So I had my first truly unpleasant PIO experience tonight. I’ve been coping with a bit of a bad reaction anyway – developing allergic reaction, I think – that’s merely annoying. Red, itchy welts around the injection sites, but no big deal. So we’ve been religiously switching sides to keep the irritation to a minimum.

Tonight, when the best man-nurse in the world started to give me my nightly jab, it felt like fire being injected into me (or the damned anesthetic they used during my retrieval, come to that). So I shrieked, “Stop! Stop! Something’s wrong! Take it out!” And he did, and blood went everywhere. Ew.

(I’ll confess here – and only here – that my first, horribly unworthy thought was to wonder if eldest daughter found my meds stash and added something, like you know, Drano, to the vial. But I digress.)

So, after I reassured the boy that I would survive, and we cleaned up the just-changed sheets that got soiled, and after I grabbed a bite of dinner after my late night at work, I went into the bathroom to perform my nightly ablutions, thinking about nothing more complicated than what I was going to read before bed tonight. And there, with my panties around my ankles, I nearly died of a heart attack. Blood. Blood filling up the pantyliner I’ve been wearing to help contain the pessary-leakage. and my brain hollering: Ohmygodi’mhavingamiscarriage. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.

Until the, um, obvious answer finally dawned on my dim brain. This was from the stab wound, not anything more dire than that. I just bled way more than I thought I did, and something about the way I was lying when he gave me the shot just sort of funneled the blood into the most absorbent thing nearby. And yes, I immediately wiped frantically and confirmed that this was blood from the outside, not the inside.

But my heart’s still beating way too damned hard.

And my ass still hurts from whatever caused that track of fire feeling. Sciatic nerve or blood vessel? I’m taking bets here! Off to research!