We were pregnant!

So, the first thing people ask me when they are getting to know me is if I'm married. I say and that it's been 8 years. Then they ask if we have any kids and I say 'no'. Every time I answer that question, something that happened to us last February comes to mind.

Not may people know this because it has been painful to tell but we were officially pregnant for about 5 weeks this year. Complete with 3 positive pregancy tests. EPT in fact. About 3 or 4 weeks in, Kari starts to complain about some lower abdominal pain. This is our first preganacy so neither of us knows whether its normal. Being nurses doesn't help with this either. After a while the pain becomes unbearable and we head to the ER in the middle of the night. It was such a relief to see Alana, a former nursing school collegue working in the ER at Timpanogos when we arrived.

Neither of us had been patients in a hospital, though we obviously felt comfortable due to our work. Being nurses actually really helped us understand the whole experience much better. The nurses we had were awesome, even though they were a bit nervous once they knew we were both nurses. I even helped with some of their duties when they needed it...

Ok, back to the story. After we got the ER, all we could think about was getting the pain under control. After that, we went in for an ultrasound to see what the pain was. Long story short, they couldn't find anything so they sent us home but said to come back if the pain came back. We got a referral to one of the best OB/GYNs, Julie Grover for a followup. She would be keeping a close eye on our case.

A week later to the day, the pain comes back, only worse. Kari was getting ready for work but ended up with me taking her to the ER again. This is February 13th. They did a couple of exams and an ultrasound. While in the ultrasound room, the tech called in a Dr. for a confirmation of some finding that looked round but they didn't tell us anything at that time. They wheeled us to our room back in the ER and we get word that Kari is going in for emergency surgery for a laproscopic tubule pregnancy removal. It happens to be Dr. Grover's day off, so it takes a bit for her to get there.

They wheel Kari in to the surgery and I waited in the Same Day surgery area for an hour. I'm going through all the worst case scenarios. Finally the Dr. comes in with pictures of some of the stages of the proceedure. We were worried she would loose her right fallopian tube due to the need to remove that along with the zygote/fetus/embryo. Turns out, thanks to all the prayers and priesthood blessings, they didn't have to take the tube. The worst thing was that she would have a 10% chance of another tubule pregancy. We would have to be vigilant from now on for this happening again. I was very, very grateful.

Here's the scary part. When they first found the tubule pregnancy, they estimated there was about 80cc or 3 tablespoons of "free fluid", probably blood, in Kari's abdomen. By the time the surgery was done, she had lost 800cc's! That's almost a quart, or over 2 units. The doctor said the hardest thing about the surgery was getting the bleeding to stop. SCARRY!!!! If she had gone one more day without treatment, I would have been a widower, seriously. I am soooooooooooooooo thankful for modern medicine. Words cannot describe!!!!!!

Anyway, I will spare you some of the other details but Kari is okay now. The only thing she has is three 1/2 scars on her tummy, a little bit of small bladder syndrome and a tender heart. Obviously this is very rough for her because we want kids so bad.

We can still have kids and look forward to the day when we'll be blessed with our first full term child. What this experience does for me is give me an appreciation for many things including the priesthood, our friends and family, modern medicine and most of all for Kari. I also have some understanding of what couples go through when they encounter difficulties having children.

To celebrate our happy marriage together, we're going to Disneyland for our 8th anniverary next May 19th!

Thanks to everyone who helped us through this experience!