Scabby Armpits were the least of my troubles

Bike trip 

I'm sure you can tell by looking at me that I was and forever will be a sleep-away camp kid! Every summer up until I was about 16 years old I would be shipped off to the deep dark woods of Deep River, CT for 8 weeks of sun, smore's and sexual experimentation. 

When campers at my particular camp turn 14yrs old they are expected to go on 2 5-day trips (hike, bike or canoe) throughout the summer. 

These trips were expertly planned to torture teenagers, to test their camping skills and to assess whether or not they would be given the opportunity to apply for a coveted "junior counsellor" position when they turned 16. And covet I did so the summer I turned 15, I signed up for the 5 day bike trip. I was gonna prove to all of the camp administration  that "I" was ready to be a junior counsellor! 

All I had to do was learn how to ride a bike! Simples!

I can remember riding (and falling off) my shiny, brand new, black and red, never ridden, 5 speed bike bought from the finest department store in Long Island...K-Mart! I tried my very best to teach myself to ride a bike the entire summer before my bike trip. I was obsessed! I mean there was a very important job on the line!

I eventually learned how to ride well enough to bike around camp and was hot damn I was ready! Well I thought I was ready until they attached the 20lbs saddle bags to my bike rack. And Boom! down I went. Luckily I had 3 hrs before we set off on the trip to relearn how to ride a bike with 20lb saddle bags. 

But I somehow managed and off we went on our 5 day bike trip starting from our camp in Deep River, CT to some random shithole town in Rhode Island and back into camp in CT. 

 There was 15 of us in total; 10 teenagers and 3 very sad, delusional adults on this trip. I was one of 2 girls on this particular Bike trip. The rest were boys...Very horny, very impatient, very angry testosterone filled teenage boys. Woo-hoo Fun times !

Here are some day to day highlights of this amazing bike trip:

Day 1: 

Oh I forgot to mention the other member of our merry journey... 

My period. My super heavy period. My period came an hour after we set off from camp. I can remember the joy I felt as I sat upon my ultra narrow bicycle seat with a thick overnight sized menstrual pad for the next 10hrs on a bike and then for the remainder of this glorious trip! 

The joys of teenage womanhood! So me, my heavy period and the rest of my fellow campers and counsellors biked about 20 miles that first day. 

Day 2 was actually a fun day. We only had to bike a total of 5 miles and we were allowed to camp on a private beach. We lit a huge bonfire and ate copious amounts of chocolate, baked potatoes, fun dip and nerd rope. It kinda was awesome. 

Day 3 however was less awesome. I woke up with an allergic reaction under my arms to a generic brand of deodorant that my mom bought because it was cheaper than my normal name brand. 

Thanks mom. 

As soon as it was time us to set off for the day, both of my underarms began to bleed and puss and I had to ride my bike without putting my arms down. 

Oh and I still had my period.

Day 4 was quite eventful. Remember the merry band of boys I mentioned earlier.  Well on this day they refused to wait for us and the other girl and I  took a wrong turn and we ended up biking 20 miles off our plotted bike route. We then somehow managed to bike into a wasp sanctuary and as those wasp declared war on us they got trapped inside our mesh basketball shorts and re-stung us about 10 times as they tried to escape our very fashionable basketball shorts. We then dropped our bikes and begin to strip naked right in front of the local fire station in Mystic, CT where luckily the firemen were all outside cleaning the fire truck. 

Oh and I still have the underarm rash and my period.

Day 5: This was the last day of the trip and it was pretty uneventful besides biking the last 30 miles of the trip all uphill with 20 lbs saddle bags, a heavy period, scabbed underarms, wasp bites all over my ass. 

But gosh darn it, I made it! I did it. I completed the 5 day bike trip and because this trip was so eventful for me, I was given a pass and I didn't have to go on any other camp trips. And I eventually earned a coveted junior counsellor position that very next year! 

My vagina wasn't numb...

My pregnancy was quite the journey.

     Those who have heard this story and also have never been pregnant always label it a "bad" pregnancy. And in those frequent instances, I will most likely correct them and say "My pregnancy wasn't bad because at the end of it I was blessed with a beautiful baby boy". Then I say "My pregnancy path was mine alone and won't necessarily be yours..." I usually say that last sentence to help quell the impending fear and soul-crushing anxiety I see welling up in behind their eyes. 
Anyhoo, back to me and my story.

