Ute's ShadowBlog

My second life-threatening event happened in 1985. Though the physicians in Düsseldorf had explained to me that operating on the Fallopian tubes would also increase the risk of a future ectopic pregnancy, I had hoped for a normal pregnancy. My wish for having my own child had been so strong that I was willing not only to take the risk of an operation but also a possible occurrence of another tubal pregnancy.

It happens quite often that if we already know in advance the exact outcome of a certain decision and action, our decision would have been a different one. And I wasn’t prepared for my next ectopic pregnancy, which turned out quite differently than the one in 1976. Therefore I got into a life-threatening situation again.

At my first ectopic pregnancy I had continued vaginal loss of blood. It was visible. But at the next occurrence I didn’t loose any blood. To the contrary, I developed signs of a pregnancy. My menstrual blood flow stopped and my belly seemed to become bigger. At that time I actually thought that I may be pregnant, but this time without complications. But I was taught a different lesson when I had a very uncommon painful experience that started on either a Friday or Saturday evening.

It was on a weekend when my sister Gabi and her husband visited me. Shortly before my sister arrived, I had severe abdominal pains. At that moment it felt like my abdomen would be torn apart. What was quite strange about this event, after about 15 minutes I felt no pain at all. Actually, I felt pretty good afterwards and therefore I didn’t pay more attention to my body. In addition I didn’t have any loss of blood, which clearly would have been a warning sign for me.

After this occurrence my weekend ran pretty normal without any pain. But the surprise came at the beginning of the following week. I’m not sure whether it was on a Monday or Tuesday. In any case it was at the beginning of the week. My husband had a visitor with whom he was outside on the terrace, and I was in the kitchen cooking dinner for us three.

It must have been between 5 and 6 o’clock when I wanted to visit shortly the bathroom. Before I reached the bathroom I fainted in the hallway and fell to the ground. I was unconscious for a few minutes, but awoke again by myself and dragged myself at first to the bathroom. Afterwards I literally crawled to my bedroom and called my friend Ulrike. I told her what had happened to me. And Ulrike asked me whether my husband was with me. After she had heard that he was there, too, she told me that he should drive me to the University Clinic. And that is exactly what he did after I had called for him. The cookery was over, and he drove me to the University Clinic.

On the same evening I underwent an emergency operation. Here again, my condition had become life-threatening. Instead loosing blood outwards, I had collected the blood in my abdomen, which later caused the hemorrhage shock and faint. And in this case, too, the attending physician told me that if I had not arrived on that evening I would not have survived this ordeal.

After those different runs of pregnancies I became scared of ever becoming pregnant again. Becoming pregnant had become a life-threatening event for me, which I had no desire to experience once more. From that moment on I knew that I would not be able to conceive naturally my own child, and the current medical technology hadn’t been available for me either.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 at 6:47 am and is filed under Doctor's visits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.