Nesting.

Note: This one gets into some heavier topics like pregnancy loss and emergency surgery. If you’re not in the space for that today, skip this one.

Well guys. August is over, and thank goodness. It was easily the longest one of my life. I moved Tony and me into our new place while he was on tour. I spent days nesting us into the new spot while he tuned in via FaceTime as often as he could to feel like he was here. My sister came to visit. We made food, watched an ungodly amount of a show called Extreme Cheapskates, and talked about all the deep life stuff while making fish sculptures out of air-dry clay.

One of the things we talked about was having kids. She’s already mom to my 7-year-old nephew, Elliot. I’ve wanted to be a mom my whole life. It’s something I’ve always really looked forward to doing someday, but I’m nearly 37, Tony and I both make our living touring with our bands, and sometimes it feels impossible to slow that train down long enough to make room for a family. I told her I was reaching a point where I thought maybe I wouldn’t get to have kids, whether for financial, biological, or career reasons, and that if that were the case, I could still see myself being okay as the fun, cool aunt instead.

Well, it turns out I was actually pregnant while we were having that conversation.

Big, surreal-feeling news. Exciting news! Happy news! But also: what would fall tour out on the road with Bumpin Uglies look like? How can we afford this? Sure, we’d been wanting to start a family, but somehow it was still surprising enough that I immediately felt like an unwed teen mother.

I tell Tony. We’re excited. For a moment, it’s this huge, fun secret we’re keeping together. I walk to my used bookstore and look for books on nutrition during pregnancy. I start taking prenatal vitamins. I book my first doctor’s appointment for when I’m eight weeks along. I tell the band because our lives are so entwined that I want everyone to be able to properly plan for the inevitable time I’ll need off. They’re supportive. We can do this!

Tony gets home from tour four days after I find out I’m pregnant. He’s coming home to a new apartment he hasn’t seen since we signed the lease and a pregnant girlfriend. I show him around. We spend a lot of time exchanging raised-eyebrow looks of excitement and surprise. He’s eager to get us even more moved in, so we hit IKEA. We stop for a burger on the way home and laugh about the fact that it’ll be a minute before I order a cocktail again. We have weightier conversations about what all of this means for our lives. We’re excited and there is a lot to figure out. I can’t wait for us to have our first night together in the new place.

I’m already tired all the time even though I’m only six weeks along. I’m brushing my teeth when I start feeling crampy, like I’m getting my period. I guess being pregnant is just a series of feeling things in your body you’ve never felt before. I get into bed while Tony hangs a new IKEA curtain rod in our room. The cramp is getting worse.

“If you could get pregnant, do you think you’d do it?” I ask him. “It’s such an extreme thing to put your body through. Think about it.”

“I think so?” he says, drilling a bracket into the wall. “I guess it’s easy for me to say since it would never be an option for me, but yeah, it’s definitely extreme.”

The cramp is kind of in my groin now. Maybe a four out of ten on the pain scale, but it’s the first time I’ve felt anything like this. I tell Tony I’m not feeling good. We decide to go to the hospital. By the time I stand up to walk downstairs, I feel like I’m going to faint. My vision is weird.

Luckily, our new neighborhood is three minutes from a good hospital. Tony gets us there quickly, talking me down and staying calm the whole time. It’s around 10:30 p.m. I’m losing the baby. I know it. Tony pulls up to the doors, grabs a wheelchair, and runs me inside to get checked in. My hands are numb. This is the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. I’m seeing stars, I guess? We wait. Everyone is playing on their phones. I’m known to be dramatic, but I really do feel like I’m actually dying.

They call my name. I tell this stranger I’m six weeks pregnant. I haven’t even told my parents. They take my vitals. I’m in so much pain I can’t keep my legs still. It feels like someone is trying to drive a pencil eraser through my groin. I throw up my burger into one of those little green barf bags with the white clasp on top. It grosses out some poor girl in a wheelchair next to me and she rolls away.

They take my blood. I pee in a cup. Blood. Okay, I’m definitely losing the baby.

Ultrasound in a dark room. I can’t even figure out how to put the gown on. This is pretty much the opposite of the happy little ultrasound scene I had imagined for Tony and me in my head. The tech is quiet and tense. So am I. So is Tony. More blood.

