The Need for IVF - Part 2

My Buddy After Surgery

In 2008 I started dating the most wonderful man in the universe.  I could go on for hours about how awesome Mr. Blue is but I don’t want to make anyone throw up – so I won’t.  We worked at the same company on the same project and within a couple of years our sister company in Australia invited a group of us to come and work for them for awhile.  It was an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up, so we moved to Australia.

At the end of February of 2011, at the age of 35, I started feeling strange and suspected I might be pregnant.  When the pregnancy test came back positive I got really upset.  I wanted very much to be pregnant but I felt like something was wrong.  My love tried to reassure me that since I had never had a successful pregnancy I didn’t know what one felt like.  He wanted me not to worry.  Within a week I started having abdominal pains.  On one such night when the pain was pretty bad I went to the hospital only to have the tests come back and say everything was fine.  However, I had gone to a public hospital and they told me they weren’t equipped to do all of the testing I needed.  I was encouraged to schedule an ultrasound.   I believe this was a Wednesday evening.  The next day I scheduled the ultrasound but wasn’t able to get in until Monday. 


By Friday afternoon I had worse pain (again I believed the worst based on my previous experience) though the pain was not nearly as severe as my ectopic.  My love and I were at work and discussed what we should do with my supervisor present for the conversation.  He understood the situation and said that if it were his wife they’d be going to the hospital right now.  We were concerned but not entirely sure what the right thing to do would be.  My love then got on the phone to the ultrasound clinic and told them we needed an emergency ultrasound ASAP, he wouldn’t take NO for an answer.  They got us in that afternoon. 

We went in together for the ultrasound and my fears were confirmed.  I was having another ectopic pregnancy and the baby was in my remaining tube.  But this time I wasn’t alone, this time my guy was with me and holding my hand.  And though he saw the heart beat, the tiny little heart beat of our child and knew we were going to lose it, he remained strong for me.  Having gone through this before it didn’t seem to be as emotionally bad for me, but that may have been because he was with me.  The ultrasound tech recommended that we go to the hospital right away and that is what we did.

When we arrived at the hospital, I wasn’t in a lot of pain so they didn’t consider it a rush job.  We had time to do paper work and I called and woke up my parents and my sister to tell them it was happening again.  It was late afternoon in Australia but about 2am back home.  We also called a friend of ours, who happened to move to Australia for the same project, and asked if he would come to the hospital and keep my love company during my surgery.  

We were finally taken to the back and I was prepped.  We met the emergency on-call surgeon.  She was a gynecological oncologist and told us that I was her first ectopic surgery.  She was a wonderful doctor.  I wish I could have taken her back home with us.   She discussed the surgery with us and said that she might be able to save the tube so we could try again later.  I told her No, to go ahead and remove the whole tube.  She was really worried about that but I explained that the tube is already damaged and I don’t ever want to go through this again. 

The surgery went well; the Doctor used the same incision sites as before with one new addition.  We had gotten to the hospital in time so there was no internal bleeding; however, the tube had burst so she couldn’t have saved it anyway.  I no longer had any fallopian tubes but my ovaries were very healthy.  At our check up the Doctor gave us information about IVF and we said we’d look into it.

I used to wonder what I did wrong to lose both tubes, how I may have caused it, but it’s just one of those things that happens.  I remember both ectopic pregnancies but when I think about them it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it once did.  They just became life’s lessons.  Needless to say I could no longer have children without help and thus our IVF journey began.