     After I told my wife we were going to have a baby I immediately started googling "morning sickness medications." Now see, I have this crippling phobia of throwing up...yeah you read that right. I'm scared to throw up. (I've had this fear for as long as I remember. I'm even having a bit of uneasiness just typing about it but alas...I must press on. I've never been diagnosed by a clinician or anything but yeah... its gross and the whole throwing up business totally grosses me out. I could probably write an entire post about that alone but I won't and you probably wouldn't want to read it anyway... ICK!)
     So instead of researching pregnancy books and Doctor Who themed onesies, I was researching FDA approved medicines that stop morning sickness in pregnant woman. I complied a list and at our first sonogram appointment I pulled this said list out like I was unsheathing a golden shield of vomit defense. (+50 morning sickness armor) Our doctor laughed at me and said "shouldn't you feel some nausea before you take meds to prevent it?" Ha! Clearly this woman had no idea who she was dealing with and I demanded she prescribe me something on the off chance it might happen! Dammit! Blame it on the pregnancy hormones if you want but after some back and forth between her and I, she took out her prescription pad and wrote me a lovely script!! 
WOO HOOOOO! 
Oh yeah, she also let us hear the baby's heart beat for the first time and that was memorable as well but I GOT MY PRESCRIPTION! YEAAAAAH BOY!!!!

     I was only about 3 weeks pregnant at that time but I sho nuff had that prescription in my hand I thought I was ready for whatever mother nature had in store for me. HA! or so I thought! Fast forward two weeks from there and BOOM! that morning sickness hit my ass like a queasy, dry-heaving mac truck! I remember the first time I felt it and surprise! surprise! it wasn't first thing in the morning! I was driving home form work and I started to dry heave. 
EWW! 
I was told to never let my stomach get completely empty so I kept a ton of snacks in my purse. I constantly munched on crackers and mixed nuts as a way to keep food in my belly. At first I thought it was just the heat because it was August in NYC and it was about 1 million degrees outside. So I shrugged it off, cranked up my air conditioning and keep on driving home. And BAM! it hit me again! My head started to get woozy and my eyes crossed so I managed to safely pull the car over, open the driver seat door and throw up bile. 
EEEW!  (I know it's gross and my stomach is turning just thinking about it.)
So I collected my self, wiped my mouth and broke the speed limit so I could get home as fast as possible. I crawled into our apartment on my hands and knees (completely messing up my 50's style American Apparel tights) and posted up on the couch. I somehow manage to find the morning sickness meds and try to choke two down. 
AHHH HAA! 
They dissolve on the tongue...those clever scientist knew...they knew just what we would need in this disgusting situation!
So I'm on the couch, in the fetal position waiting for my the sweet relief of my magic dissolving pills...and I wait...wait...wait and ummmm it was still there. That ~feeling~ was still there. Before I took the pills it felt as if my stomach was on a bungee cord and it was violently bobbing up and down after it jumped off a cliff but after the pills it felt as if my stomach wasn't exactly bobbing up and down but doing lazy jumping jacks. 
UGH! 
But the nausea had weaned a little. The pills basically just took the puke-y edge off. Damn, I was super disappointed that my magic pills didn't work but at least I was able to move around the house.
And moving around the house was the ~only~ thing I could do. Going to work was now off the table because whenever I stood upright that motion would send some cosmic message to my stomach to purge everything in the lower half of my body. 
UGH!
Fun times! At this point I was about 5 weeks pregnant and I quickly realized that my body (or baby?) needed food every hour and 45 minutes. 
O.K. so listen...I'm not bullshitting you here.  My daily pregnancy eating schedule was as follows:

(Notes: The following schedule is a section the very document I complied when I was pregnant.

             -Zofran is the name of the prescription morning sickness medicine.

             -My doctor advised as an alternative to taking prescription medicines that I could try taking a Unisom pill with a B6 vitamin which has been found to help quiet nausea. As you can see I took both them shits!)

8:15-took uni/B6

           - ate potatoes

10:50- took zofran

              - ate potatoes

1:30- ate pasta

3:30-uni/b6

3:44- ate pasta (feel sick)

5:30-Zofran (real)

7:30-ate potatoes

9:47-ate potatoes uni/b6

7:00am- took Rzofran

7:50-ate home fries

10:50-ate home fries

               - took half  uni /half b6

11:50- took Rzofran

1:30- ate pasta

3:33-took Zofran (felt sick)

4:32- ate potatoes

7:30-ate pasta

            - took Rzofran

8:50- took Rzofran

             - ate potatoes

10:30-ate potatoes

1:05- took RZofran

1:26- ate pasta

2:17- took uni/b6

4:00- ate pasta

4:45- took Rzofran

7:23- ate some potatoes

9:07-took Rzofran

9:30-ate potatoes

12:36-ate potatoes

12:45- took uni/b6

2:00-took Rzofran

2:45-ate soup

4:40-took uni/B6

5:10-ate pasta

5:56- took Rzofran

8:11- ate potatoes

This crazy feeding schedule continued until I was about 15 / 16 weeks pregnant. During that time, nothing much happened because the meds made me super drowsy. I only really woke up long enough to choke down a couple of bites of food and start another British period drama on Netflix. Thank goodness, I started to feel a bit better when I hit the 4 month mark and wheeewww! thank goodness because I was so happy to get off the couch, break up with Mistress Netflix (we started a love affair during this time) and go back to work.

