(Disclaimer: I'm going to be blunt,
use harsh language, and at times be very graphic
in blogging about my miscarriage, so if you can't deal with it, you may
want to stop reading now. This blog is also written with the
information that I knew at the time, and nothing else.)
I feel that my memory of this time is already more foggy than I'm comfortable with. I feel immense guilt that I've let myself forget details about my pregnancy, however short and horribly it ended.
I'm actually riddled with guilt at all times. When I'm happy, I feel guilty that I could possibly feel any amount of joy after such a ridiculously horrible event, and guilty that I'm moving on.
When I find myself hysterical in the car or in the shower, I feel guilty that I'm letting myself drown and feel too much sadness at once.
When I'm furious with the world, angry that it feels like my world is collapsing, and that I can't handle anything else, I'm feeling guilty. After all, many people have it a hell of a lot worse than I do.
I'm well aware that I shouldn't feel guilty about all of my emotions. It doesn't really change much for my current reality though, just adds another thing to feel guilty about. Feeling guilty about feeling guilty....
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I've never been great about putting my negative emotions into words. I despise arguments regarding feelings, and I tend to keep my negative emotions bottled up, only to be verbally let out in the form of, "Well, that's fucking stupid." I also do occasionally angry-cry too.
Blogging about this has been my only way to really talk about my miscarriage, and honestly even writing about it is emotionally exhausting, which is a lot of the reason it's been so long since I posted. When I'm pressed to speak about it in social situations, I try to keep it as brief as possible. "I was pregnant, and then I wasn't," "We we're going to have a baby, now we have to wait to try." I haven't yet become comfortable enough/ cold enough to be able to really speak about it without becoming overwhelmingly sad. My shortness on the topic has been confused by some at relief that my pregnancy ended.
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One thing I do remember was that directly after the appointment we needed to go to the pharmacy to pick up the cytotec. I didn't want the awkwardness of picking up the RX where I worked. It was too close for comfort.We decided to go to a small pharmacy close to my OB's that I had never been to . I remember thinking about how strange it felt that I was still alive and able to interact with others with all of my internal emotions. I also felt very uncomfortable thinking about what the pharmacist might think about me considering that my association with cytotec was abortion. That being said the pharmacist was very nice and it was likely all in my head. Also, I'm sure I cried multiple times while there.
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I forget about how awful working in a medical profession must sometimes be emotionally. I tend to think about all of the skill and pressure that is involved in diagnosing or performing surgery, but doctors have to give patients and their family's the worst news they might ever receive. They have to tell people that their loved ones are dead or dying. I really hope that there are mental health programs specializing in the treatment of medical professionals.
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I pretty much immediately started researching cytotec. I wasn't going to take the medication until Sunday afternoon to ensure that I would be able to have a follow up appointment within 48 hours to check my uterine lining via ultrasound. I was left with a lot of time to panic and try to plan for the worst, just in case.
(More about Cytotec later in the post)
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The next day I had to work. It was surprisingly easy to pretend that I was okay in my interactions with customers and most of my coworkers. I confided in a supervisor who had known about my pregnancy who was eager to hear about how far along I was and how the appointment went. I dreaded telling her, but when I did she was very warm and empathetic. She told me that she herself had a miscarriage years ago and that it was horrible, but that life gets better. As strange as it sounds, it was nice to find that my first admission about my miscarriage was to someone who had also had that life experience. It's like a fucked up club for people who have had their hearts ripped out, and their babies stolen.
I spent a huge chunk of my day at work covering my shifts for the entirety of the following week. I knew that the Cytotec could fail, and that even if it didn't, I was going to spend the time in physical and emotional pain. A friend at work put the pieces together of what had happened without really being told, and even covered the next day, so I just wouldn't have to come back and worry that I'd miscarry at anytime.
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Cytotec is also known by its generic name, Misoprostol, and not gonna lie, while researching the drug, I got pretty terrified. Cytotec's purpose is to treat stomach ulcers. Inducing a miscarriage and abortion is an off-label usage, but because Cytotec is a class X drug, and an abortifacient (a drug that induces an abortion/miscarriage), health care providers frequently prescribe it for those purposes. Alone, Cytotec has an 65-93% "success" rate depending on the sample groups. For abortions (as in elective), Cytotec is prescribed together with a drug called Mifepristone, also known as RU 486, which I'm sure sounds a little more familiar, but also is more effective than the Cytotec alone. Cytotec is also sometimes used to induce labor, and ripen the cervix but the statistics on that seem pretty scary too.
I found a couple of blogs about what taking the Cytotec is actually like, which were incredibly helpful, terrifying and heartbreaking. It's really overwhelming even rereading some of it now. It's not as lonely of an experience to know that it happens to other people, but also heartbreaking that it does. My heart breaks for all of the women who have scooped their babies bodies out of the toilet, but even though it's kind of sounds sick and fucked up, I also am envious in a sense. My baby disintegrated, and at times I feel I have nothing but heartbreak from the experience. Comparing my grief to that of anyone else is ignorant and hurtful to both myself and others, which is a topic I'm sure I'll come back to at some point, because it's incredibly important.
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In reading all of these posts, I got a sense of the range of things that could happen once I took the Cytotec. I knew what I would need to have at home, and I knew how bad it could get. I could bleed out or pass out, and I made sure to make Stefan a list of phone numbers and drug allergies (My list is a little longer than average, ha), and the schedule for taking medications. If I got really sick, and he was panicked, everything was in order to get help ASAP.
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I'm going to end my post here, because if I start talking about my experience with Cytotec, this post will go on forever. The next post will hopefully be within the week, and not months from now. I will pick up where I left off.
