The Weekend

Friday morning I woke up and thought I had been hit by a train. I got out of bed to go to the bathroom, and that's it. Chase brought me water and pain meds, and I didn't move until about 3 that afternoon. And I don't mean I laid in bed. I mean I did. Not. Move. I remember thinking, I should roll to my other side. I didn't roll. My mom came down and snuck in while I was sleeping, made a big pot of chicken noodle soup, and sat with me for a couple hours and talked. It made for a better afternoon. I don't remember what we talked about, but I do remember feeling better. Mom's do that.

Saturday morning I felt much better. We got up and headed to Park City to watch Conference with my mom. I love conference, but I'll need to go back and go over it, considering I was doped up all weekend. Then we went to watch Zach's bike race. My mom got me VIP parking (handicapped) because walking was painful and slow. Zach did amazing, taking 7th and killing his last lap. I love high school athletics. I hadn't had a chance to tell Avery anything that had happened. She was having a bad day Wednesday , the day I had the chemo shot, so I didn't tell her the events of the last couple of days, and she had been out of town for a game. When we were all watching Zach, she ended up being a little late from the airport and had a friend with her, so I decided to wait to talk to her about it. After the race, we headed up to Timberlakes in Heber City where Chase's family has a cabin. Chase went to priesthood with the guys and the girls stayed and crafted. I sure love the cabin. At this point Connie, Tony, Megan and Jeff who were all at the cabin had been informed of the weeks happenings. But grandma and grandpa Thomas, and Jeff, Lisa, Ben and Sophie had not. And that's how I wanted it. I wanted it kept private. Chase and Connie made sure to take care of me though, so I was able to relax. That night I was feeling really good and I don't like how Percocet makes me feel, so I decided to not take one before bed, or during the night.

That was a mistake. I woke up, again, feeling like I had been hit by a train. My abdomen felt like it did before I went to the ER on Thursday night. So I laid in bed, ate two bites of toast, took a Percocet, and slept until Conference started. At that point I went down stairs and laid on a coach. I think Connie knew I wasn't okay. She jumped up and asked that someone on the love seat move so I could sit there, and Chase joined me. She repeatedly asked if I needed water or food or a blanket or a million dollars--I really think she would have tried. Conference was great, although I struggled to stay awake, it just feels good.

And then the session ended, and all hell broke loose. I stood up to join Chase and Tony at the dinner table to chat, five feet from where I had been sitting. After sitting for about a minute, I stopped listening to what they were talking about. I started to get dizzy. Then my vision got blurry. Then my hearing was muffled. I could feel my face drooping and my mouth hanging open. I couldn't focus on anything. I could kind of hear what was going on, but not all of it.

Tony: Chase, she is yellow.
Chase: Chlo are you ok?
Tony: Let's get her laying down.
That's all I've got.

Chase tells me this: They both stood up to help me down the hall, as I dropped my head onto my arm on the table. I tried to stand up once, then sat back down. They helped me up, one on each arm, I took one step, and dropped to the floor. They caught me and laid me down. Chase said he tried to get me to respond to him

"Chloe. Chloe can you hear me." I was looking him straight in the eyes. And then my eyes rolled back in my head.

I came to as Grandpa Earl who was an EMT for many years was suggesting that it was my appendix, something I haven't had for two years. I heard Connie in the back ground telling them to give me a blessing, my third one this week. Chase called Grandpa and Jeff over to join. I grabbed randomly at the wrists near my head, and I got Chase's. I had no idea what was happening, and I didn't quite know what was going on yet or where I was. I felt like I had been sleeping for hours. And then I hear this.

"Chloe Calton Reynolds, by the power of the Melchizedek Priesthood we hold, please stay with us."

I truly thought I was dying. Or at least that people around me thought I was dying.