And that I did! Armed with my green grocery bag packed with my "lunches" which consisted of ketchup, vegetarian chicken nuggets, baked curly fries and Amy's frozen vegetarian lasagna I went back to work with a lovely little belly bump. 

But when I hit the 5 month mark, shit got real! 

     
     During a routine sonogram, my OBGYN noticed that my cervix was shorter than it was during the last appointment. The doctor explained the baby was developing well and growing on track (Thank God!) and all my vitals were normal but it seemed like my cervix was getting shorter. This was particularly worrying because if the cervix continued to shorten I was at risk of going into preterm labour. (commence freak out!) The doctor told us not to worry (yeah right!) and he gave me a prescription for some medicine that prevents preterm labour and then he put me bed rest. The very next day I resurrected my not -so- secret love affair with Mistress Netflix, nestled into my comfy spot on the couch and "rested".  After about 2 weeks of bed rest, I was itching to go back to work and when my doctor checked my cervix again he found that it grew back to safe length. My wife and I were so happy that my cervix situation rectified itself because needless to say we were really concerned.  
Unfortunately, that relief we felt was short lived. 

     My doctor put me on a weekly appointment schedule so that he could keep a watchful eye on my cervix. Thankfully he did that because that very next week when he checked my cervix he found that it had shrunk to a length that was dangerously low. He explained, very gently, that the only way to save our pregnancy was for me to have a cervical cerclage that very next day. 

WHHHHAT! 
And before we could think about it, I was signing hospital permission papers and getting pre -surgical blood work drawn. We drove home in silence. I remember rubbing my belly and wanting our baby more than I wanted to take my next breath. I have no idea what I did when I got home. The rest of the night was blur. 

     The next morning I woke up at 5am and my wife told me that I wasn't allowed to eat the maple brown sugar oatmeal packet that I normally eat every morning. I think it finally sunk in that I was having surgery later that day and from that point on I was pissed. I knew this was going to be a long day. 

When we got to the hospital I had more blood drawn. We were then led to a small room where I was instructed to change into a purple hospital gown. The room had two leather seats, a computer desk with a computer on it and a 19-inch flat screen television mounted on wall above the door. I was 5 months at this point and I could feel the kicking and moving around because he was hungry. 

But I wasn't hungry I was "hangry". (hungry + angry=hangry). Actually, I was hangry and super nervous. I was about to have surgery on my cervix while being pregnant....ummm that is some crazy shit! After about 10 minutes of waiting in the little changing room the anesthesiologist came in and explained the procedure to my wife and I. She made a point to tell me that I would be awake during the entire procedure. She further explained that because I was 5 months pregnant she couldn't put me under local anesthetic because of the potential damage to the baby's development.    

O.K. prepare yourself for this shit. 

     She then explained that she was going to walk me into the operating theatre and help me onto the table. (Remember I was 5 months pregnant right?) Then she said she was going to have me sit on the edge of the operating table so she could insert the spinal tap into my spine and then gently lay me back down so she could administer the medicine. O.K. so this happens and to be honest it wasn't that bad. I don't have a needle phobia of anything so the spinal tap didn't hurt at all. When she inserted the needle into my spine she told me to hold my breath and remain completely still. It was kinda crazy, because I felt the needle enter my spine and when it reached a certain point I felt a sharp jolt over my entire body. Now that I'm thinking about it, I probably should have asked her about that but I didn't. (Kanye West Shrug.)  I mean it didn't feel like I was getting a relaxing swedish massage or anything but it wasn't the worse thing in the world. 

The worse pain I have ever felt was coming in about 5 minutes and I didn't even know it. 

      The anesthesiologist asked me to tell her what I felt as the medicine began to make the lower half of my body numb. I remember my butt feeling numb. My legs were sort of warm. But my vagina was not warm or tingling. It felt normal. Little did I know, it wasn't supposed to feel normal. It was ~supposed~ to be completely numb. It wasn't. And I unfortunately didn't realize this until the doctor started sewing up my cervix. 

Now let me explain something to whomever is reading this blog post. I am no wimp. I have felt pain in my life but this pain was something I could never fully describe by using mere words but I will do my best. 

     After our doctor came in and greeted me, the nurses put my legs in some elevated stirrups that made my legs hang open and high above his head. He told me to take a deep breath and then he started. I watched as he took a needle the size and shape of a mattress needle and threaded it with some sort of black thread. He told me to take a deep breath and I felt him stick it through one side of my cervix. 

I screamed! 

It hurt soooo bad. It was pain like I have never experienced in my life. 

