I should begin by sharing that I’m fine. Really. I am in a hospital window in this photo, staring out at my view of a boring, gravel pad of river stones enclosed by four stories of boring tan brick on all sides. A door across from me opens onto a little sidewalk which I am surprised to see is littered with cigarette butts considering we are in a hospital. I assume the employees come here when they are overworked and under-appreciated and exhausted, when they have patients who shout at them, which I assume happens all the time.  

As a matter of fact, I just heard it happen a few days ago as it flew out of my own mouth.  

“Are y’all just taking bets on whether my pressure’s gonna bottom out or I’m gonna get an embolism first before somebody comes in here to turn the alarms off?”

I was tied to a dripping bag on an IV pole on one side and heart monitor on the other, the screens arguing about which one got to kill me first. The receiver I yelled into was stretched as far away from the wall as it would go, the cord a tightrope connecting me with the nurse’s station. Gripping the little speaker with one hand, and protecting my IV from ripping out of my arm with the other, I contorted the rest of my body into an indelicate and grossly immodest yoga pose trying to get the door to the hallway open with my foot as I called for help.  I had placed my bet on bottoming out, and if I was going to lose consciousness, I wanted someone in the hallway to see it before the embolism hit. 

To be fair, my pressure had fallen somewhere into the 80s-over-50s, and the IV bag had a bright red “AIR IN LINE” warning flashing on the screen. To be fair, the hospital ER was busy and I was already fighting to get someone to listen to me generally, not just in this moment. To be fair, this was my second visit in three days. 

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The view outside this window is not one I signed up for when Tim and I packed up to travel.  I’m pretty sure the schedule says that right about now, I’m supposed to be showing off the views from The Grand Teton, which is my favorite mountain in America, which I have never touched before, which I will now have to wait another year to visit. 

Instead of walking on Grand Teton, I’m in recovery from surgery, several days into being treated for sepsis with an antibiotic resistant bacteria caused by a pregnancy i didn’t know about until I lost it to a half-assed miscarriage. 

A month ago, I had visited a clinic in Montana after passing a blood clot, and confirmed through bloodwork that i was pregnant, and not pregnant, again. My labs suggested it had been very early, and we assumed nothing would be visible on ultrasound. 

The next day a Covid infection wiped me out. I slept for 32 of the next 48 hours and I was post-viral and immuno-suppressed, so when my body decided it would not let go of the house it had built and the tiny babe inside, an infection grew in my uterus instead, moving to my bladder, and eventually my blood before I had any symptoms. 

So instead of photos of me walking the rocky footpath of a Teton this week, I’m staring at what looks like a fancy prison courtyard filled with commercial riverstone gravel, and this is the only picture you get. I can’t see the horizon, but I can feel the sun when I decide to sit in the window. I don’t mind it.  I slow down and sit without doing.  I accept this. 

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This was our second loss this year.  I thought the grief would have been more difficult to bear for these babies because of how lucky we had been to conceive them, but the truth is, I felt more grateful for the days I spent with them than sad for the ones we missed out on.  

All babies deserve to be carried for as long as they need us, and the mother in me made quick peace with their losses, knowing I had carried them for every day they required. I was sad not to meet them on the outside, but glad to have been the recipient of the gifts they brought me.  These wee humans change us and our lives when we permit it. They teach us how to be patient. How to love differently.  How to slow down. How to accept.  Whether they continue to live on earth’s side or not, they count. I am grateful to have gained this perspective through my life. 

I recovered from Covid quickly, but continued to spot blood every day for the next 30 days, and while I knew this was atypical, I also thought that at 43, my hormones were probably disregulated, and without any other abnormal symptoms like smells or pain, I thought I was just being patient. 

But when I woke on Saturday with a fever, full body pain, chills, and an exhaustion indescribable, I knew I had waited too long.  I said to the doctor upon my arrival to the ER,  “I’m fairly certain I have retained a miscarried pregnancy, and that I am septic as a result, and that I need a D&C.” 

Six hours later he high-fived me for scoring a UTI on my urine test, congratulated me on a bladder infection and discharged me faster than a .40 caliber bullet. 