After the blessing, Chase started telling people what to do and said "We are going to the hospital NOW." I just heard lots of commotion as I layer there. The only thing I remember seeing with clear eyes as I was laying down was Tony's face. I kept saying, "What happened?" And he assured me everything was fine, and he didn't leave. Everyone else was getting the car ready to go. When the van was just out side the door, I was stood up and was helped over to the bed they had made for me. I laid down and that was it. Megan came and sat by me in the back. She's a CNA. Connie came and sat up front. Chase drove. As we pulled away from the cabin, I heard Chase cry for just a minute. He doesn't  cry often. On the way down the canyon Megan took my wrist at one point and then said, "It's there, but it's too weak to count." The second time I thought I could really be dying.

I learned after all of this that poor Grandpa Earl kept trying to diagnose the problem as I was being put in the van. Connie finally turned to him and told him I had lost a baby. Poor guy was embarrassed. And Uncle Jeff pulled Chase aside at one point and said, "She does not have the flu. What is really going on here?" All weekend while I'm walking around slow and everyone is doting over me, Lisa had asked if I was pregnant, and Connie appropriately responded that I was not. But passing out in the middle of a full cabin will pretty much disclose every detail. I was not okay with telling everyone. This experience has taught me that I am much more private than (some) other people. But Chase put it best when I was annoyed how many people had suddenly found out about the WHOLE story, "It's just more people praying for you, that's powerful."

On the drive down things got much more clear. I told Chase to call my parents and Lauren, and to tell Lauren to call Dr. Barton. Chase reminded me that my dad had flown to Greece that morning. "Call him anyway, they might have a layover." And he did. For 90 short minutes he was in New York calling the Heber ER, the surgeon on call, the OBGYNs at Mckay, Dr. Barton and every other resource he had. From hundreds of miles away, he was everything I needed him to be.

We arrive to find a wheelchair waiting. Connie had called ahead. They got me in a bed, gave me an IV with who knows what in it, asked me a bunch of questions, and took me to get an ultra sound (and their technician was not my favorite; very impatient). And then I waited. My mom arrived, bawling, confused at how this was still unresolved (as was I). Then Avery and her cute friend Hannah arrived. I hugged Avery and she cried, this was the first she had learned that it wasn't a normal miscarriage, whatever that means. Not how I wanted to tell her, but she's tough and she understood. Mom took on the job of texting every detail to dad. When we get a lab result back, she tells dad. When the doctor breathes, she tells dad. It helped so that when my dad finally called me back he said, "If you can make it to IMC, do that. Let your own doctor operate on you. And don't let them do surgery unless your tube has ruptured, or you are loosing a lot of blood."

They couldn't tell why I had passed out. Best guess was the high altitude with some blood loss. My hematocrit was down to 32; down 6 points in three days. Not good, but not dangerous. They said the ultrasound showed the mass in my tube was still about the same size, and there was still fluid in my abdomen, but nothing much different. I told them I wanted to go to IMC, and they said that was fine, right after I signed a waiver that said if I die on the way to IMC, they told me I could have taken an ambulance. The doctor made me promise that I wouldn't try to walk into the hospital when we got there.

So Chase drove me to IMC. Everyone else went back to the cabin, mom to PC, and Avery went home to Provo. I called Dr. Barton and he met us there and had me admitted. As promised, I waited for a wheelchair, feeling dumb as pregnant women walked passed me. I was, again, in a gown in a bed in a room, in about 5 minutes. The nurse immediately put me back on morphine and drew more blood. I chatted with Jeff while Chase went to move the car. Per my medicated memory, he thought surgery might be a good idea. Just to see what was going on--why I have ended up in the hospital three of the last five days, why my hematocrit was dropping, possibly prevent a tube from rupturing, or remove a ruptured tube. I was not interested in exploratory surgery, but he had a point. I wanted to know I wasn't going to need another run to the ER in the next few days or bleed out in my sleep. I did make it clear, I would like to keep my tube if possible. So Jeff left and we waited for blood work.

