Okay.
It’s 10:54 pm on Jan 1, 2017, and I am just STARTING my first blog post in honor of my New Year’s Resolution to create more content and publish a weekly blog each Sunday. My goal is to actually have it written by Friday to allow time to edit the dang thing and publish it in a timely manner, but….
Today is day one. I’m pretty proud that my fingers are on the laptop and I managed to remember my login to this site.
I’m eating a coffee cup filled with black-eyed peas and drinking my first glass of red wine in over a year. I just took a long lukewarm bath in the tub of the only bathroom of my apartment, and both of my boys managed to need to use the toilet during my “mommy time”.
I didn’t mind them coming in to pee and chat.
“Mom, do other people do this too? Do they lay in a tub with candles around?”
“Mom, can I take a bath like that when you’re done?”
“Mom, do you think that bubble is all out of you now?”
I’m sure that last one sounded weird. Let me explain…
I don’t have much time. My goal was to have this blog published today–Jan 1st–and by golly good jiminy Christmas, I’m gonna have a dag-gum blog published by midnight on New Year’s Day. It’s 11:14, so I’ve got 46 minutes to get this out…
I spent 2016 as an “inhale year” to center myself and focus on my wellness, and I have absolutely no regrets about that decision. I chose to put a halt to my alcohol consumption for the entirety of the year (which I completed easily and successfully), and I chose to take a step back from many of my creative endeavors. All of my 2016 choices were made in order to focus on my wellness, with aspirations to heal, gain strength, and to foster my creativity and resilience to spring into the next year as a stronger, better, more energized artist.
I chose to put a halt to my alcohol consumption for a year.
As much as I’m honored that people took inspiration from my choice, and as much as I know how many people were paying attention to my sobriety, I don’t feel incredibly prolific regarding my experience. I may dedicate a future blog post about my non-drinking, but for right now, I’m on my second glass of red wine, and I want to talk about how I struggled with birthing a non-human just before 2016 came to an end.
It’s 11:32.
Fuck.
Fuckity fuck fuck…
Why do I do these things to myself? Right now, I’m stressing about a deadline that I CREATED! There’s not one person sitting around thinking “where in the hell is Kelly Stone’s blog? It should’ve been published by now.” BUT… I have committed to this. I have decided that this will be my thing. So, I HAVE TO DO IT!
Okay, back to passing the non-human.
Do yourself a favor. Google “Blighted Ovum”.
Now, think about how a woman in Texas, with no health insurance, would come to that diagnosis and what she’d need to go through to deal with this very biologically unfair situation.
Bleh.
Bleh, Bleh, Bleh.
Okay, here goes:
On Nov. 4. 2016, I voted for Hillary Clinton, I did the standard thing and posted an “I voted” selfie on facebook, but I chose to be a little more feminist and relate my early voting day to the pending start of my period. I have never ever posted about expecting the start of my period. However, I’d been running on a 24-day cycle ever since I attended that “Honoring Your inner Wild Woman Yoga and Surfing Retreat” and had started my period SEVEN DAYS EARLY. Anyway, I posted that I was so excited that I’d be on my period when she gave her acceptance speech. I also posted on Nov. 8th, Election Day, that I was going to start my period at any minute and that I really wanted to free bleed in my white pant suit.
Then, I went radio silent.
I did not get my period as planned.
I took a pregnancy test. FUCKING POSITIVE,
No.
No, no.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
And then
On Nov. 12th, I got sick. Fever. Chills. Shakes. Period blood. Then chunks.
WHEW!!!!
That was a close one. I’d had a miscarriage.
Thank the friggin angels and sweet sweet David Bowies in heaven. Oh man. That was close.
And then three weeks later…I STILL HADN’T GOTTEN A REGULAR PERIOD. I took a positive pregnancy test and started to flip out. I read online and saw that sometimes it can take several weeks for HCG to lower from the body. So I got a blood test to see how slowly the HCG rate was lowering out of me so that I might have an idea of when I will get my period back.
The blood test results showed that my HCG rate was as high as if all that fevery toilet deposit episode had never happened. AND I STARTED TO LOSE MY MIND.
OMG…WHAT IF I WAS PREGNANT WITH TWINS AND ONLY ONE FELL OUT AND THE OTHER ONE STAYED IN?
