And Then There Were Fibroids (I Told You They'd Be Back)

My fibroids had been assholes throughout my pregnancy.  Don’t know what uterine fibroids are?  Well, they’re non-cancerous tumors that, believe it or not, the majority of women over 30 have, but most will never know about them.  Mine were the special annoying kind.  One was located on top of my bladder, making me think I had a U.T.I. for a few weeks, and then another one developed.  By the end there were 3 of them.

As your uterus grows and swells from increased blood flow, so do fibroids.  They grow and grow and grow until they get so big that they outgrow their blood supply and die (degenerate).  And they don’t always die in one shot-nope, it could take a couple of tries.  I’ve heard horror stories of women, late in their pregnancies, in the hospital on narcotics trying to cope with the pain of degenerating fibroids.

One of my fibroids was so large that I could feel it on the outside of my body.  No joke.  I could feel the roundness of it, poking at my bladder, growing up my side as my tummy got larger, sometimes even vibrating (and not that good kind of vibrating)-and then it started to degenerate.  By the end of my 2^nd trimester through my 3^rd trimester, every 3 or 4 weeks, I would feel this horrible pain on my side, sometimes sharp and sometimes dull, but always present.  I didn’t get out of bed-I would just stay in my room for the weekend or the 2-day period until the pain subsided.  I thought it was done degenerating-sadly, I was wrong.

The hubby took paternity leave Lily’s first week in the NICU, and by the end of that week (Lily’s 1^st week birthday), I was in the E.R. with suspected appendicitis.  I woke up that morning with some extra pain in my belly.  I thought it was because the drugs had finally all worn off, but as the pain increased and I couldn’t physically stand, we became worried (especially after the NICU nurse told me that this wasn’t normal).  I called my OBGYN and he had me come right over.  First he checked my uterus (stupid plastic dildo) then palpitated my stomach-the pain had moved from side to center, and my doctor was very worried.  He called ahead to the E.R. and told them to accept me immediately-he was worried I had appendicitis.

A week post-partum and a newborn in the NICU and there I was, sprawled out awkwardly on a gurney in an E.R. hallway because there were no more rooms available, while nurses took blood and asked what was wrong-I was in so much pain that my position kept alternating between standing, sitting, lying down, hunched over, etc...  Hormonal and miserable about the possibility of being further kept from my child, I just cried and begged to be able to see my daughter.  I mean, she was just upstairs, in the same hospital-couldn’t I be evaluated upstairs?  At one point even I knew that I was being hysterical, but I couldn’t stop myself.  My mother sat on the gurney while the hubby called his family from outside the E.R.

The next step-drink barium so they can do an MRI.  Here’s the deal.  I’ve never done a shot-never, never in my entire life.  I downed a beer once and it was the worst experience because it tasted like swill, old, carbonated piss. I’m not good at taking medicine if I don’t like the taste.  So what makes you think that I’ll be able to drink 2 bottles of this chalky, white, milky, disgusting, throat coating, vomit inducing crap?

Turns out the pain was from the fibroid finally degenerating.  The E.R. doctor seemed surprised that I was able to handle the pain without narcotics, and he was more than happy to prescribe anything I wanted.  He also seemed surprised that my OBGYN didn’t pick up on this one, especially since I had a history-strike 3 (or 3 million) against my OBGYN.  I should also mention…the E.R. doc was pretty damn cute.  Never hurts have something pretty to look at.

I climbed into a wheelchair and the hubby elevatored me up to see the baby.