He seemed so confident. I was hopeful.  This was simple. Maybe the spotting was pretty normal after all, and the arid climate of the desert had made me dehydrated enough to cause a UTI. But as we pulled away in the truck, I noted my fever was still 102.5 and thought to myself, “but isn’t your bladder like, right next to your uterus?”

As it turns out, it is.

They called the next morning on Sunday to let me know that my blood had grown bacteria in a petri dish. Tseudomonas aeruginosa was antibiotic resistant, and it boasted a mortality rate of 20-40%. 

Granted, this was typically a bacteria that went after sick people in hospitals, and I am active, and healthy, and willing to yell at people. So my risk was lower by a lot, but it wasn’t zero or close to it, and I was afraid. Still, the massive dose of IV antibiotics they had given me Saturday in the ER proved effective enough to bring my fever down, and we trusted we were on the right plan. 

I felt good enough to let Tim drive me to the mountain on Monday morning at 4am to watch the sun come up and over Grand Teton. We watched a peregrine falcon hover in the sky like a hummingbird, hunting for its breakfast. I wanted to stay and watch, but I felt a wave of chilly exhaustion wash over me, and when I stood up after making my way to pee behind a sagebrush, a small pool of blood collected underneath me instead. I knew I would not be returning to touch the mountain this year.  The sun had not yet made its way over the ridge line. 

“Thank you for bringing me here.  I think we should go home.”

On the way, I called the ER.

“I was there Saturday afternoon and I am taking antibiotics for sepsis and a bladder infection.  My fever is gone, but my urine is more concentrated now, and I have discomfort I didn’t have before in my pelvis and my kidneys.  I have started to bleed a lot of bright red blood. It felt like a change I should call about to update my doctor. “

A quiet moment as I held my breath waiting for the nurse to respond. 

“Okay,” he said.  “Thanks?” 

I hung up and rolled my eyes. The interns had started in July. But I knew something wrong. 

And so a few hours later, after a series of calls to family, a return visit to the ER, an ultrasound, a pelvic exam, and a forceps extraction of old greying tissue from my uterus onto a silver tray, I was finally sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, and this view became the postcard I would wake up to until my sepsis was fully resolved.  

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The Women’s Center in East Idaho RMC is like any other labor and delivery ward in any other hospital.  They have the nicest rooms, the biggest bathrooms, extras like bathrobes and slippers, and a complimentary snack bar. At first I wondered if my placement there rather than the ICU was some sort of VIP treatment to keep my complaints about the Emergency Department to a minimum,  but then I remembered I qualified rightfully to be there.

Because of course, the Women’s Center is also where they have all the babies.  All the tiny first cries happen there in the night. All the rooms have beautiful pictures of growing families, and they have the best and kindest and strongest nurses in the hospital.  They have to be strong. They see us at the times in our lives we are most joyful, and at the times we are most destroyed. Because the L&D ward is also the place they care for women whose babies never cried at all. 

The nurses and I got along like old friends.  They came into my room for long stretches of time, and we told stories of our children. They listened to my birth stories and asked me about travel life. They said I was a great patient, and I expressed my deepest gratitude for their kindness and care over me, the attention they paid to all my symptoms. They were advocates and protectors who would make sure I returned to my three living babies at home. They understood. 

I told them i planned to score them a 12/10 for patient care, but a 0/10 for the number of sweet, squishy babies I had been able to peep going past my door.  

It was my second night on the floor when I realized they had put me on this quiet hallway, all alone, on purpose.  Away from any crying babies who might trigger my heart to shatter, they attempted to shelter me from what I had lost.  It was so considerate, and so thoughtful, and so unnecessary. That night, I took a walk around the ward, hoping to sneak the view of a soft little head peeking up over a swaddle, or listen to the first exercise of a brand new set of lungs to pick my heart up.  But it must have been the quietest week for births Idaho Falls has ever seen, because this place created to bring forth life was full of closed doors, and I stood alone in an empty hallway. 

