So I don’t come across many medical (abortion pill) stories in comparison to surgical, so I thought I’d share mine with you all.
Pre-procedure
I was 20 years old, and discovered my pregnancy on the night of my 21st birthday. I couldn’t believe the little cross that appeared on the screen, I’d had pregnancy scares before, sure who hasn’t? But they’d always turned out negative. Today was different. I’d had all the symptoms, dizziness upon waking, occasional bouts of nausea in the morning, and these could no longer be ignored. It turns out what happens in Vegas, doesn’t always stay in Vegas. I’d been there the month before, and it appeared that was where this baby had come from.
I called my fiancé into the room of the hotel, and showed him the test. He was happy, he told me he’d help me support and raise the child. (He already had a previous failed marriage with a 6 year old son) I couldn’t see myself having a child at 21 with him yet. I knew for a fact I’d make an awful mother, and that I’d unfairly blame the child and him for ruining my life. It bothers me that all these anti abortion people make such a big deal about murdering unborn groups of cells with a heartbeat (Yes, they don’t have a neurological center that early on, they can’t experience pain in any fashion, despite having a fetal heartbeat, it’s just plumbing at that stage) When there are kids, with heartbeats also, brains and the ability to suffer pain, who are being beaten up/abused/neglected because of their actions. Yet they just don’t care about them, why don’t they spend less time outside the abortion clinics, and more time out at the adoption centers, making a difference by adopting all the kids without homes? Hell, if every abortion protestor adopted instead of trying to save unborn fetuses, I doubt we’d have a problem with homeless children in this country. Never let them feel bad, pro life is pro suffering, pro capital punishment, pro war, and pro death (Killing doctors in church is about as anti pro life as it gets, I think they need a new name ) Not only that but most of them are male (Once they have a womb, start bleeding/cramping each month and having to give birth, then I think we should let them have a say over what we do with our bodies) There were so many things I needed to do with my life first, get a degree, have a career, have fun with my life, and a child just wasn’t on there yet.
I explained this to my partner, and he agreed to support me whatever my decision. That’s right, it was my decision, my body and no one else’s.
So he drove me to an appointment at Planned Parenthood, which cost us nothing to look at both options of termination available. They even discussed the possibility of adoption, not that it was on the table for us, but I was pleased that they included it.
After listening to both I thought I’d go with surgical, they told us about their abortion clinic and warned us about the level of protesters surrounding it.
Once back home with all the information they gave us, I did some soul searching and internet searching. I came across your site, and read nearly every story on the site. This helped me greatly. After looking at many sites, I became increasingly worried about Planned Parenthood as my choice, the long lines, the scary protestors, and the waiting rooms with other women, and the occasional tale of someone being inhuman or emotionless with patients. So I looked for other options, of which there was luckily many in the area of Colorado that I lived in. So I ended up picking a doctor’s office, on site at a hospital. I reasoned that if something unlikely went wrong during surgery, being close to a hospital would not be a bad idea. Also because of it being on site, there were no abortion protestors anywhere to been seen.
I picked up the phone and made the appointment with a friendly lady over the phone. I waited till I was 6 weeks for the surgical then went in. Waiting for that was the hardest, I worried/cried everyday, has awful morning sickness/nausea, and couldn’t wait to be back to normal.
The clinic
The day finally came, the drive was short, and as I had hoped, there were 0 protestors to deal with, I was still nervous as anything though! I went to the 4th floor, and into a small room labeled gynecology. Inside was only one other couple waiting, the girl who looked to be in her mid-thirties, was crying her eyes out while filling out the form. I hadn’t cried at all that day, but seeing this girl suddenly made me very nervous, as if the reality of it was coming around. I got my forms from the nurse at the front desk, she was very comforting, they had sweets and tissues on the tables. I was happy that I only had to wait for one woman before me. I filled out the form, and suddenly it came to the part where it spoke about all the things that could go wrong, and the possibility of death from rare allergic reactions, blood loss or damage. I had been unsure about which option to pick before, but decided on the surgical because I thought I’d be too weak to handle the abortion pill because I had a history of anemia/general hypochondria, plus at 21 I weighed a shocking 92lbs, and only stood at 4’11, I have the body of a 14 year old roughly in shape.
I told the lady at the desk I was unsure, and she said I could go in for an ultrasound first and discuss with the doctor for my options.
I went into the room and had a vaginal sonogram, which I was worried would hurt, but it didn’t hurt at all! (and I’m a wimp!) The doctor was very kind, and anything but impersonal. He asked all sorts of nice questions, like about my accent, and then saying how he had been to London (where I’m originally from) a couple of times with his wife. It made me sad that anti abortion people label these doctors as murders, when I saw this man as very kind and understanding, and out to help women with their choices over their bodies. I was 6 weeks as I’d suspected, I looked at the sonogram picture of my baby, I couldn’t see anything that even resembled a human, literally there was a jelly bean on that screen, that was the size of the embryo, more egg like than anything human.
