Did I Get So Fat I Broke My Vagina?

I’ve been bleeding for twenty-four days. Thirty-one if you count the spotting that I originally considered to be an absent period.

I’ve been to A&E, I’ve been examined, I’ve been prescribed tablets to stop the flow. Yet still, I bleed.

“Are you trying for a baby?” the on-call gynaecologist asked, without looking up from the forms she was filling out.

OVERWEIGHT, she wrote in capitals and underlined it twice.

“No, but I want to start trying after Christmas. I’m trying to lose some weight first.” I wanted her to know I wasn’t happy with my size; that I hadn’t settled in this body.

I’m waiting for a scan. I’ve been poked and prodded (inside and out) but no obvious problems were found.

Yet still, I bleed.

The gynaecologist told me the scan would take a deeper look, but from what she could tell everything appeared as it should. I suppose she was hoping to reassure me. Dr Google told me it could be an ectopic or molar pregnancy, but without any swelling or pain that was unlikely. Lack of diagnosis only made me worry more.

“Will any of the possible outcomes make it difficult to have more children?” I knew this was a vague question, since no one really knew why I’d been bleeding for the last twenty-four days.

She told me it was too early to tell, but hopefully not. She thought there was a small chance it could be fibroids, but I wasn’t the right ethnicity or age for it to be especially likely. If it was fibroids, losing weight might help and depending on their position, I shouldn’t be infertile.

The only worry, she said, facing me in an attempt to connect, was that I might have lost so much of the lining of my womb that there wouldn’t be anything for an emybro to cling to if I fell pregnant in the coming months.

“Would losing weight help?” I was hoping my double-underlined insult of a diagnosis could be undone. Maybe I could lose the weight and erase the problem.

“Maybe,” she gave a reassuring smile, “it depends how much you lose.”

I was alone once again in the waiting area on the gynae ward. It was 12:45 a.m. and I was sitting on the disposable mat I’d been given in A&E, many hours before. Despite changing my ‘heavy flow’ pads hourly, I’d managed to bleed through the pad, my underwear, and my only clean pair of leggings. I was leaving a smudgy trail of blood everywhere I sat before the nurse brought the mat to protect my modesty/her upholstery.

In the early hours of Thursday morning, sitting on my disposable mat and wincing at my heavily bruised, cannulated arm I was feeling very sorry for myself.

Google was telling me that I’d brought my problems on myself. I hadn’t given my body the proper care it needed and it was repaying me with the first of the ten Egyptian plagues: a sea of blood. (I’m not all that familiar with the bible, but I think frogs were on that list too. I’d have preferred frogs.)

I’m not really sure where I go from here. I guess it’s just a waiting game.

I rang the ward today to tell them the tablets hadn’t worked and I was still bleeding. The nurse who answered didn’t seem too concerned but told me to ring tomorrow if it was was worse.

I’ve joined Slimming World in the hope I’ll lose a few stone before my next appointment in January. If this is weight-related then surely it should be reversible? Maybe the damage is done and things won’t go back to normal. Maybe there won’t be any more babies in my future. Maybe all I have to look forward to is pools of blood and unanswered questions.

Did I really get so fat I broke my vagina?

 

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