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We had planned for me to stay just a night or two until the full course of my sepsis treatment was complete, and to give my uterus time to recover from the ER room extraction. I was feeling much better, my fever was gone, and at least for now I was confident I wouldn’t die from a blood infection or from bottoming out after an embolism.  I was healthy.  I convinced my doctor to move my repeat ultrasound to Tuesday night instead of Wednesday morning in the interest of leaving as soon as possible when the sun came up. And when the ultrasound technician took way more time than she should have to take way more images than she should have, I told myself they were CYA pictures.  They wanted to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was okay before letting me leave again, of course. 

But at 5am, a nurse walked into the room and let me know the doctor would be coming around soon to discuss my results, casually changing the ‘Can I eat?” designation on my board from “no restriction” to “nothing by mouth” which means “we don’t want this one aspirating any stomach contents while she’s in surgery,” and I burst into tears.

It followed that the ultrasound revealed a mass still in my uterus, which was the primary source of my sepsis infection, and that i needed a D&C procedure to finally put an end to the havoc in my body. I didn’t know whether to cry or scream. It had taken them four days to find out what I told them from the beginning. 

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Now that it was an emergency for the hospital and not just for me, my room became a buzz. I wouldn’t have time to shower, a team of nurses stood outside the door waiting for me to remove my jewelry and change into a gown. Paperwork appeared. Transport arrived. 

Is surgery more dangerous when you have infected blood? 

I spoke to Tim for only a few seconds on the phone before they tapped their wrists, hurrying me along. I told him I loved him enough times to make it awkward.

And for the first time all week, it was quite  routine after that.  Predictable, normal. A Dilation and Curretage is a simple outpatient procedure sometimes used in abortions, but more usually to manage the delivery of babies who have already passed, and is performed with sensitivity under general anesthesia.  My doctor used extra ultrasound guidance during my surgery to ensure this would be the final solve in the series of their efforts to fix me, and remarked afterwards in the recovery room how necessary it had been, how snugly my baby had buried itself into the walls of my uterus, and how difficult it proved for him to ensure the complete removal of something I had held onto for so long. 

“I really struggled with it, ” he said.

“I’m sure you did.” 

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On Wednesday night, finally at home, I taught March to play rummy and let him fall asleep in my lap. He had reached for me a hundred times since I got home, placing little kisses all over my face, saying “mama, I just need to hold your hand.” He asked to see pictures of my mother, and cried because he never got to meet her. 

Charlie came up with twelve topics to discuss until late in the night. How she likes to sleep. What she wears to bed and why.  What kind of art project she’s working on. What I thought we might eat for lunch the following day. 

Finally she said, “I’m sorry to keep talking a lot. I just wanted to talk to you a lot tonight because I thought you were never coming home.”

And we put our arms around each other and cried together for a while because it was the first time anybody had said it out loud. 

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We have all been recovering together at home in the RV the last two days.  It’s been remarkable to witness the kindness and support of so many.  My sister reserved fancy resorts for us to stay in so that Tim doesn’t have to source activities for the kids or manage our solar power.  The campground hosts have offered flexibility on arrivals and departures.  My work family has made it easy to order takeout instead of cooking. My babies and I are wrapped in blankets together. I am surrounded by love.

I’ve been on 6 different antibiotics in as many days, but we are confident the two I’m taking now will clear what remains of my blood infection as well as the anaerobic infection in my uterus. My energy is depleted to absolute zero, and it has taken all my waking time to write this down. When I started it, I didn’t even know about my surprise surgical ending yet. I have been afraid to rest, but am resting nonetheless.  I have had fears about resurgence of bacteria in my sleep, even though probably, things are fine. I carry a thermometer with me back and forth to the bathroom, to the truck, to the bed. Tim reminds me every time he hears the little beep that I’m okay.  I know it will pass, and that soon I will be able to believe I am not sick anymore. 

And I have been making peace.

At a cellular level, my system is recovering from oxidative stress and whole body inflammation. I walk like I’m an 80 year old woman, eat like a 16 year old boy, and sleep like a fresh newborn, in complete oblivion.  

I will be exhausted for many days to come. 

I will be grateful for every one.