We are rebooting my wife.

Or, at least, that’s the best I can come up with in terms of what happened today at the doctor’s office.

We went in for a visit with Dr. Michael Faust in the Mercy Gynecologists and Birthing Specialists office. We got into him because the previous doctor Landa was scheduled to see wouldn’t touch her now that she had a miscarriage and it was time, our PhyAsst Daphne said, to see a real Gyno. So off we went at 1:30pm.

Dr. Faust is a very nice guy and very businesslike without being cold. We got right down to the fact that Landa’s HcG levels are still up (the hormone that you have in mass quantities during pregnancy) and that was bad because, after the miscarriage, it should be at zero or below. So, he suggested that we get it tested right away and he’d rush the blood test through so we could come back later that afternoon and get it tested. He said there were basically four possibilities: One, we had twins and one was still in there. That was pretty unlikely given that the ultrasound showed nothing. Two, there was an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy. That was much more likely. Three, a molar pregnancy, but the hormone wasn’t high enough for that. The fourth was a condition, but again, the hormone wasn’t high enough for that, either. So ectopic was our best bet.

The problem, of course, with ectopics is that eventually they grow too large and either burst the Fallopian tube or need to be removed by surgery. Or they flush themselves out as they grow too large. Or we could take a drug called Methotrexate which would cause whatever was still in the tube to abort.

So, we went up and had blood drawn then spent the next nervous hour and a half doing some shopping. Upon coming back, we were ushered back into an exam room and Dr. Faust came back in. He said that the level had dropped only slightly and certainly not enough to warrant relief. He said we had a choice — we could wait and see, monitor her hormone levels, and watch out for pain and so forth, or we could try the Methotrexate and that would definately clean things out if there was anything.

After much discussion, Landa decided that the Methotrexate was the best option given that she wanted to get things sorted out right away, it wasn’t going to hurt anything if there wasn’t anything there, and this way we wouldn’t have to sit around wondering if her stomach was going to explode or something bad.

The Cancer Center normally gives an IV of such things, but they were full up, and since we wanted to get it done today, we headed to the ER. After a long wait (we weren’t a high priority and they were pretty busy when we arrived), we got into a room where we learned that it was two shots, not an IV. One in each hip. So, Landa bared her sides and got jabbed with 2 needles the size of Jamaica and a dark yellow liquid shot inside. Bandaid-clad, we left the ER to quick do some shopping at Wal-mart and go home.

So now, we wait while her reproductive system reboots.

I have mixed feelings on the whole thing, even though I probably shouldn’t. It ends up that we might have had a miscarriage the first time or not. We might be flushing out a baby now or we might not. She might have an ectopic or she might not.

I’m vehemently against abortion but in the light of this, I’m not sure what to think about it. The facts are if there’s a baby there, it wouldn’t make it till term no matter what you did — ectopics don’t survive. And usually, if they’re allowed to go, they end up either severely endangering or killing the mother. There’s a good chance that the baby isn’t viable anyway — that it is previously damaged or has bad genes or whatever. There might not even be a baby there, as such, but rather just some tissue. If we didn’t do this and it ended up being ectopic, we’d be going in for surgery to have it removed, too.

So, in light of all that, I guess we’re doing the right thing as it’s the only one that ends up with a healthy Yolanda, and that is very important to me. It’s disturbing that we have to do this at all, and Dr. Faust told us that after we get this all sorted out, we’d be going back to discuss with him at length a plan for having a child, negotiating all the health-related pitfalls that Landa would likely have in the pursuit. I like that idea — a plan. Good thinking.