September 1, 2006, 9:19 pm

Ovary There!

I know just what her stomach feels lke!

Except I’m the one with the complaints!

Not about me!

I’m doing fine and am 32 pounds down in 36 weeks, physical therapy pretty much cured my back pain….until I undid four weeks of therapy at the Journey/Def Leppard concert.

Since when does three hours of foot stompin’ rock-and-roll mess with one’s back?

And don’t tell me I’m older…

If Mick Jagger can strut around a stage at the age of 64, I can certainly dance in place without fear of anatomical damage!

Can’t I?

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No, my complaints are about “Inferior Medical Center”.

Get a load of this story.

See if you can spot the no-nos…..

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The year: 1990

I’m five months post-partum with my youngest daughter, who is entertaining herself with Big Bird on a blanket on the floor.

I’m chatting with my sister on the telephone when I am consumed by a sudden, sharp lower abdominal pain that doubles me over.

Literally.

I hang up the phone because with the ungodly pelvic floor pressure I was then experiencing, I figure one of two things is going to happen next:

• I’m going to need a bathroom very quickly or

• I’m going to give birth to a cantelope

Since cantelopes don’t run in my family, I decide to prepare for the first option.

But I couldn’t bear down.

And I couldn’t stand up straight.

I was bloating like a balloon. And it didn’t feel like helium.

I couldn’t pick up the baby. I couldn’t even sit down.

Something was horribly wrong.

I called my husband and he came home to rescue the baby from the floor and to take me to the hospital.

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This was all occuring at noon and I knew my OB/GYN was at lunch until 1400, so even though I didn’t think I needed an ER, it was what was available.

The triage nurse informed me (as I sat there at a 45 degree angle and wondering if the cantelope would resemble my spouse) that it would be at least a two-hour wait.

I unfolded myself to a 60 degree angle and said that if that was the case I’d just wait and go to see my own doctor because she would be back by then. I wasn’t angry or anything, I was just being practical.

I’m not sure what made her change her mind. Maybe I resembled the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Within 90 seconds I was in a room.

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While the discomfort was constant, the pain varied in intensity. While I was waiting to be seen, a nurse walked by and saw me grabbing the sides of the (pelvic) gurney and panting.

Did I need pain medicine?

Uh…yes, please.

Two Vicodin. PO.

BA = before assessment.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated it. But in light of what was happening…..

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It wasn’t even a gurney. It was a table.

Heather, and that is her real name, was the Physican’s Assistant on duty that day. She took one look at me, listened to my history, did an exam and pronounced her diagnosis.

“Ovarian Torsion”.

Damn, she’s good!

Let’s get an ultrasound!

Okay!

***

Two hours and two liters of water BY MOUTH later…..I’m in ultrasound and three people come around to look at the screen.

(Yes, they let a woman with acute abdominal pain drink enough to fill her bladder.)

The sonogram tech began his interrogation.

When did you last see your doctor?

Five weeks ago.

Everything was FINE?

Uh…yeah…why?

I can’t discuss the results with you.

Uh oh….

***

The bloody urine specimen I gave them on arrival was sent to the lab to rule out a urinary tract infection.

Or a kidney stone the size of a cantelope.

I told them it was contaminated and would be of no use.

When I got back from ultrasound, they told me my urine was contaminated with blood and of no use.

Hellloooooo straight cath! Let’s add burning uretheral spasms to the mix!

I also discovered that pelvics are not transferrable. One person cannot verbally tell another person what they felt.

Oh great…

I had to have a second pelvic from the off-going ER doc. Apparently it was very productive because I then got one from the ONCOMING ER doc! Hell, let’s just sell tickets and let everybody have a look, eh guys?

The concensus? A ruptured, and hemorrhaging, ovarian cyst that measured 7.5 centimeters causing intermittent ovarian torsion.

I told you that PA was good!

I would have to be seen by the on-call OB/GYN.

It was now 1600 hours.

I would need surgery.

***

Four hours later Dr. OB Wan shows up.

I’ve been in the ER for eight hours now.

Hemorrhaging, supposedly, but still with no IV access.

Still in pain, but somewhat muted by the earlier Vicodin.

And guess what?

Another freakin’ pelvic.

I told him to go ask the other guys.

***

Now I get my IV because I am going to surgery.

But I get something else, too!

An NG tube because they let me drink so much water before my ultrasound, that I was not considered to be NPO!

I refused.

He insisted. I knew the risks of aspiration, he said.

***

The nurse brought the NG into the room packed in ice.

Ice? I’m getting an iced tube in my nose?

Profuse epistaxis from right nares?

Check.

Go left, old nurse.

Profuse epistaxis from left nares?

Check.

Get away from me NOW.

The OR wouldn’t be ready until 2300. I went in at 2345, almost twelve hours to the minute that I had arrived, now bleeding from both ends.

***

The anesthesiologist gave me Neo-synephrine to snort bilaterally and then after I was out placed an NG without difficulty. I had 400 ccs of fluid in my stomach.

Per the OR nurse, who gave me a full report later:

They did multiple attempts at a laparoscopic removal but because of scar tissue due to three C-sections, Dr. OB Wan couldn’t see.

And as he was palpating all over my abdomen to get the offending organ into view, he pushed a little too hard and the entire cyst burst.

Good thing no one faints at the sight of blood in the OR because when they opened me up it was everywhere. She said they had a hell of a time cleaning it all out.

It pays to have surgery where you work (I worked Psych there at the time) if you want the real scoop.

I survived and Dr. OB Wan saved the ovary.

***

Recovery was uneventful except for two things:

• The insurance company considered my surgery day my first post-op day even though I didn’t even get into surgery until 2345 and wasn’t finished for hours into the next day! So I was discharged home less than 36 hours later, with a five-month old to care for and after my second abdominal surgery in five months.I was charged for a hospital room at the same time I was in the ER.

• At my six week recheck, Dr.OB Wan said that if I wanted any more kids I had better have them within two years and then have my tubes tied! Why? Because if I took the birth control pill after the age of 35, I would die! And he had the graphs to prove it!

I hightailed it out of that office so fast you would have thought I was an Olympic sprinter.

Dr. OB Wan still practices. Ran into him a few times at another hospital when I was working ER. He didn’t know me and I didn’t tell him he was one scary guy.

***

You see, that is the thing with Inferior Medical Center. The actual experience there is exasperating, frustrating and sometimes just plain unpleasant.

But everything always turns out alright in the end.

I mean, Dr. OB Wan did know how to save an ovary.

He just didn’t know what the hell he was doing when it came to reproductive advice or the latest statistics on birth control pills.

And isn’t that what you want from an OB/GYN?

Never been to a male OB/GYN since. I get my care at a Women’s Clinic staffed by female doctors and Nurse Practitioners who know what they are doing when it comes to caring for women.

Guys, you can be really good at what you do as OB/GYN doctors and nurses, and I would have accepted a male nurse in L&D without a flinch.

But it takes a woman to know what you are going through. And I hate to admit that.

But it really does.