We go back out to the waiting room and wait for my results. The pain is worse. My left hand is numb and sort of crumpling itself up. I watch it defy me when I try to move it. Okay, maybe whatever is happening is for the best. I don’t know if I could handle childbirth. I can’t believe what women can survive. What is happening inside me? Is there nothing they can give me for pain? I ask Tony if he can go ask the nurse at the desk.

Suddenly the nurse comes racing over and pushes me through to the back. We’re moving at a light trot, hopefully toward an IV of morphine. They bring me into a bigger room with one bed under a bright light. It’s my first time in the ER. Are they all this dramatic, or is this just how LA is?

It’s freezing. They start putting little stickers all over my chest and a port into my arm.

“This is fentanyl. You won’t be able to keep your eyes open with this, much less feel the pain,” a nurse named Chris tells me. I immediately like him. So many Chrises in my life. Two bandmates, a manager, now this guy.

K, well, I am not falling asleep and I can still feel the pain. The fentanyl seems to be doing basically nothing. Also, I’m still freezing. Tony puts my sweater over me and asks them for blankets. We have no idea what’s going on, but things seem to have escalated quite a bit. At least we’re no longer in the waiting room.

Some super standard-looking blonde guy comes in. I just know this guy plays tennis. I can only assume he has never felt pain like this in his life. He tells me we need to wait for the on-call surgeon to arrive. At this point I’m imagining they’re going to sort of vacuum out my insides and send me home, but it’s starting to feel like perhaps that’s not the case. Everyone seems a little more tense than they did initially.

Apparently I’m having an ectopic pregnancy. That’s when the embryo doesn’t quite make it to where it’s supposed to. Oops, embarrassing! I know I’ve read about this before, and I remember thinking of it as the emotional equivalent of missing the bullseye while playing darts. No big deal. Try again.

Well, okay. I was completely wrong.

Medical explanations have a way of leaving out the emotional consequences of things. Intellectually, I know this is not my doing. This sort of tragic thing happens all the time. But in this moment it still feels like my body somehow missed the one trick women’s bodies are famous for pulling off. Humiliating.

But actually, there is no time for that.

Not only is the pregnancy not where it’s supposed to be, it’s in the narrow hallway of my fallopian tube, and the tube has ruptured, which pretty much means exploded. By the looks of the ultrasound, there is a good amount of internal bleeding and they need to act fast.

It’s around 2 or 3 in the morning in Mexico, where my parents are sleeping, but I tell Tony we should call them. He doesn’t want to wake them up, but things are starting to feel serious in a way neither of us can really wrap our heads around. They’re preparing me for surgery.

My mom picks up and Tony has to tell her that, one, I was pregnant, two, I’m losing the pregnancy, and three, I’m about to have emergency surgery. It’s a lot of information to get at three in the morning, but she takes it really well. I let her hear my voice so she and my dad know I’m okay despite the circumstances. She is concerned but strong and calm. My grandmother had an ectopic pregnancy. These things happen. Doctors are amazing. I’m going to be okay. She loves me. Tony will keep her and my dad posted.

Another stranger comes in, apparently the man who will be cutting me open. He’s holding a clipboard with a drawing of a uterus. He explains what’s going on inside me and what needs to happen. He’s going to remove my right fallopian tube. There is no way around it. He’s going to clean up all the internal bleeding. He’s done hundreds of these surgeries and feels confident. I immediately and literally trust him with my life. When you hear about women dying from pregnancy complications, this is one of the many things they can mean.

Tony is allowed to walk with us as they wheel me to another part of the hospital. It’s like 3 a.m. at this point? The halls are dark, like we’re in a business after hours. It feels like a horror movie. I can hear them telling Tony where he can wait and that they’ll keep him posted. I wonder if he’ll go home and let Winnie out, or is this more serious than that? I’m trying to figure out how scared I should be.

We say our goodbyes, me barely getting out an “I love you” over my shoulder before they push me through a set of doors he isn’t allowed to pass through with us. Did he hear me? Are these my last words if something goes wrong? What the fuck is happening right now? Also, I’m on a light dose of fentanyl. Feels tacky. I haven’t even smoked weed in a crow’s age.

It’s just me and two male nurses pushing my bed. This is just another day on the job for them. This is the most intense moment of my life for me. I run through a Rolodex of everyone I’ve ever dated and imagine glimpses of myself in this same scenario with them.

