Miscarriage - Operation and Crisis
Part 3
Sara woke me up Friday morning about the time I would normally get out of bed on a day off moaning and rocking forwards and backwards. My heart sank a little and I asked her what was wrong. “I don’t feel right.” She certainly didn’t look well. She was in a lot of pain and suddenly began almost screaming as she ran back and forth from the bathroom to the living room. I started to panic just a little. “Do you want me to go ahead and call the hospital?,” I asked. She gave me an affirmative response, but did not really say much more than a few groans.
I called the hospital where we scheduled the procedure. This was all happening very quickly because the evening before was pretty much uneventful. The hospital is so much a maze of bureaucracy: One person transfers you to another in an attempt to eschew responsibility or liability. I hung up in frustration, thought about things for a second and then decided to call the doctor’s office that will be doing the procedure in the hospital. These folks were very understanding and quickly alerted the outpatient surgical staff to our plight. They told us to come on and they would see us when we got there. Thank God, because not only would we now have a hope of being seen more quickly, but also we wouldn’t have to pay the ER staff to do little more than give her some pain medicine and not be delayed in getting seen. Sara was practically writing around the floor in pain. It freaked me out. I couldn’t get her in the car soon enough.
The drive to the hospital, though short in distance was one hell of a nightmare. I don’t know why, but Sara’s pain began to increase and she was quietly pleading with me to get there faster. My adrenaline started kicking in and I sped up as fast as I thought I could get away with and not cause an accident or attract too much attention.
I dropped her off at the door to the emergency room and told her to go on in, as the outpatient waiting room was pretty close. She goes on in semi-staggering, and I quickly park and ran- something I rarely do. One problem with our hospital, and maybe all hospitals is that they’re pretty disorganized- the right hand doesn’t tell the left hand what’s going on. It’s a little bit like that where I work, which is usually OK- I’m loud enough and assertive enough (especially in this situation) to ask for what I need.
Nobody was seated at the reception desk! The waiting room for outpatient surgery is this big open area that is more accessible to the public than usual. I was really on edge because Sara by this point was literally doubled over in pain. I stopped one of the hospital workers and told her who we were and what was going on while several country people looked at us as if we were on fire. It made me mad because it seemed like we were on display. The worker was very responsive and in just a few minutes we were back being processed.
In my opinion, it is important to be polite but very assertive about what you need. If you can’t do this yourself, then it is a good idea to have someone who will communicate these needs to hospital staff. My wife needed some pain medicine and I must have asked about it a dozen times before she got some. They hit her with morphine twice before she was wheeled to surgery, and to be honest, it didn’t seem to alleviate the pain that much. I don’t know if they got annoyed with me, but I really didn’t give a shit.
We spent a long time in a pre-operation ‘recovery’ room. There were people who had it a lot worse than we did, I am sure. After the second shot of morphine, Sara was out of it enough so that I was somewhat more comfortable. I just wanted to take her away from all of the pain and heartache I knew she was feeling. I wanted to do whatever she wanted- If that meant trying to conceive again, then that was fine. However, if she wanted to take some time off, then I would be all right with that as well.
The crazy thing about the operation was that it took hardly any time. By the time I got some cash from an ATM, food from a vending machine, and a drink from the in house drug store and ate everything, the doctor was calling my name and proclaiming the procedure a success! Fifteen minutes later I walk into a recovery room with a smiling Sara. “The difference is like night and day,” She said wearily. She had no more pain.
As soon as I heard that, I lost it- the pressure from the whole event was just too much and I succumbed to the stress and emotion.
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