I screamed out...

(I am feeling dizzy as I write this because I am reliving this moment as I try to describe it you.)

My doctor continued to sew my cervix closed and I screamed each time as he pierced back and forth through my cervical skin. 

I screamed. I cried out. 

I screamed for him to stop. 

At one point he stopped sewing and asked "Are you feeling pain or pressure?" I was so dazed that I couldn't speak. I managed to say "I don't know just stop". But I knew he couldn't. The anesthesiologist grabbed my hand he started sewing my cervix again. It hurt so bad. The pain was unbearable...indescribable.

I cried some more.

The anesthesiologist told me to look at her and she began to ask me questions about the baby. I suspect she did this at an attempt to distract me from the MOTHERFUCKING excruciating sewing that was occurring inside my vagina. 

I screamed. 

I cried. 

He continued. 

It hurt. 

      After what felt like hours of unbearable pain (he later explained that the entire surgery only took about 10 minutes), he pushed back from the operating table and said "I'm done". He walked out of the room very quickly. 

I was still screaming. I was crying in agony. 

In between the sobs and wails of pain, I asked for pain medicine. The anesthesiologist and the operating nurses looked at me with such pity in their and said "we can't give you anything sweetie because you are pregnant. I'm sorry."

I screamed out and felt my child kick inside my stomach. I had just lived through the most harrowing and torturesome 10 minutes of my life annnnnd he was still hungry. 

But he was alive and so was I. Thank God! 

      I was wheeled to the recovery room and left to "rest". There was NO resting. There was screaming and crying and wailing and howling from the pain. It was unbearable. The baby was kicking inside and I was in so much pain. How can two polar opposite feelings exist at the same moment? It was mind boggling. I screamed at the nurses to help me. I screamed out in so much pain that the other patients in the other rooms demanded that I be moved because I was disturbing their recovery. I didn't care. I was in pain. I wasn't being oppositional for the hell of it! The nurses knew that and after 30 minutes of screaming in sheer agony, they gave me some medicine that was the equivalent of Tylenol. They couldn't give me morphine because....once again...I was 5 months pregnant and anything stronger would harm the baby. 

Allow me to be perfectly clear here.

This medicine did NOT take the pain away. It only took the edge off so I could fall asleep. I only slept about 20 minutes because the Tylenol wore off very fast. When I woke up, my wife was by my side and was going crazy because I was sobbing and writhing in pain. She yelled in out in full patois to all the nursing staff to help me but no one responded. No one had any answers. Finally after about 4 hours of me screaming in pain, the nursing staff called my doctor who performed the surgery to come down to my recovery room. When he reached my bedside, my wife was at the ice machine getting me some ice. He appeared at side of my bed and grabbed my hand and softly said "I'm sorry. You had some bad anesthesia. She didn't know what she was doing." 

My wife then appeared with a cup of ice and doctor told her was sorry and quickly left the room.  

Just let that sink in a bit.....

The rest of the day was a blur. I was in gut wrenching pain the rest of the evening. They told me I wasn't going to be allowed to go home until I urinated on my own. So after 5 hours of laying on that torture bed my wife helped me get up and I inched my doubled over pregnant body to toilet and peed. That was one of the most painful urinating experiences I have ever felt.  

The reality of the situation was that I had just had vagina surgery and MY ANESTHESIA FAILED! 

The spinal tap didn't take....or so I thought. We later find out that my anesthesiologist was a resident student and wasn't experienced at administering spinal anesthesia. 

Awesome. 

      After this agonizing surgery, I managed to walk out of that hospital, get in and out of the car and walk into the house. It took me 20 minutes to walk down the 3 steps that led into my doorway. My vagina hurt so bad I winced and screamed with every step. My mom was in the house when we got home but she couldn't stay in the same room with me because she was too disturbed by my screaming. She had to leave. 

I saw tears in her eyes through my tears in mine.

My poor wife made me some oatmeal, gave me some pregnancy safe prescription pain medicine and held my hand until I screamed / cried myself to sleep. 

Healing from this surgery was a grueling experience. I couldn't walk to the bathroom (or anywhere else) by myself so my mom, cousin, best friend and wife took alternating days off work to take care of me. And being that I was pregnant I had to pee every 5 minutes! The burning and tearing sensation was insufferable. It felt like I was peeing razors blades and chain saws. 

But I healed...eventually.

Thank God.

It was hard....so unbelievably hard.

I never cried out from pain so much in my life. 

The human body is amazing machine. 

How could I be hurt so badly in one area and also be growing a wonderful life in another at the same time? 

The bright side of this situation was that since I experienced this dreadful surgery, I was no longer scared of going into labour. Because what ever contractions felt like, I KNEW they could not be worse than having cervix surgery WITHOUT anesthesia while being 5 months pregnant.