I was escorted to a curtained off area and instructed to put on a hospital gown and get in bed. A male nurse came in once I was settled and extremely unsuccessfully attempted to insert an I.V. The result was blood all over the bed, my gown, the sheets, the floor and even the wall. After countless attempts, he found a vein and began sucking the life out of me. I'm not sure how much blood he drew, but it was enough to facilitate a transfusion should something go horribly awry. I felt faint, I saw stars, my stomach churned.
Life just kept leaving my body.
As the nurse walked away Tom noticed he had left the bloody needles on the counter top in a puddle of blood... surrounded by splatter marks from the multiple failed insertion attempts. He yelled after the nurse and got a response of, "Oh yeah, whoops!" Seriously?
I managed to stop crying for a few moments, but when I would look at the faces of my family and see the pity and sorrow, I'd break again. I felt like I couldn't do anything anymore. I had no control over myself or my life or anything that happened to me. I was a victim.
After a while, my bed was rolled back to a private room where the doctor met us. He was jovial, pleasant, uplifting. He tried to make us laugh, and succeeded. He was and is a good man. I thanked God that he treated me that day.
A female doctor came in to perform an ultrasound. Another internal. This was to determine if medication could handle "the issue" or if surgery was required.
My wonderful team of doctors decided against surgery. Instead, I was to undergo a round of chemo. I was informed that chemo stops rapidly growing cells, and essentially, that's all a fetus is. Cancer. My baby had now been downgraded to a life-threatening disease.
I wasn't given an option. This is what was going to happen. I was going to be injected with something that would stop the growth of my baby. I was being forced to have an abortion. I was killing my baby. I was killing my baby to save my own life.
The doctors said it wasn't my fault. They said that the fetus never would have grown to be a baby and it would have died anyway, but without this, it would have taken me with it. They said I didn't have a choice.
I heard it all, but I didn't believe any of it.
What I saw was that I was choosing my own life over the life of my baby. I was having an abortion.
After a few hours the doctors were relatively confident that I would be okay. I was instructed to get regular blood tests over the next few weeks to monitor my hormone levels and assure the chemo was acting as intended. I was then informed that I am also RH negative. If you are not familiar with that, read here. Basically, it means if my baby is RH positive, my body will attack it like a disease. When I heard that, I knew that it was the worst day of my life.
I didn't think things could get any worse. Then I was given my discharge papers.
In large capital letters, the only thing I saw, was "PREGNANCY TERMINATED".
Abortion.
I did this. I voluntarily killed my baby.
After leaving the hospital, my family decided it would be a good idea to go out to eat. Distraction was good. To be quite honest I don't remember much else from that day. The next thing I do remember is a nightmare about having aborted my baby. Every night in my dreams I saw those words, "PREGNANCY TERMINATED," harshly written across various surfaces, belligerently reminding me of what happened. Of what I had done. Of what was lost. It recurred for weeks, feeding the guilt and crushing my spirit.
I spent the days following in darkness.
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