTION BAN will somehow magically be more open minded and make exceptions to protect the mother? YOU ARE WRONG!
I cannot overstate this enough: when I was in the very liberal city of Portland, Oregon, before Roe was overturned, the medical staff still waited until I became critical before they considered performing a D&C. Only once they absolutely confirmed that the baby was gone and that the only way my bleeding would stop was to perform a D&C, did they perform a D&C.
Sure, maybe it was different for your wife when she miscarried. Well, then she was lucky. Would you really want to keep rolling the dice on that? How about the women who were like me? Before Roe v. Wade was overturned by Donald Trump’s Supreme Court, I had two D&Cs. I was treated for 2 other miscarriages with Plan B known as the morning after pill. All of these procedures saved my life. Think about the real world consequences of these legal decisions.
