"If we don't suffer enough we won't remember it."

I woke up feeling dizzy and horrible.  I had been bleeding a lot since Friday.  I counted the tampons left in the box, having had to purchase more on Sunday morning.  I soaked and bleed through 20 in 24 hours. 

Called the nurse and she said to go to the emergency room.  I asked what they would do there, saying that would cost me a lot of money.  She insisted I should go.  I wanted to just go into the office to see the doctor.  Realizing that was the only way to get help I spent 2 hours there for the doctor there to talk to my doctor and send me home saying it's typical to bleed a lot after an IUD removal and to keep my apointment in two weeks.  I was mad.

7 miles on treadmill, stopping a lot and feeling bad.  Still bleeding the same.

~~Thursday morning I met Melanie to run Suncrest.  I was bleeding though my tampon before I even started running and changed it by the dumpster.  I started out with her and stopped after .25 miles.  I told her not to wait for me and that I didn’t know how far I would go.  She went ahead and I kept going.  I stopped at 1.5 miles and started to cry.  I felt so horrible and was going so slow.  When I hit the real hilly part I was doing an 11 min mile.  I turned around at 2 miles and headed down.  Even coming down I felt like I needed to stop for breaks.  I ran an average 8:50 pace for 4 miles and felt horrible.  I drove home and felt myself bleeding out all over the place.  I sat on a hat so I wouldn’t get blood on the seat. 
 When I got home big clots of blood were dripping out of me into the toilet.  I showered and got the kids off to school.  I called the doctor’s office and cried on the phone to the receptionist and nurse, telling them how much I was bleeding and that I felt horrible and couldn’t wait two weeks to see the doctor.  The nurse told me to come in at 9:30 a.m. 
 I saw Dr. McCarter and he said I was hemorrhaging and suggested a D&C to clean out my uterus and restart my cycle.  I got that scheduled for the next morning.  I felt like he should have done that for me on Monday, but was too exhausted to get upset. 

Brent took me to the Orem Community Hospital at 8:15 a.m. to prepare for the surgery. 
I initially planned to have a spinal block because I don’t like having general anesthesia.  I always have a sore throat from the tube they put down my throat and usually end up feeling sick to my stomach afterwards.  I also thought it might be interesting to watch the procedure on the screen.  I spent about 30 minutes talking to Dr. Brown, the anesthesiologist about it.  He convinced me he could put me under with general anesthesia and wake me up quickly without putting a tube down my throat.  He said I would be out of the hospital a lot faster than with the spinal block and since they literally charge by the minute I went for that.  He said he wouldn't put a tube down my throat and if I had problems he would get down on his knees and beg my forgiveness.  
I convinced him to give me the least amount of everything possible and told the nurse I would rather deal with a little pain than all the problems pain medications seem to cause me, high blood pressure, heart racing, nausea, etc.  When I had my nasal passage surgery a year ago I was feeling ok until they gave me medication for pain.  Then I needed three of four other medications to deal with the side effects of the pain medication and I went home so doped up on stuff I felt horrible. 
When the nurse anesthetist came in he said he was going to give me some medication before we went into the operating room.  I said I didn’t want it and asked exactly what it was for.  He said it was to calm me down.  I said, “I don’t want it.  I want the least medication possible.”  I had just had a 30 minute conversation about how I wanted the least medication possible with the anesthesiologist.  I calmly told him I would be fine. 
They wheeled me down to the operating room and I got on the table.  The nurse put the mask on my face first with oxygen and then something to put me to sleep.  The next thing I knew I was back in the room I started in and Brent was sitting on the chair next to me. 
The anesthesiologist came in a few minutes later and asked if he needed to beg my forgiveness.  I said I felt great.  He brought me straight to the room I started in instead of the recovery room clearly to save me money.  I thought that was nice.  It also shows that it sometimes pays to ask about the cost.  Then Dr. McCarter came in and showed me pictures of my uterus.  He said I had a lot of tissue and blood vessels built up in there probably because of the IUD.  He thought the procedure would fix my problem.  They were sending the tissue to the lab to be tested to make sure there wasn’t anything serious though.  We signed our discharge papers at 10:55 a.m. and left a few minutes later. 
I talked to Melanie in the hospital shortly after the surgery, as soon as I felt with it enough to carry on a conversation.  We talked for a few minutes and then I called her again after I got home.  Melanie said, “You need to tell them to give you something to fix your blood.  Tell them you’re a marathon runner and you have a race in a month.”  I was thinking, “I don’t know that I’ll be running the race in a month,” but didn’t tell her that.
I was surprised I wasn’t sore after the surgery and also that my bleeding stopped so quickly.  I was spotting a little when I left the hospital but by 2:30 p.m. even that stopped.  It was nice to be able to tell the kids I was fixed and not bleeding anymore.  I was so glad to be on the road to recovery instead of feeling like I was slowly bleeding to death!