Lauren and Hudson came down after taking Sean to the airport. Chase had Hudson in the lobby and I was filling Lauren in when my cell phone rang. It was Jeff, telling my my hematocrit was 26--down 6 points in the last two hours. That's fast and dangerous. He didn't ask, he told me, "You will be going into surgery in about ten minutes." I told Lauren, who called mom and texted Avery, who texted dad, and so on. Connie and Tony arrived just then. Lauren left to take Hudson to Jan's house. The four of us said a prayer, Lauren came back, and they walked with my nurse as she pushed me two the OR. I wasn't nervous physically, probably the morphine, in fact I think I was oddly cheery, while everyone else was crying. But I kept thinking...I am having emergency surgery for internal blood loss...I would sure like to live...Dramatic I know, but for the past several weeks I had been optimistic, and every fork in the road went south. I had kind of run out of it-will-be-alrights. I hugged Chase, Tony, Connie, Lauren and Chase again. And then I got scared and didn't immediately let go of Chase. But I didn't really have time to be scared. I met my anesthesiologist, and I was out before I got to 3.

Apparently I ripped my feet out of the boots they have you strapped to during surgery. Cool I guess? They went into my abdomen from my belly bottom, my lower appendectomy scar, and made a new incision I've added to the collection on my left side. All very small. Thank goodness for laparoscopic surgery. They pumped me full of air and look around. The 300-500 cc's of blood they thought that might find turned out to be 1.6 liters. Go ahead, have a sprite. Jeff was shocked. They had to use the super sucker, as he called it, to get it all out. They had to rock my body from side to side and move my organs around to get it all out. They estimated the whole surgery would take under 1.5 hours. At just over an hour, they called Chase and told him about the blood, and they were just barely starting to look at the actual problem. They stopped the bleeding, and found a really beat up left tube. The right side is pink and normal. The left side was swollen, twisted, and had huge blood clots attached to it. They removed the clots, made two incisions into the tube to pull out whatever was creating the swollen bumps, but found nothing. So, the theory is that the mass started to smolder and pulled itself away from the wall of the tube after I got the chemo shots. That started the bleeding and that's why I was in so much pain on Thursday. But why the bleeding intensified so much Sunday afternoon, no one knows. It could be because there was nothing in my tube, that the mass rolled (or plundered) out of the tube into my abdomen and reattached itself to the out side of the tube, opening the flood gates for the bleeding. That makes the most sense, since the ultrasound in Heber earlier in the day showed that the mass was still in my tube.

Waking up from surgery is a doozy. Chase makes fun of me because I always talk about how I love the feeling of coming out of anesthesia. When I had my tonsils out, I was basically high as a kite. When I had my appendectomy, I woke up sobbing. I wasn't in pain, just sobbing, for like 30 minutes. My dad was also by my bedside when I came too. But this time I was crying, and rolling around on my hospital bed and trying to wake up because limbo is not fun. It took quite a while to come out of it. Family met me in the hall and walked to my room with me. I was still delirious. I do remember asking Chase to lean down and put his face by mine and just be. I don't think I like anesthesia anymore.

Then everyone left, Chase slept on the window bench, and I slept well most of the night. I had the best nurse at IMC I think. I think her name was Andy (again, drugs). She was so sweet. She told me not to get up without her help. During surgery they pumped me full of 3 liters of IV fluids to replace the blood loss, so I had to pee like 20 times that night. I'll tell you what, having your bum hang out of a hospital gown while a complete stranger helps you get to the toilet that is 10 feet from your bed while you shuffle hunched over in pain... That is humbling. And I just assume do most things on my own. If nothing else, I have learned to take help from those around me, give people the opportunity to serve me. I had to suck it up and ask for pain meds when I needed them, even when I didn't really want to admit I was in pain. So every couple of hours Andy was in my room for about 15 minutes. I asked about her life and she said she and her husband are in the process of adopting because she can't get pregnant after eight years of trying. And then I stopped feeling sorry for myself about no longer being pregnant. Life is just full of little learning experiences and people to remind you. I am still left with my right side, completely functional (they checked it out during surgery), and my left side may heal just fine, and we at least know that all things are going well enough for us to get pregnant. That's an enormous part of the battle. Little victories.

