Ghostwriter

Hi everyone. This is Mike here (Fran's DH, for those who don't know). She asked me to write this in order to keep you up-to-date on events. She's fine, but as you will have deduced, things have taken a turn for the worst.

I got a message from her at lunch time to say that she had more and heavier bleeding, and that she had scheduled a scan in the clinic. I left work to meet her there and by the time I arrived she was being scanned by our Favourite Doctor (who did the scan during her lunch break). The scan revealed an extra-uterine gestational sac near the right ovary. A blood sample was taken for HCG determination and we set off home to get organised for hospital admission. Another (more detailed) scan was performed at this hospital (hospital #1), which showed the embryo to have a heartbeat (or at least the precursor of a heartbeat). For some reason the surgeon recommended by our Favourite Doctor was uncontactable, and so we had to go to another hospital for admission, but before we left, our Fav Doc had already phoned us with the rushed HCG results: 7495 (up from 4004 three days earlier).

Off to Hospital #2. This is the one where Fran had the previous ectopic dealt with. Another scan and about a million photos later, we met the doctor who will perform the surgery, who informed us that the operation will take place tomorrow morning. It’s not an emergency since Fran isn’t in pain (although she was feeling twinges later on in the night before I left to go home).

She almost has a sense of relief. “Almost”, I say since it is of course a desperately disappointing thing to happen, and we are devastated. But at least when they remove the ectopic along with the right tube this time, it can’t possibly happen again. And then there was that feeling that she had of sensing that it was ectopic, when everyone around her (me included) thought that the feeling must be brought on by fear of a recurrence of the previous ectopic, rather than an actual recurrence: The HCG levels were rising nicely, and, how could we possibly be so unlucky? Well that’s life, and it sucks. But with your support and mine, she’ll get through this, and hopefully we’ll be rewarded with an incident and stress-free pregnancy next time.

Sorry if my writing style is a bit matter-of-fact (I’m new to this). Hopefully normal service will be restored tomorrow night (here, they like to empty the hospitals for the weekend, and tomorrow (today now) is Friday). I wish you all everything that you wish for yourselves. Over and out.

Mike.