I stepped in the shower. It's cancer. I have cervical cancer or ovarian cancer or one of those cancers that never shows any signs and HOLY HELL I must make a doctor's appointment tomorrow. I knew I shouldn't have waited on my annual, it was due a month ago.
And then...
What if it's not. What if that pregnancy test I took two weeks ago was wrong. What if my period wasn't a period. What if the exhaustion isn't from the half marathon training. Well, then I'm miscarrying. In three pregnancies I've only bled once and it ended. Just ended.
I dry off and slip into yoga pants and a t-shirt. I hand Clif $10 and send him to the store. I stand in the kitchen waiting, googling "mid cycle bleeding," "cancer and bleeding," "bleeding while pregnant," "random female bleeding." I come up with a million different scenarios.
I text my sister. She's a nurse. She doesn't know.
Clif comes home and I take the test into the bathroom.
The positive sign appears before I can finish peeing. I'm pregnant...but I'm not, I must be miscarrying.
Two weeks I've been pregnant. Two weeks of caffeine and beer and sushi and over easy eggs. Two weeks of running 5 and 7 and 11 miles. Two weeks of crunches. Two weeks...I'm pregnant, but I'm not. I've done something wrong.
I have ultrasounds.
"Everything appears to be fine."
"This resembles a healthy 6 week fetus."
"I can see a slight flicker of a heartbeat, but I can't get a reading. It's probably just too early."
"Right now, I see no blood around the fetus."
But the blood. I was bleeding. Bleeding in pregnancy is bad. Very bad. Tell me I won't miscarry, then I'll be excited. Then I'll embrace this.
"Well, we can't say that exactly. But we have no reason at this moment to believe you will lose this pregnancy."
So I wait. I worry. I know this is ending. I won't be happy. I won't get excited. I won't tell anyone.
But I have to tell some people. My sister, my mom, a friend I am spending a weekend at a winery with. I have to tell them, because they'll know anyway.
They all say it will be fine.
But I'm sure it won't.
So I don't get excited, I try to forget that I ever even saw that positive sign. If I'm going to miscarry, it won't be like last time. I won't be a wreck, because in my mind, I'm not even pregnant. It's all a mind game anyway. Miscarriage. It's too early to feel it or know it. You just fall in love with this idea and then poof, it's just gone.
I don't get excited when I can't keep my eyes open at 6 pm. I don't get excited when I throw up my prenatal vitamins 3 nights in a row. I don't get excited when I have to move the notch on my belt buckle. I don't get excited when I see the first ultrasound, even though I can finally see the heartbeat.
I wait. At 12 weeks I'll get excited. We'll hear the heartbeat, then everything will be fine.
I am 12 weeks and 6 days when I'm sitting in the doctor's office waiting for my 12 week appointment.
There won't be a heartbeat. I know there won't. And then I'll miscarry and this will be over.
And then, just as that thought leaves my mind, a tiny little bubble deep in my pelvis.
Was that?
No.
Then another.
Yes, it was.
You are there and you're telling me to stop worrying.
Be excited.