October 2nd

The next day I woke up feeling drained. Probably more emotionally than from the chemo. I let work know I was going to be late and wasn't feeling well. "Don't come in if you are sick."
"I'm not contagious."

When I got there, I looked like hell I am sure. My friend asked me what I had, and I had a mini melt down. I had planned perfectly what I would say so I could lie and keep my secret a secret. But the two of them were very supportive and told me to go home, I shouldn't be at work. But I wanted to stay and get my mind off of everything and get something done. So I worked for a few hours and left feeling a bit nauseous and feeling an unfamiliar pressure in my chest.

I went to Lauren's house and tried to relax. I really did feel ok, I was just anxious. Then I started cramping. We decided to go on a walk to the farmer's market that is two houses from hers. After about 2 minutes, I doubled over in pain. It felt as though someone had punched me in the chest. It brought me to tears, and scared us both. She called Dr. Barton who is also her OBGYN and family friend, and I called dad. Barton said, you may want to go to the ER to get checked for blood clots. Clots aren't a symptom of chemo, but chest pain is not a good thing. Dad said, if the chest pain stopped you should be okay. Lauren and I loaded up the car to head to Ogden, still unsure about whether I should go to the ER at McKay or if I was going to be fine. But on the drive up I could barely contain the pain of the cramps. It felt like someone was blending my stomach with a fork from the front and kicking me in the back. I called Chase to tell him what Barton and Dad had said. "Do me a favor. Stop at my parent's house and have Tony give you a blessing." He was in Park City working and would be behind us about an hour.

We got to Tony, and I still hadn't decided if I just needed to lay down or if I really needed an ER. When Tony realized that I was thinking about not going, he said something along the lines of, Oh yes you are, I'll drive you myself! When I told Chase I didn't know if I should go to the ER, he said, you know how we just keep thinking this is going to end, and bad things keep happening? Go to the ER before something really bad happens. So, Tony gave me a blessing, we left Hudson, and Lauren drove me to the ER.

Upon our arrival, the nurses waiting at the door looked at Lauren, 36 weeks pregnant and said, "Labor and delivery?" Um, no. But when I said chest pain, they all jumped. I was in a gown on a bed in a room in no more than five minutes. The doctor and nurse seemed much more concerned with my chest, which was no longer in pain, just tight, than with the searing pain in my abdomen. It reminded me of the pain before I had my appendectomy done 2 years ago. They did give me morphine, and that helped. A lot. I got a CT scan to check my chest for blood clots. They drew blood to check for internal bleeding, and my hematocrit came back at 38; the low end of normal. I had been bleeding vaginally for a very long time, so maybe that's why. But no one was concerned. So I was sent home with Percocet and Zofran. And the feeling that someone should have warned me that Methotrexate would make me feel like I was dying.

We missed a really great night at the David Eccles Conference Center. My grandpa Ferrell was honored my the McKay Dee Hospital Board for starting the cath lab at McKay. He gave a speech and everything. I was mortified that we missed it.

October 1st

On my way to my appointment on Wednesday, October 1st, I was sure I was going to have an ultrasound, everything would be normal. I was just having an exceptionally long period because I had just miscarried. Worst case, Dr. Barton, Jeff, would recommend a D&C; the removal of excess pregnancy material left behind in the uterus via scrapping the uterus wall. That sound horrifying, so I would simply ask if it was absolutely necessary. If so, scrape. If not, I would continue to moderately bleed until everything ran it's course.

Chase had said to me that morning, "Do you want me to come with you?" I declined. It's an 11:30 appointment right in the middle of the day, and it will be routine I am sure. 

