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.