Thank goodness I'm with Tony Stern.

We wait outside another set of doors and I’m left with some goon named Trevor? Travis? Jose? I honestly cannot tell you. He’s trying to make small talk, maybe as a distraction tactic, maybe because he has zero awareness of what this moment is for me.

“You’re a musician? Oh cool, these are my guitars. That Ibanez is actually a Tim Henson Signature. So Tim Henson is in this band…”

I am having the most terrifying experience of my life and even in this dark corner, someone is mansplaining Polyphia to me. Bless his heart.

I wake up and a new nurse is asking me if there’s anyone she should call to let them know I’m out of surgery. Somehow I remember Tony’s phone number even in my post-op stupor. Thank goodness we use his number for our Ralph’s rewards. I don’t remember how, but I end up in a new hospital room. Tony is there. He did not go home to walk Winnie. He sat in the waiting area, traumatizing himself with internet research. He is the best.

The nurses shimmy me off the gurney and onto a bed. Some nurse named John keeps telling me that he “heard my incision was huge” and that he wishes he could see it under the bandage. I can’t feel much, but I can feel Tony wanting to smack this man.

“They said it was going to be really small. This guy is cracked out. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

John tells me I can’t have solids for a while, but I can have broth and Jell-O. Everything feels like dreaming, but I can get it together enough to tell him, “John, I gotta level with you. I fucking hate Jell-O.”

He tells me I can just have broth.

Tony tells me the surgery went well. The doctor had to remove my right fallopian tube and a cyst on my ovary, along with a big blood clot, and clean out a lot of internal bleeding. He sent Tony photos of everything he removed. Do I want to see them? Duh. airdrop Ew, gross.

(I still have them on my phone and am considering doing a watercolor rendering of them. Seems like a good exercise.)

The doctor says my left side is still in good shape and that we’ll be able to “have as many babies as we want,” but that we can’t try again for another 6 to 12 months. I feel like the least sexual creature to have ever walked the earth.

Tony tells me I could have died. He is so happy we came to the hospital when we did and that we had such a great doctor. You don’t imagine this moment when you start crushing on a long-haired guitarist you met on tour at Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom in Denver.

I have a catheter in, which is actually quite luxurious. Don’t let anyone fool you. I don’t even have to stand up to pee. This is great because I have an apparently quite large incision a few inches below my belly button and I cannot even fathom standing up, much less walking. I have three separate ports for IVs and blood draws. It feels like every few hours someone comes in to pump more fluids into me or take something out.

Everything is super hazy. I’m in the hospital for about three days. Tony brings me coffee and soup. He wants to pull the service animal card and bring Winnie in, but we’re on a fairly quiet oncology floor and I think she would create too much commotion barreling around the linoleum halls with her unbridled joyful grunts.

It is still so surreal to be in the hospital at all, to be coming off anesthesia, to be meeting a new nurse every 12 hours. The fact that we lost the pregnancy isn’t really something I can even dig into emotionally yet because life just doesn’t feel real.

Tony’s bandmates, Roach and LJ, bring me pastries from my favorite bakery. The view out my window shows me the hills behind Burbank and the Disney lot. The whiteboard in my room says I can eat solids now. The hospital food is actually not bad. Friends and family call and text to check in. I can’t get over how many women I know who have either lost a pregnancy or had an ectopic.

Eventually I can shuffle around the unit in my grippy socks, holding my IV tower and hunching because standing up straight feels like it’s going to pull my stitches open. Tony walks with me, encourages me to do a second lap, and helps me get to the bathroom. I feel like a million-year-old toddler hobbling around in my nightgown. I can’t believe just months ago I was running around a stage doing high kicks.

I’m cleared to go home! The doctor tells me I can stay another night if I have any hesitation, but I can’t get any rest with all these needles in me, and the lack of sleep and tanking hormones are making me less charming by the minute. Someone comes in to check my vitals or medicate me what feels like every other hour during the night.

“No, Patricia, I don’t want to get up and walk around the unit at 5 a.m. on a good day. I certainly don’t feel like it now that you’ve removed part of my organ. Is it alright if I try to get some sleep?”

They wheel me to the car and help me load myself into the passenger seat. I feel every flaw in the asphalt in my body as Tony drives me home.

