I am NOT okay! (5 Weeks + 1 Day / 13 Days UIRTW)

I know I may seem hysterical and melodramatic, but I really don't think I am. In fact, one time one of my best friends from college wrote me a letter (back in the day of letters) telling me that when it came to trying to decipher my emotions, I was a 'Houdini.' This happened as a result of the fact that I went to visit her in California after we graduated from college, and had a great time. Unfortunately, I didn't write her a thank-you note soon enough telling her that I had had a great time, and apparently I didn't make it obvious enough that I had had a great time while I was there, and she interpreted my lack of prompt thank-you note to mean that I had had a terrible time, and wrote me a nasty letter telling me that she was sorry I had had such a terrible time. The sort of funny thing is that her letter and my thank-you letter crossed in the mail. Right after she sent her letter, she got mine, and promptly wrote me an apology, but said that I was a 'Houdini,' so how could she have known what I was thinking?

So this blog is evolving into a blog about everything except for my hip. If you are really reading this out of interest for hip arthroscopy, I do apologize.

At any rate, I feel like I need to tell a story to put what I am about to write into context. Fortunately, I've already written the story. It is here: http://39andhip.blogspot.com/p/somethings.html. The first paragraph. Yesterday I mentioned that I was nervous about taking an anticoagulant because of my occasional propensity to hemorrhage. The irony is that I stopped that entry to eat dinner, then in the middle of dinner, it started. It was as if I brought it on by writing about my worries. Now, I do realize that A. I stopped taking my birth control pills on Thursday night after the initial concern over having a blood clot, and I have not taken them since then, which could mess up my cycle; and B. I am on an anticoagulant, which will likely make me bleed more than normal. However, I am NOT okay with how much blood I have lost between last night and today. The thing is that it isn't necessarily alarming in itself - I am not bleeding to death - BUT, it is literally exactly the same as it was after my daughter was born, and that did not end well. And that feeling of losing a bowlful of Jell-O out of my uterus is something I don't care to experience again in my lifetime. It's worse than the shot in the stomach, and even worse than the cortisone shot, not to mention it is damn messy. My doctor kept telling me I would be okay, and ultimately I guess I was (I'm here to tell the story, after all), yet I was NOT okay with how it ended - with a lot of trauma and a totally unnecessary $10,000 hospital stay.

I'm also feeling a little put off because I feel like I've been voicing concern for my leg pain for a long time now, and everyone told me it would be okay. And because I try very hard to NOT be hysterical and melodramatic, I just went with the flow and tried really hard to be positive about it, even though my gut felt like I should not be having that much pain so long after the surgery. And look where that got me. My gut was right; there WAS something wrong. And while I am okay - again, 'okay' as in I'm NOT DEAD or permanently disabled - I'm sort of NOT okay with the fact that I had a blood clot that likely went undiagnosed for four weeks and now extends into my proximal femoral vein, which makes it much more risky to be toting around.

And for this same reason, I'm sort of NOT okay with everyone telling me this bleeding is going to be fine. And I'm sort of NOT okay with everyone telling me this blood clot is going to be fine. Of course, I absolutely hope everyone is right and I am wrong, but most other times when I have felt like I feel now, I'm the one who has been right.

So. I went and saw my orthopedist today. Before my appointment, I stopped by the PT room and brought my therapist some flowers from the yard, just as a little thank you for... well, finally realizing that things might NOT be okay. He was his usual stoic self, but who am I to talk? LOL.

At my appointment, I told the medical assistant about my bleeding so I at least didn't have to bring it up directly with the doctor. She reacted exactly like I figured she would: she told me it would be okay. I'm soooo sick of everyone telling me this, I just burst into tears after she left the room. I am not kidding. And even though I tried and tried and tried, and pulled out every stress management technique I have ever attempted (there are a lot of them), I could not stop crying before the doctor came in. And I cried the whole time he was in the room, which was fortunately only about three minutes. After the appointment, I kept on crying. In fact, I saw the doctor at 11:30, and it is now 3:30 and I am still crying. If I were more lucid, I would be really embarrassed, but at this point I don't even really care that much. My orthopedist didn't seem to care too much, either. He just kept talking at me as I kept crying, and it didn't matter that I wasn't paying that much attention because he wasn't telling me anything useful anyway. A summary of what he said:

• These things happen; there was a 1% chance of developing a blood clot, and I did. But it's going to be fine.
• We'll get you through this. (Yeah............. right. I'll get myself through this.)
• The bleeding is probably nothing to worry about, and it's going to be fine, but if I'm really worried ( = that much of a hypochondriac), I should see my (nonexistent) OB/GYN.
• My hip seems great.
• I should keep doing PT - I should not let the blood clot get in the way of my hip rehab. 
• Do you need some Kleenex?

A few additional points:

• If I had had my wits about me, I would have had the doctor look at my incisions, which seem a little infected to me, but... I'm sure they are fine, just like everything else. 
• I GET that an orthopedist, especially a young male orthopedist who for all I know is a virgin, doesn't know much about vaginal bleeding. At the same time, I am SO SICK of people being sooo specialized in their jobs that they literally can't tell you ANYTHING about ANYTHING other than the one little teeny tiny area they specialize in. It's no wonder my students are always asking me bizarre medical questions, as if I should know the answer to a mystery that stumped someone with at least seven freaking years of medical education and training.
• On a side note, one of my friends and former colleagues left the university to go to PA school. As a gay male, let me tell you he was dreading the OB/GYN rotation like nothing else, ha ha ha. Thinking back on the conversation we had about it at least got me to stop crying for a minute. :) (The way I see it, females are at an advantage because they have all those parts. And straight men have at least played around with all those parts!)
• The doctor did try his hand at due diligence, and asked around the office and came back to me with the name of an OB/GYN some of the females recommended.
• But, I'm sooooo over doctors right now. The last thing I have the time or energy for is another useless appointment. If everyone else is right, and the bleeding is just because I stopped taking the birth control, then it will stop within the next few days. If my gut is right, I will end up having a massive hemorrhage, and I will have to go to the ER where I will just see the OB/GYN on call, so it doesn't matter.

All I can say is that if my gut is right, I hope I bleed out all over my orthopedist's carpet and not my own.