When they said i was just constipated...

July 14th, 2017

(the night before)

July 15th, 2017

(day of)

One morning I made my way to my office hungover from a work night out, and when I got there, I felt very light headed and told my manger I was really ‘hungover.’ I then went to the toilet thinking I needed to empty my bowels (lol), but nothing was happening. I then fell to the floor, light-headed. My vision was blurry, and I remember feeling really confused. I got out of the toilet and told my manager I wasn’t well whilst sweating and looking very pale. My colleagues lied me down and called an ambulance. When the ambulance arrived they pricked my finger and asked me a lot of questions, seemingly taking the situation very lightly, asking if I was constipated... They took me to the hospital, taking their time, and giving me pain killers in the van.

They rolled me out in a wheelchair and put me in the waiting room while they called my boyfriend. 10 mins after, I started throwing up, and then my boyfriend arrived to help and moved me to the emergency room. My vision was blurred, my hearing was off and I was still very lightheaded.

The nurse finally arrived after a while and asked me to pee in a container. Because by that time I was too weak to get up, I was moved to a private room where I could pee from my wheelchair. The nurse came back after testing my urine and told me I was 8/12 weeks pregnant (although there were 0 signs). I started crying as I was scared and shocked. I had just recently stopped taking the pill and switched to a female condom solution to avoid hormones. Plus, I had only been with my boyfriend for a couple of months....

The nurse then told me I need to quickly move to another area of the hospital to test my wee as there was a little blood in it ( I thought it was normal as I had just recently finished my period). Once I got moved to a different room, I started having excruciating shoulder pains. I was screaming and crying and my bf was massaging my shoulders trying to help. I was left in this room for at least an hour before someone came to see me! I then had to get dressed into a robe and remove all my piercings, and they put some machine inside of my vagina with a screen connected to it. At first the nurse was silent and was unable to see anything. He said the screen was all black and seemed very confused. He then called in a senior doctor to take a look, and straight away she knew what it was.

She explained I was having an ectopic pregnancy which is quite common, although in my case, the egg carried on growing in my right Fallopian tube until it burst, and I had internal bleeding for the last few hours... They then explained that I had to get operated on immediately. They told me they first had to remove the blood and then remove the egg and tube. If I’m lucky, they will only have to remove one tube instead of both, but they wouldn’t know until doing it.

I felt so scared, upset and anxious and didn’t want to tell my parents. I had to sign a form where it said I acknowledge that I could die or something, and that just scared me even more. I had no idea what an ectopic pregnancy was, I just knew I had very little time and had to hurry up before I lost any more blood. They said the operation would last an hour, but it ended up lasting three. I just remember screaming with pain because of my shoulders, and then they put me to sleep.

When I woke up no one was next to me, and I shouted out for help. The nurse came told me the operation went well, however it had lasted a lot longer than what they expected as I actually had a lot more blood than they thought I did. They also told me they had to remove my right Fallopian tube (which I didn’t even know what it was at the time), and I was left with one only. They explained I will still be able to get pregnant, although I have to be very careful and I would need to take contraception. If one day I want to have a baby, I would have to have my pregnancy carefully followed by a doctor because if this happens again, I will not be able to have children and it will be life threatening.

I have 3 scars from the operation which are very small and almost gone now in 2021 (almost 4 years later). It took a month to recover fully. I had very bad headaches and tummy aches and had no strength and wasn’t allowed to walk for 2 weeks.

After a month I went back to work and pretended nothing ever happened. The doctors suggested counseling, but I wasn’t interested. My sexual relationship with my boyfriend changed for a long while after my surgery, as we were both so scared something bad would happen.

Since then I have been taking the contraception pill again. Every time I get lightheaded, have shoulder pains, or anything that feels similar to what I had felt, I feel PTSD where I automatically think it’s happening all over again and end up have mini panic attacks. I have even had to call the emergencies, my boyfriend or my mum to calm me down.

Now I buy pregnancy tests all the time even though I’m on the pill I just like to make sure.