January 6: Discovery Channel

It’s a long story… You see (deep breath), as well as being pregnant, feeling very sick and tired, being dumped by the prospective father-to-be (FTB), having lots of ‘cultural’ stresses, moving city, trying to find new friends, trying to understand my feelings for an X-boyfriend, and doing my house up with the help of big skips and cheerful builders who can't quite fathom why I am slow at making decisions, I also have – or rather had - a horrid ovarian cyst. A cyst, a cyst. What an ugly word. Like mucus. Or offal. Or prolapse.
I discovered it on a ‘writer’s weekend’ away last October. Well, I can’t claim all the credit. The doctors found it really.
I was in a workshop in sunny Dorset, thinking about lunch, no doubt chewing on my Biro, when ‘Ohhhhhhh, that hurts.’
Five minutes later, I left the room at a snail’s pace. Six minutes, I was on an urgent Paracetomol hunt. Eight minutes, I was lying on the floor of the canteen, on the phone to NHS Direct. Nine minutes – after being asked my postcode several times - my workshop leader hung up and rang for an ambulance instead. Flashing lights. Siren. I just managed to crawl in before hurling everywhere. Severe abdominal cramps, I heard. Eight-weeks pregnant. Possible miscarriage? Ectopic pregnancy? Before hurling again.
Hurtling through twisty, tiny lanes; a paramedic stroking the back of my head, cooing to me like a mother to a child. Belt holding me in, oxygen on.
I remember being wheeled into A and E, being fitted with bleepers and wires and gas and air; a big hustle and bustle.
After hours of no comfort or pain relief besides kind people stroking the back of my hand, the doctors came (never be ill on a weekend). My pregnancy hormones were still high – so probably not a miscarriage. But what then? Morphine, beloved morphine, then trickled into my veins. They must have figured my need greater than the baby’s. At last, the pain evaporated and I was wheeled to a ward for a scan.
Poor me, you may think. What about my tutor? She got the fun job of ringing my mother, who was several hundred miles away in John Lewis eating a cake.
The phone conversation must have gone something like this:
‘Hello Mrs XXXX. Sorry to bother you. You don’t know me. I’m your daughter’s tutor. In fact, I only met her this weekend. This may come as a shock but your daughter is actually eight-weeks pregnant (sorry she hasn’t told you yet).
‘Oh, and she’s also in A and E in excruciating pain, having a possible miscarriage or something worse and life-threatening.
‘And no, the doctors haven’t come yet but the nurses are very nice and there’s good coffee in the machine.
‘You may want to drive the four hours down here to see her?
‘Oh, but don’t rush. Enjoy your cake. They’re good in John Lewis, aren’t they.’
Mum came. As did Father To Be (FTB), who was on his way up north to celebrate Diwali.
At midnight, they scanned me. An ovarian cyst, they said. A big one. The size of a grapefruit. Nice. Something to be proud of, then. Had I not noticed myself bulging in the midriff? Well… yeesss.. but I thought that was for other reasons.
The pain was because it had twisted, yanking my ovary with it - a rare occurrence. Count myself lucky.
I stayed the night, sleeping in my dress while a woman (who I cruelly dubbed ‘the cage-rattler’) glowered and shook her bed-bars at me. They let me out the next morning with a CD of said evil cyst to show other doctors. 'It will probably need to come out,' the consultant said cheerfully, 'or they’ll be no room for the baby to grow. But the hospital on your home-patch can deal with all that. Hopefully, it won’t twist again in the mean time.’ You don’t say.