OMG…DO I HAVE A FRIGGIN’ MUTANT GROWING INSIDE OF ME?
HOLY SHIT! HAVE I BEEN IMPREGNATED WITH THE ANTI-CHRIST?!
You know. Very normal thoughts like that.
It’s 11:54. I gotta wrap this up.
I can’t tell you how horrific my dreams were.
My body morphed and stopped being mine. All of my hard work from finishing the Tx Water Safari was being completely undermined, and my tits just wouldn’t stop hurting.
I called around for abortion pricing.
I was completely mislead by how they each pitched in $75 in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I really did think it was about $150-250. Nah, y’all. It’s like $800. AND THAT’S WITHOUT THE BURIAL OR CREMATION COSTS ATTACHED.
Yeah. I had a “miscarriage event” on Nov. 12th, and the very next week, the first week that the new Tx Lege got together, the first policiy that was passed was that all abortions *and miscarriages* must be buried or cremated. Fucking crazy. Absolutely fucking crazy.
Goddammit. It’s 12:02.
I missed my deadline, but I’m gonna wrap this up and maybe continue on another post on another day at another time.
So, there I was at the place with the cheaper D&C pricing, having my pre-abortion ultrasound so that I could *see* the mutant that had somehow made it through the Nov. 12th miscarriage and so that I could know (or be told) what a horrible human being I was for being in such a position. There I was. After probing me at various angles with the transvaginal ultrasound wand and apologizing profusely with each readjustment, the doctor finally found an image of an empty sac.
“Um…this isn’t a viable pregnancy. It’s a blighted ovum.”
“Okay, what does THAT mean?”
“Well, it means you have options.”
I wanted to write this whole blog about what the free option–the let-it-pass-naturally-because-it-inevitably-will-come-out option–was like.
It’s now 12:16 am, and I have missed my deadline.
I’m also on my third glass of wine and my face is hot and my kids are sleeping next to me now and I’m sweating.
The doctor told me to come back after Jan 5th if it hadn’t passed by then. When I returned, I could take a pill or have D&C. Both abortion procedures. Both my only options for removal. Both regulated heavily in Texas.
I left that appointment shaking my head but also overjoyed that I could go paddle the next day rather than go in for a very invasive procedure. Then I went and picked up a new dining table and chairs from friends moving to LA before I headed to meet an old NOLA friend for coffee. I am a woman who gets stuff done, you guys. Also, It was surreal. I think I’m drunk.
It took 5 days.
It took 5 days for my blighted ovum, or what my boys came to refer to as my “bubble”, to pass.
It took 5 days for me to bleed profusely while my vadge coughed up gizzards and chicken livers and turkey necks and stuff and I had to walk around acting like everything was normal af.
It hurt.
It hurt a lot.
It hurt from Dec 27-Dec 31.
Five freaking days.
I’m still traumatized by some of the stuff that I saw fall out of me.
I’m still traumatized that one of the big cooter explosions that I got to experience was while grocery shopping at HEB with my children.
I’m still traumatized that during my morning radio show (where I attempt to image-craft a lens for my whimsical and wacky mom-lyfe), one of the other mutant bubbles burst out of me while I was alone in a DJ booth talking into the ether .
It’s 12:34 am. I’m definitely feeling this wine as well as your judgement.
Oopsy.
I shouldn’t let you know that you get to me, right? I’m so friggin. strong. And independent. Shit doesn’t get to me. Oh, but it does.
Today was the first day that I felt like I had full ownership of my mind and body again. Gosh it felt good. To be in a pregnant (but not) body that influenced a pregnant (batshit crazy but not) mind was one of the hardest things I have had to overcome this year. I’m so glad that’s over. I can’t imagine being legally obligated to collect all of those crazy things that I was finding on my pads and to somehow bury or cremate the entire collection. What a bunch of ass-hats. Those #TxLege mofo’s ain’t got no kinda idea. I actually do this stuff for a living, and I had never heard of a blighted ovum.
I learned a lot.
I learned a whole whole lot.
I’m glad it’s over.
It’s passed.
I’m ready to do the 2017 bidness, and I’m ready to do it now.