I asked him honestly which he in his personal opinion thought was better, abortion pill or surgical. He to my shock immediately said abortion pill. He’d been doing abortions for 25 years, and said that there is always a risk with surgical, any tool that goes into the cervix, is never going to be sterile because it has to pass through the vaginal passage which has all sorts of bacteria. He also quite honestly spoke about the rare occurrence of tearing the uterus during the procedure, which requires more severe emergency surgery to fix. Whereas the abortion pill was newer and he’d seen far less problems with it in his patients.
Well, he’d sold me, I chose to be one of the 20% that pick medical abortion over the 70% who do surgical. I told him I was worried about being too anemic. We did all the blood work, and it turned out I was 15 on the count, which is very good and high for blood. I was happy about this, did blood pressure and all those other checks, then he handed me the first pill with some water to swallow. I am awful at swallowing pills, I’d rather deal with needles than big pills, but I managed to swallow it just fine. This has been easy so far, I thought to myself!
A nurse then gave me the rest of the pills to take home (Cytotec to dissolve 4, 2 in each cheek) Vicodin for pain management and antibiotics for afterwards.
They refused me the stronger narcotic pain relief based on my Body Mass index, and the doctor was worried about my size, so told me to take only half a Vicodin at each time.
I left the clinic with a number to keep in touch with a nurse on call, and was very happy. I’d not eaten for 8 hours before because I believed I was going to have surgical, so was starving! My loved one promised to take me for a feast. Downstairs I saw the same couple from before, the girl was lying on the floor in the hospital reception in fits of tears, a plaster over where she’d had her IV. Her partner had to get the car, but was worried about leaving her there. So having known they’d seen me before, I offered to stay and look after her while he pulled the car round. He hurried off and she looked up at me. “I just had an abortion” she said, clearly still slightly drugged from the IV “I know, and you did the right thing, you were very brave and should be proud,” I said. I don’t know if she really even heard me, was like she wasn’t there, so I helped her up and sat her in an armchair until her partner came and got her. I was very glad I opted for the medical, I imagine I would have been more of a mess than she was, I don’t do well on anesthetic.
The abortion
So my man booked us into a motel close to the hospital, in case we had any problems. I had to wait 24 hours before I could take the next round of pills. I had zero problems on the first pill, and know that some people have nausea from it, I was very lucky in this respect. My partner was very supportive, he gave me a massage and we watched TV most of the night. (I was too nervous to sleep) Next day I tried half a Vicodin first at my doctor’s request. (He was worried it would make me loopy!) Luckily I had no side effects from the Vicodin, and so took the other half with no problems. I then as instructed let the 4 Cytotec pills dissolve inside my cheeks (You are meant to hold them there for 1 hour while they dissolve) unfortunately I was only able to keep them there for 20 minutes before throwing up from my first wave of nausea! I rang the nurse, worried, but she said if you can keep them in for at least 20 minutes, then you’ve done the trick! Now all I had to do was wait … I honestly didn’t have to wait long. Roughly 5 minutes later and my cramps started. I wont lie, these cramps were bad, like really painful, I rolled around the floor, unable to even talk from pain, wondering why the pain killer hadn’t worked! Suddenly I was very spiteful that they’d denied me the stronger narcotic based on my smaller body size, when all the stories I’d read, petite girls seem to get the worst pains. I imagine someone of a healthier weight than mine would experience the same pain of cramping, but for much less, on average it tends to be 3 hours. My cramps lasted a shocking 7 hours, non-stop. I passed the clots fairly early on, and the rest was just my uterus cramping the rest of the material out. The bleeding was less than some heavy periods I’d had, and manageable. My advice to someone wanting a medical, is don’t be scared by the pain, just get a good strong painkiller, and take it half an hour to an hour before you take the pills. My problem was that when I took the Vicodin, it wasn’t strong enough, and I couldn’t hold it down, if you throw up the pill it won’t be effective. However there are other ways of relief. I took a hot shower roughly every 30 minutes, this helped my cramps a lot. (Never take a bath as there is chance of infection) I also used a heating pad, which worked wonders for the heavy cramps. Really it just felt like a very heavy painful period, but nothing I don’t think I girl can’t mentally or physically deal with. Having someone there with me helped a lot also, so I’d suggest that too.
All in all I was really pleased with the abortion pill, despite the amount of time I had cramps for. I think for other girls it is much less, and that this is a great more natural feeling way to deal with an abortion, it really did feel like a miscarriage! I just finished up a few hours ago, I have a couple more appointments to make sure all the tissue was dispelled, but I’m pretty confident that it has been successful from the amount of clots, just follow the instructions and the guidelines, and you’ll be fine.
I’m the most scared/nervous/anxious person I know, I worry endlessly and even suffer panic attacks, yet I had no problems with this method, and even now after it all, think I would of had more stress under the invasive surgical procedure. So if you’re looking to decide between the two, I hope mine helps, because all in all it really was a very positive experience for me, aside from the cramps and minimal nausea, I never suffered fever, chills or anything else. I can only hope that we women continue to have such good choices out there for our body which match our needs/comforts. I still have the picture of the sonogram, and I’m anything but sorry.