I got there on time, and Connie, the ultrasound technician was great. She was really sweet. She asked me to tell her what was going on and answered my questions as she looked at my belly. But it took a really long time. So I asked what she was seeing. And she didn't say much. "There is some large swelling and a mass over here... and some fluid over here...but there is nothing in your uterus. You shouldn't be bleeding at all. I can't figure this out. What you've told me doesn't really make sense with what I'm seeing."

Back to the lobby. When Jeff called me back, he looked at me and said, "What's going on with you?" Um, I don't know, you're the doctor. We went into a room to discuss what the ultrasound was showing. His bedside manner is great, but he was obviously having a hard time getting to the point. While he talks I'm thinkgin--Ok, so I'm not having a D&C? Oh good. But what was in there? Why am I bleeding again? And out of the blue...

"You have two options; chemotherapy or surgery."

You have the wrong patient file. Sorry, try again. But then he went on. There is a mass in my left Fallopian tube. It is 3.8 cm in diameter. It's the pregnancy. There is no heartbeat, no baby. The baby died weeks ago. But the placenta is still growing attached to the wall of the tube. It's called an Ectopic pregnancy. The stress on the tube as it stretches around the growing mass is where the bleeding is coming from. The fluid in my abdomen is blood from the tube as well. It's bleeding out both ends. It's not a dangerous amount of blood though. The chemotherapy of choice is called Methotrexate. It is no longer used on cancer patients, but it is used on MS patients, other diseases, and Ectopic or tubal pregnancies. The mass is growing at a rapid rate; it is larger than a normal pregnancy would be at 8 weeks. They treat these ravaging placentas like cancer because they will do anything to survive and grow, even without a baby to support. Methotrexate targets and kills rapidly dividing cells, ie. cancer. So the idea is the chemo will cause the mass to stop growing, and be reabsorbed into my body. I won't lose my hair, and will hardly notice any symptoms at all. Ectopic pregnancies are dangerous. They can cause the tube to rupture and internal bleeding can go undetected. The chemo is used when there is no heart beat, the mass is smaller than 3.2-3.5 cm in diameter, and HCG levels are below 5000. Otherwise, the mass is too strong to be thwarted by the chemo, or the risk of rupture is too high, and surgery is the alternative. 

As he talked, I listened. I didn't cry until I tried to ask a question. He was very kind and supportive, but anxious. He said I needed to get the chemo immediately. Although the mass with slightly larger than is usually treated with chemo, surgery is always the last recommendation because it is more invasive. I went to get my blood drawn so they could verify that my HCG was low enough, and it was; 1485. Normally a pregnancy at 8 weeks produces HCG, the pregnancy hormone, in the tens of thousands. So my placenta was producing very little, but growing rapidly. They didn't see the pregnancy the first time I had an ultrasound, the day I found out I was miscarrying, because it was too small to see. And now it was big. 

I called Chase and told him all of that in about 2 minutes, barely able to speak. I was horrified, more scared than I think I have every been. He left work and immediately came to meet me at the cancer center at IMC, where they give the Methotrexate. He expressed concern; doesn't chemo hurt your future furtility? Does surgery sound like a better option? Then I called my dad. I rarely do anything medical without his recommendation first. Through tears I asked if I should let them give me the chemo. He tried to calm me down, but I could hear it in his voice. He doesn't get scared, and to him, nothing requires a doctor unless it's a really big deal, and he sounded nervous. He said, don't let them give you anything until I call you back. As I walked to the Cancer center I called Lauren, who knew I had an appointment that day. And I called my mom who offered to come down just as Chase arrived. We walked upstairs to the second floor of building three. They put me in a room, and right as the nurse walked in my dad called back. He had spoken with a trusted OBGYN friend of his who reiterated the same recommendations that Dr. Barton had given me. I later learned that my dad got emotional as he talked to his friend about my condition. I got the green light from Dad right as the nurse came in with a couple a big syringes. From the time that I spoke with Dr. Barton, to the time I was being injected with chemotherapy, was about one hour. And then I went back to work. That lasted 15 minutes, and I went home.