My Recurring Nightmare

Bleeding out, and what happens when you can't get lifesaving care

Over the last few weeks I’ve had a recurring dream (nightmare) that I am bleeding, and I can’t get it to stop. I typically get them around the time I get my period (the blood is triggering), and this is because in early 2020, that did happen to me, two weeks after I had a baby.

It was the first day I had left the house after giving birth. I got dressed. I went to Trader Joe’s. I had myself a little day, while Craig stayed home with our 2 week old infant. I had stitches that were mostly healed but was still wearing pads for light bleeding. When I got home, I felt exhausted, and then I started gushing blood. I sat on the toilet for a while hoping it would stop. It didn’t. I laid in bed in pain, thinking maybe that would help. I bled all over our mattress.

I finally decided to call my doctor’s office and explained the situation to the nurse on call. She said she’d call in a prescription for me to stop the bleeding, and I could go pick it up that night. Frantically I called CVS trying to explain I needed this medicine ASAP, but they didn’t have it in stock, and couldn’t get it until the next day.

I called the office again, and explained I needed to speak to a doctor (it was after hours). A doctor (not mine) answered the phone and I explained my situation attempting to remain calm but also trying to be clear this didn’t seem good. “Should I go to the ER?” I asked. “Yeah that’s probably a good idea,” they replied.

When they immediately took me in at the ER despite a full waiting room, my stomach dropped. This can’t be good. There were no doctors available, so I had to wait for one to come from another hospital. I sat in the room gushing blood while young nurses stared at me blankly, they looked more scared than I was. Eventually the doctor arrived and told me I needed a D&C (dilation and curettage) to remove the remaining placenta from my uterus.

That night I underwent the procedure, and because they couldn’t stop the bleeding, they inserted a uterine balloon filled with fluid. I spent days in the hospital and received multiple blood transfusions because I lost so much blood. I thought I was going to die, but I lived.

The common procedure that saved my life, a D&C, could have saved Amber Nicole Thurman. But she was a Black woman, living in Georgia, where performing that procedure had become a felony, with few exceptions. Amber Nicole Thurman was just 28-years-old. She had a 6 year old son, and an entire life ahead of her. Georgia’s abortion ban killed Amber Nicole Thurman (and Candi Miller).

This week, a Judge in Georgia struck down the state’s 6 week abortion ban, in a stunning ruling that truthfully, I read in it’s entirety (including most of the footnotes).

Whether one couches it as liberty or privacy (or even equal protection), this dispute is fundamentally about the extent of a woman’s right to control what happens to and within her body.

…Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote.

…For these women, the liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they serve as human incubators for the five months leading up to viability. It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could -- or should -- force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.

While this ruling is good news, it couldn’t save Amber or Candi’s lives. It is also very unlikely that this is the final word on abortion care in Georgia.

There are just 34 days left until the election. Republicans not only support abortion bans, they claim sole responsibility for enacting them across the country. Maternal mortality is higher in states with abortion bans. Abortion bans are killing women, and they will continue to do so. Project 2025 the roadmap for another Trump presidency, aims to end abortion and abortion medication entirely.

In Louisiana, misoprostol – a drug used for medication abortion and other lifesaving purposes – will be labeled a controlled substance beginning on 1 October. One of its uses is keeping patients from bleeding out after childbirth, which is the No 1 cause of postpartum mortality.

Yet physicians cannot keep controlled substances in their emergency carts, and they fear they won’t have enough time to fill prescriptions for patients when minutes and even seconds make the difference between life and death.

If you are a person with a uterus, this affects you. If you are someone that loves someone with a uterus, this affects you too. And if you think women should have the right to control their own bodies, and to access life-saving healthcare, there’s only one choice. Republicans will not protect women. They are actively trying to control us, even if it means we wind up dead. In 34 days I will vote for Kamala Harris. The alternative is a nightmare I don’t want to wake up to.

P.S. Who is watching the VP debate tonight? I am most likely choosing peace and not going to watch, but we’ll see what kind of self-sabotage I’m up to at bedtime!