Special

December 30th, 2011

It was raining lightly as I walked from the hospital building to my car with Michael. What the hell is with this weather? Raining in December in Wisconsin? Yeah, right there is no global warming.

But rain made more sense. Rain was wet and cold and sad in December. There were no leaves on the trees, no flowers blooming, no grass growing. Just cold, dark, wet, and brown. Snow would have been too pretty, too peaceful and graceful for my mood that morning.

Early that morning I had gone into surgery with the newly acquired knowledge that, yes, indeed I was pregnant. That I already knew. I was not, however, miscarrying this ectopic pregnancy as I had assumed I was.  It was alive, a 6 week 1 day fetus inside my body. In the wrong place. This little one wasn’t going to make it though. I was yet again losing a pregnancy. This would be my 5th loss since trying to have another baby in 2008, but this baby didn’t die and pass on it’s own. This little one was stuck in my right fallopian tube. The tube had not yet ruptured, but was very close to doing so. My entire tube was consumed with this pregnancy and when the surgeon removed that fetus that would never live past 6 weeks 1 day, my fallopian tube was lost as well.

I felt numb. Hollow. Empty. Profound disbelief. How could I get through this? I was. I was being strong. I knew that there was no way to save this pregnancy and after seeing the photos of my tube through the lens of a laparoscopic camera, I knew that there was no way that they would have been able to save my tube.  

“How many pregnancies have you had?” they asked---the nurse, the ultrasound tech, the surgeon.

“Seven.” I would reply.

“And how many living children do you have?” followed the first question.

“One.”  

For months I have been thinking of writing my stories down, in the form of a blog since that is the hip thing to do now—not just journal for yourself, but blog so that everyone else can know your business. I have held off, thinking it was so egocentric. What am I gaining out of this? Do I want more dumb conversations with people? People who think they can comfort me with their simple replies to my complex feelings? I don’t know.

So here I sit, alone, writing at my 5 year old laptop in my living room. I don’t know if this will become some piece of stored blubbering that I will never look at again or if I will share it with a few people, or if I will share it with the vast Internet world of blogging.

Am I that special to write a blog that people would give a damn about? Well, I always told my students that there were two kinds of ‘special’—I thought it was cute. I suppose the joke is on me.

20% of couples have unexplained secondary infertility— special.
10-20% of women have unexplained habitual miscarriage—super special.
2% of pregnancies result in ectopics—wow. I’m special.
1 in 70-80 of normal women may experience an ectopic pregnancy. Women who have already had one ectopic have a 1 in 10 chance of having another ectopic.--- fuck, I’m special.
Odds of getting pregnant after secondary infertility AND losing a fallopian tube----10%.

I don’t want to be special. I want to be average. Normal. Common. Run of the mill. Typical. Standard. Ordinary.

Screw special.