Other people's pregnancies couldn't possibly be like this.
I recognize the irrational nature of that thought. I know it's almost definately not true, and that I'm the zillionth woman to create life. That statistically speaking at least some other pregnancies are like mine, are like me at this moment in time.
However that refrain will not leave my head.
I began having serious abdominal pain a week ago. It took me 5 days to finally break down and seek help, at which point the forceful advice given by the nurse on the other end of a phone line was: "Go to the ER. Now. Get someone else to drive you."
The reason it took me almost a week to seek help is that my brain lies to me. Living with anxiety is like having to constantly be the referee to your own psyche. How much panic is too much? Is this actually a problem or am I blowing it out of porportion? If I swing to the far cautious side of panic, will the ER docs roll their eyes and laugh at me for wasting their time? If I don't act cautious and give in to my panic, will I die from some undiagnosed internal bleeding?
These are all actual thoughts that went through my head. On constant loop. It's incredibly difficult to balance reality and perception, to gauge how much of what I'm feeling at any given time is legitimate or crazy. The most pessimistically implausible scenarios not only seems completely plausible to me, they feel probable. There may only be a 1% chance that the stabbing pain in my head is a tumour, but for an instant my mind fully accepts the probability that it's a tumour which will kill me. All it takes is that instant, and the idea is planted. Rooting it out takes a large shovel, an incredible amount of effort, and maybe some weed-eater.
If someone doesn't pick up their phone, it's completely plausible that they've been in a car accident and are surrounded by paramedics trying to push their organs back in, unaware of their name or medical history because their wallet was burned up in the fire from the car crash. No one will be able to identify them, and they'll be in the morgue labled as "John Doe".
Rationally I know this is improbable. But my brain doesn't, so it takes constant policing to bring my mind back in line with reality.
So when the medical system sluggishly leaves me in limbo for days on end, with no explanation other than "Here's a list of 4 possibilities. One will kill your body, one will kill your soul. Fingers crossed it's not those two!". And then send you home to wait and wait and wait... My brain wins and the implausible scenarios become probable.
Grief interrupted. Arrested development. Incredibly painful.
