Here's snippets from "Adrienne's" Story (Emphasis added by me.):
My back story: I'm a thirty-something professional woman with a younger live-in boyfriend who is still in school for his B.A. We have been together for over three years now, and had lately gotten careless about protection. ....
So I told my SO, and we talked about what to do. He thought he might want to have children someday, but felt very strongly about waiting until he had graduated and found a job, and until we were legally married (and marriage also has to wait until he graduates). I strongly considered giving up the child up for adoption, but after reading some online stories from mothers who gave up children and later wished they hadn't, I changed my mind. .... Since I didn't want to force a pregnancy on my SO, and I didn't know if I could emotionally handle giving up a child in adoption, we decided on an abortion. ....
Fortunately, there is a clinic that uses Mifeprex nearby to our home. SO and I went there together.... We went in, I filled out paperwork, and I paid with my credit card. ....
My state's law mandates a 24-hr waiting period, but the clinic kind of winked at it. They give you the abortion meds to leave with that day, but give you a dosage schedule as though you weren't going to start taking them until the next day. .... If I experienced extraordinary pain or bleeding, I was to call the clinic's emergency line. She said something interesting too: I asked her about going to the emergency room if I were bleeding too much or in too much pain, and she said, "No, they won't know how to take care of you there."
As SO and I left the building, I took the Mifeprex. .... During the three day waiting period, I wondered sometimes if I felt *too* good. Did it really work? Then three days later, on Saturday afternoon, I took the Misoprostol. And that's when things started to get bloody. ....
.... I remember lying on my stomach just moaning in pain and crying, just wishing I could somehow just go unconscious until it was all over. My poor SO, who was terribly frightened and worried at this point, called the clinic's emergency line again and again and finally got hold of the OB-GYN on call. SO talked him into calling in a prescription for Tylenol 3 with Codeine to the nearest pharmacy. .... All I could do was lie in bed, grit my teeth against the pain, and wait for my SO to bring me the medicine.
While I was waiting for SO to return, I passed a blood clot that was approximately the size of a walnut. I am pretty sure that this clot contained almost all of the pregnancy tissue. .... SO *finally* arrived home with the Tylenol 3, and it made all the difference in the world! Finally, my cramping pain went away, and I was able to relax and sleep.
.... This morning I took another pregnancy test. Negative. What a relief! It was an ordeal, and SO and I both sometimes wonder about the baby that could have been. But overall, I feel that we made the right decision, and I have no deep regrets or guilt. And I'm happy to say that my SO was supportive and helpful through the whole thing, and was a good nurse to me when I was going through the worst of it. I think that the experience actually brought us closer together.
Just a medical comment -- the way this facility is passing out the medications, to be taken at home with no medical supervision, is asking for trouble. That's how Brenda Vise and Holly Patterson wound up dead.
And the, "Sweetie, don't go to the emergency room. They won't know how to treat you!" line. What a crock! They should tell the truth and say, "Sweetie, don't go to the emergency room. We like to keep our little snafus amongst ourselves!" Yeah, they're so concerned about you, they tell you not to go to the ER, then your boyfriend has to call again and again and again to get in touch with somebody. Ah, those champions of women's health and lives! They're just so selfless!
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