More uncertainty

I was gearing up for a cheery post about having El Prima's family (or rather, 7 of them) stay at our place over the weekend, and how lovely it was that her sister mentioned the accident, and said she was so sorry we'd lost our baby. This was the first time I'd seen them since mid 2009 (though El Prima and the girls had visited them in Sydney a few times since we'd moved), so I was very nervous about what might happen. But it was all good.

Then I got a call from the Women's hospital this morning. The pathologist had looked at the pregnancy tissue from my miscarriage and was concerned that it may have been a molar pregnancy. It will take about 4 weeks for the pathology tests to work out whether or not it is actually molar, but during this time, they told me it is important not to get pregnant again, as this can be dangerous. No chance of that happening.

F#$k. Just when I manage to swallow one nasty reality, there's another waiting for me. It is a pretty tiny chance that this will be molar, or even if it is, that it will require serious treatment. It may just be that I have to have further testing to ensure my HCG level goes down. And even the worst case scenarios (requiring chemo etc) still have good prognoses for survival and for subsequent fertility, though you may have to wait 6-12 months to start trying again. But whatever faith I once had in statistics is pretty much gone now. An old friend contacted me via FB after we lost Z, to send her love and thoughts and to let me know that she'd just been through a molar pregnancy. I had no idea what that meant at the time. The good thing is, she's recently had a healthy baby girl. I'm holding onto that thought for the moment.

The Snail

(detail from Frida Kahlo, Henry Ford Hospital, image from here)

Thank you so much darling ones. For the hugs and the donkeys balls and the love and light and thoughts, stories, your own tears - all of it. I'm so sad that so many of you know what this pain feels like (and that some are experiencing very similar losses at the moment too). It makes such a difference to know that others are cussing this loss for us too. I had no idea how many women have been through similar experiences - thank you for sharing your stories here - particularly what choices you made in similar circumstances.

Our doctor hadn't given us the medical (ie, non-surgical) option - the drug involved, RU486, was banned in Australia for nearly a decade thanks to a deal between a fundamentalist senator and the previous conservative government (well, it was listed as a legal drug, but the Health Minister - a conservative, anti-choice catholic - was given a power of veto to prevent it being used). Then, in 2005, a cross party group of women parliamentarians worked to lift the veto. But all of this was very far from my brain when we had our scan last tuesday morning and were sitting shell-shocked in our doctor's office.

I had thought, very pragmatically, that I could teach my seminars as planned on the Wednesday and Thursday, and then go in for the surgical procedure on Friday. But the anger wasn't going anywhere. I didn't feel safe to drive, so I walked and caught the tram to work, hoping that none of my students would see me sobbing. Finally, I spoke to my boss, let her know the diagnosis, and that I wasn't realistically going to be able to teach that day or the next. I haven't ever felt so violently angry as on that Wednesday morning - I'm just glad I got home again without seriously hurting anyone or myself.

Part of that white hot anger I think was with myself - for thinking that I could just timetable my grief around my work responsibilities. But the whitest white-hot anger focused on the planned procedure on Friday - I had handed my body over to the IVF people so many times already - I didn't want that again, not for something my body could most likely do on its own. I called our IVF clinic to ask about the medical option, and finally after a few hours, heard back from our IVF doctor - yes, it probably was possible, but you needed to be specially registered in order to prescribe it, and he wasn't. He gave me the name of a private provider, and I drove nearly an hour to get to an appointment on Thursday, but after discussion with the doctor there about wanting to be 100% sure this pregnancy was not viable, decided to wait and have a further scan before doing anything else.

All of which led to me and El Prima leaving the house in the morning dark of a tuesday morning - just like the week before when we'd been on the way to our scan, but this time with a tired sadness rather than the excitement of 'we might see a heart beat today'. The scan showed the same little empty sac - I was readier for it this time, and in a way it was relief - I wouldn't have to wonder if there might have been a chance. I opted to go to the public women's hospital, rather than with the costly private provider, and the Womens' protocol for "medical management" involved a day admission. While I could have done without some of the prodding (why put in an IV canula 'just in case'? Painful and unnecessary!) I very much appreciated the pethidine, and the nurses were universally kind and compassionate. This is the hospital adjoining the general hospital where I was taken after the accident, and where Z was born, with the assistance of obstetricians and midwifes from the womens, so I feel that at least this PLB has another connection with his/her sister.

I see now why Frida Kahlo included a snail in her painting, "Henry Ford Hospital" about her 1932 miscarriage to represent the slowness of the pain. For me, it took a while to allow myself the slowness - to realise that this loss can't just be skipped over so I can move onto the next thing. It meant so much for me to be pregnant - how could I expect it to mean nothing to lose this pregnancy, even if it were only very early in the piece? I knew all along that this was a very tentative, border-line pregnancy, but in a way that only made it more precious. Last night, El Prima took the girls and me out for an impromptu family dinner. For the first time since our bad news, we really laughed. I wish we had more family dinners to look forward to with the PLB, but I'm glad we had this one while we could.

I feel hopelessly sappy to be mourning for this tiny sac which never even grew the beginnings of a neural tube, but I'm learning not to expect these things to work logically. A little pink crepe-myrtle tree is waiting on our porch to be planted near Z's pomegranate tree.