A drop in the bucket
I wrote this privately years ago, only sharing with women I knew with fertility problems. Now I see my error. Maybe I should have told everyone — at work, the young man at the car dealership, everyone - in blunt detail what was happening, maybe then you'd understand why this is a medical healthcare issue for women. Or maybe not. But I'm correcting that today. Here's another story among the millions and millions. Maybe we should all tell them.
My story is steeped in privilege: I had the health insurance and medical care to ultimately resolve this in a state that supported my healthcare. But what if I didn’t? With two children, a family, and a job? I could be dead or incapacitated for months — that’s not dramatic, just fact. What if it was criminal to get the personal care I needed? Please read this and understand why women, daughters, mothers are terrified. Please grasp the guilt, the terror we feel regardless of whether we wanted a baby or not. Please understand. This is my story about saving women.
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Trigger warning: graphic, blood, miscarriage
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The Good Egg: An excerpt
“I was standing outside the Lexus Service Center, and blood was pouring down my legs. It was 2014, and I’d had 2 miscarriages. More accurately, I was still having the 2nd miscarriage. Outside the Lexus Service Center. Bright red blood was staining their driveway where the cars lined up neatly in front of me. The Lexi stretched out in rows, all neat and prim looking. And here I was with a towel and sweatshirt knotted around my waist to soak up all the blood. Drips of blood stained the concrete with a pool forming by my feet. Was I going to be able to come back here? It seemed terribly inappropriate to bleed out next to a luxury SUV.
There was a nice impressionable young man with a clipboard in front of me. He looked terrified. I couldn’t imagine what he thought was going on. This was an early miscarriage so I didn’t look pregnant. I was worried for him. Did he now think this was how girls had their periods? Was he going to wait for floods of blood to stream from future girlfriends? I felt like I should say something. My mind was spinning. I needed to reassure him as much as I needed to say something for myself. I should accept this was really happening.
“I’m ok. Really.”
I actually wasn’t sure about that, but it seemed like the best of various options to say. “It isn’t as bad as it looks” may also have popped out -- which again wasn’t entirely true when you’re dripping blood everywhere. But I wasn’t in pain, and the bleeding was slowing down. I’d technically miscarried weeks previously with the pregnancy never progressing past the very early stages of development, but I’d been having intermittent bleeding as my uterus recovered. Or maybe it wasn’t recovering given the gushing of blood down my legs in front of this poor guy.
I’d felt the bleeding starting at the stoplight a minute ago. The feeling was a strange one -- liquid but also something more substantial sliding out of me. reminding me significantly of my loss. I’d thought it would stop and I’d just have to trot myself to the bathroom to clean up. Then it didn’t stop, and it became a worry --- Should someone drive when they are bleeding this much? It all was happening rather quickly.
So when I got to the Service Center, I was still under some sort of delusion that I should get my car serviced. Much like I had operated during both miscarriages -- life must go on. I kept going to work, taking the kids to school, walking the dog. Whatever it took to move forward because otherwise I was just depressed. Was this it? At 37 years old, was I out of good eggs? Was my uterus no longer hospitable? Was I... old? Here I was at the nexus of “fuck it” and “heartbroken” again deciding how to brazen my way out of this until I got home.
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I had multiple incidents like this -- the first at home during the night terrified, another smaller one at work walking with a co-worker, an avalanche one walking with a friend. The incidents defied scheduling or prediction, so I just kept moving. I brought extra clothes to work, prepared myself mentally that I might need to rush for the door, wore incontinence pull-ups to buy myself time to run to the bathroom. Finally I had to get knocked out for another D&C because there was clearly something in my uterus which wasn’t coming out. No one tells you this shit, and it’s good they don’t.”
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I cried various times during these months, out of sheer frustration and dread. Each time I miscarried, my body didn’t accept that news. I wanted to move on and try to get pregnant again. Each miscarriage required multiple procedures, and I started to joke with my OB that my body clearly really wanted to be pregnant. I tortured myself with what I did wrong, how long I waited, all the things I ate or didn’t eat. The statistics say that most miscarriages are due to chromosomal abnormalities - nature’s way of flunking the failures -- but I felt responsible.
