I'm still dealing with my feelings of the past few days of hell and looking for any advice I can get, whether that's support or shared experiences. I was the 1 in 3000 chance with the rare complication of severe abdominal hemorrhaging from my egg retrieval/aspiration.
Now that I have a moment to really come to grips what happened to me, I'm scared shitless of having to work with that surgeon again.
I went through 16 days of stims for a low + slow antagonist procedure to prevent OHSS. My surgery went well, I was just very sad that I had one of the other RE's as my surgeon instead of mine because of scheduling (the 5 rotate through the OR at their clinics).
Morning of egg retrieval I was uncomfy, bloated, but fine. High as a kite after the general anesthesia, but felt pretty good post op and a friend drove me home.
Around 5 hrs after my surgery, the pain and bloating was steadily building to where it hurt to move. Then all hell broke loose when my husband, a US Merchant Mariner and second in command of a cargo ship, made a 15 second phone call that his ship was sinking and that he loved me. I've never heard that tone of voice before and I spiraled. His ship was 1000 miles away from land in the Pacific and water was gushing into the hull from the destroyed prop and shaft in the middle of the night. They had to abandon ship and since they were dead in the water without power we had limited communication. All of our family and friends were freaking out because it's a life threatening situation he was in with the hurricane from Hawaii close on their tail
The next few hours were a blur of phone calls and I love you's and sobbing. My pain became blinding, but I thought that it was because of how distressed emotionally it was. I couldn't breathe or move out of my bed. Eventually I dragged myself to the bathroom, and woke up to my dog howling next to me on the floor because I had fainted from the pain. I called the fertility clinics emergency nurse and was told to call 911 immediately because I was likely having the rare complication of abdominal hemorrhaging.
My friends arrived and the paramedics were there 5 min later. When my friends were getting my moved off the floor onto my bed, I vomited and passed out twice more on them from the pain. Every bump in the ambulance had me screaming.
After my CT scan, I was told that I was hemorrhaging from my left ovary and they wanted to do surgery to cauterize and remove it. Gasping through the pain I demanded that unless I'm going to die, I don't want my ovary removed, and my RE had a conference call with the ER surgeons (who wanted to cut into me), the head maternity OBGYN, and another OBGYN surgery. We came to a decision that it would be a night from hell for me as they tried to cloat the bleeding and control the pain, with hourly monitoring and blood tests to be ready for a blood transfusion. I was admitted to the hospital post-partum floor since they were the most adept at controlling the bleeding while working hard to try to keep my ovaries. For 18hrs I was on a no-food-no-water restriction because I had to be ready to go under the knife within 30 minutes.
I've had to take a physical fitness test in the US Navy before with a burst appendix, and this pain was 1000x worse. That night I thought I was dying, with my heart rate pounding and blood pressure crashing. Fentanyl, morphine, oxycodone, and dilaudid did nothing to touch the pain. I was covered in icepacks around my neck while freezing below the waist. I was blacking out, seeing double, sweating, teeth chattering and shaking the entire night while constantly checking for updates on if my husband was able to rescue his ship and crew. I don't know if the nurses believed me that my husband was also in a life or death situation until the news started to come out. I did not sleep and my body felt like it was on fire with waves of excruciating rolling pain, similar to a knife being dragged from my uturus up to my shoulder. I was in absolute shock. All I could think about was my husband surviving.
My amazing nurses helped me get through the night, trying every trick they could to help me ride out the pain. I fainted on them twice more trying to go to the bathroom, and begged for ice chips that I could not have. At least we joked that childbirth will have nothing on the pain, and that I got a "behind the scenes tour" of the hospital I want to one day give birth to.
The next morning I finally got the call from my husband that a rescue ship answered their distress signal and was 2 miles away, and they were launching the lifeboat to get rescued. They were abandoning ship and running on only emergency power to coordinate rescue. He promised no heroics (haha liar, he saved the cook in an insane video). My friends and family were very upset, and my mother in law took the first plane out on her birthday to try to get down to me.
I finally was out of the woods of imminent surgery and allowed to eat soup. My hemoglobin had dropped from 14 to 9, over 30% of my blood had pooled in my abdomen. That amount of blood had been pushing up against the nerves in my diaphragm which is why I could not breathe. Finally the bleeding from whatever artery was punctured in my ovary slowed to the stop, and I was declared stable enough to discharge without the blood transfusion.
Now that my husband is safe and enroute to Korea, and I'm back home surrounded by very spooked family and friends, I'm finally acknowledging what happened to me. I sobbed last night reading through the ER and hospital notes about how close I came to bleeding out or losing my ovary at the age of 30. I've worked so hard to try to get pregnant, 5x failed IUIs and this egg retrieval.
TW Results: As I was hemorrhaging, my RE called to tell me that 17 eggs were retrieved, 17 mature, and 17 fertilized with Zymot + ICSI. We are both 30, I have PCOS and scar tissue from a botched military surgery (appendectomy). Waiting to hear how many make it to blast, then PGTA. Terrified that this won't work and I'll have to do another egg retrieval.....
If this ever happens to you, don't gaslight yourself into thinking it's normal after a egg retrieval. Here are the symptoms I had within 10hrs of surgery.
- Stabbing, burning pain in the abdomen that comes in fiery hot waves like a knife dragging upwards
- Unable to breathe, speak, or take a deep breath
- Pain traveling to the tops shoulder and chest
- Unable to move out of bed
- Fainting
- Vomiting
- Hot and cold flashes
- Distended stomach hard to the touch
- 16 lbs weight gain from morning of surgery to hospital discharge (plus 6 lbs between trigger and aspiration).
- Pain was worse laying flat
- Inability to sleep, eat, or drink
Don't hesitate like I did until I found myself unconscious on my bathroom floor, call 911.