How Did We Get Here and Where Do We Go From Here?

This series is meant to share stories, give women a place to feel heard and safe and hopefully to be able to educate. So the topic of discussion, "how did we get her and where do we go from here"?

Well, for starters, an introduction. My name is Jessica. I am 35 years old and I'm from Tennessee, by way of New York. My husband and I met in 2016 through mutual friends and after some teeth pulling, mostly by him, we started dating a few months later and got married in 2019, just before, you guessed, the world shut down. As luck would have it that afforded us some extra time together, even while working essential jobs, and we really learned about each other, so well, as a matter of fact that we were both on board with trying to start a family, even with the huge risks that the virus brought.

Well, wouldn't you know. Before we even got a change to purposefully attempt trying, although we also weren't preventing, my husband started having some health issues that we needed to address. He wasn't sleeping properly and we learned that he has sleep apnea. One, supposed to be in-and-out surgery turned into a nightmare. This surgery that was supposed to be a 2 hour surgery, some recovery time and home by dinner, was anything but. His surgery ended up taking about 3 1/2 hours and at one point i had to demand that they give me updates, because while a little more time than expected isn't too bad, twice as much time and mean issues and that's exactly what I got.

When the doctors finally let me and my mother-in-law back to see him, he was hoked up to oxygen.... Um, what? What happened to him that he needed to be on oxygen, all they needed to do was shave his septum, drain a cyst and pop an air bubble. It wasn't until my mother-in-law overheard the nurses, that we found out exactly what happened. A great number of capillaries in his lung burst because of the pressure change in his lungs during surgery, because of the oxygen and at one point his blood pressure all but bottomed out because the pain relief they administered was fentanyl. Why would a hospital be using fentanyl when they know how deadly it can be. I was so overwhelmed by what was happening around me and all the information getting thrown at me that at one point I almost passed out myself, and i usually do pretty well with hearing procedure details and holding myself together.

So finally, after an overnight stay, a doctor that had nothing to do with his care trying to force him to stay for the entire weekend after his actual doctor said he was being discharged, we were finally home and in recovery mode. Fast forward to the end of the month, recovery was going well, all follow up appointment when without a hitch and dun dun dun.... I missed my next cycle...

I MISSED MY NEXT CYCLE!! There was just something about it, something unfamiliar, but so familiar, it felt so much like what I have heard. I could just feel it in the days leading up to does Aunt Flo show up or not. that evening, I took the test and there they were those 2 pink lines. And then just like that, you go to the store and pick up vitamins, call the doctor and set up your first appointment. Then think back to that horrid day of my husband's surgery and think, "Well, that explains why I felt soo off that day and became faint." But here we were, happy as could be and gearing up for lots more doctor visits and figuring out how, when the time was right, we were going to announce the news to the family. We could finally let go of our rocky start and get to the good stuff.