I need help getting out of the car. I need help opening the door. I need help showering. I need help lying down on the couch. I need help getting back up off the couch. I’m crying. I’m in pain? I’m frustrated?

We lost a baby.

I was only six weeks pregnant. I had only known for four days. By every measure, it was early. In theory, that feels like it should make this easier. But it doesn’t.

I hadn’t painted a nursery. I hadn’t seen a little face on a sonogram or started trying to decipher whose nose the baby was going to be born with. But four days, it turns out, is plenty of time for the imagination to do some pretty good dreaming.

“Babies” this and “pregnancy” that had already taken over my algorithm. I’d saved a hundred videos I likely would have never opened again, regardless of whether we had a baby or not, into an Instagram folder called “baby things.” I still haven’t deleted the “hospital bag” list from my Notes app. The whole time I was telling myself and Tony, “It’s early yet, and I’m old. Anything could happen.” But in hindsight, I don’t think I really believed it. I think I just didn’t want anything to jinx us.

My prenatal vitamins are glaring at me from the counter. They get replaced with the little orange bottles of extra-strength ibuprofen and acetaminophen I left the hospital with, which I have to alternate every three hours.

Tony gets to work hanging things on the walls and doing his share of nesting now that he’s home. Crazy to think we still haven’t slept a single night together in the house since we moved in. Whenever I start getting sad and overwhelmed, he tells me how happy he is that I’m here and that we went to the hospital when we did.

I slowly start getting better. I can get up by myself and join Winnie and Tony on walks around the neighborhood. I can shower unsupervised. I can cook! At first I’m feeling like, “Okay! I am resilient! I’m mentally strong! I’m getting off scot-free!”

But now I’m starting to realize that my body is healing a lot faster than my mind.

I feel irritable. I try to pick fights with Tony out of nowhere and then start crying and apologizing for being crazy. I’m having a perfectly normal day perusing Marshalls and drowning my feelings in consumerism when I burst into tears walking past the baby section. I told my Instagram algorithm to stop showing me baby stuff, so that was quickly corrected, but somehow it still feels like everyone has a baby but me and the entire world is rubbing it in my face.

Our fall tour with Bumpin Uglies will certainly be easier now that I won’t be four months pregnant for it, an upside that is difficult to embrace. It’s nice that, of all the bands we could be going out with, we’re heading out with Brandon, who has become like a brother to me over the years. He and his wife sent me DoorDash money one of the first nights I was home, and they’ve both been checking in on me. I’ll have to take it easy for the first few shows, but other than that, I think it might be nice to be out doing our thing again.

I have a lot to be grateful for. I’m just having a hard time seeing it that way sometimes.

My mom and dad came to town to take care of me this last week while Tony’s been out on a short run with his band. I can get around pretty well now, but I still haven’t driven and I can’t lift anything over 10 pounds for another month, which makes simple things like getting groceries or pulling our cast iron pans out of the cabinet off limits for now.

A few days ago, Mom drove me to my two-week post-op appointment where the doctor removed my bandage. Apparently John, the “cracked out” nurse, was correct. My incision was huge. Okay, not huge, but definitely not the quarter-sized incision I was told it would be. It’s about five inches long and sits just under my bikini line. It’s healing well, but it still doesn’t feel like I’m looking at my own body. I feel like I’m built like a wine fridge now, and it’s difficult to relate to the girl who cropped all the T-shirts in my closet.

I know this is maybe a weird thing to make a blog post about, but I’m also kind of always oversharing in inappropriate spaces, so it seems pretty on brand.

I think I’m also grappling with the fact that my whole world feels completely different and I’m not really sure how to tell the people in my life. It’s not exactly happy news, so I don’t want to call someone up, interrupt whatever they’re doing, and dump it in their lap. But it also feels like a massive part of my story to leave out. I’m having a series of interactions that look sort of like this:

friend texts me about something mundane

me: omg that's so funny, also so random but I had this crazy surgery, I was pregnant and it exploded in me and I guess I almost died? I'm good but just can't lift anything for a few more weeks

immediate phone call

I’m afraid sharing all of this will come across like I’m looking for sympathy when I'm really not. This is just the craziest thing I’ve ever been through, and I feel this weird need to explain why I suddenly feel so different. Which, come to think of it, is maybe why everyone I know who’s ever done ayahuasca is so eager to talk about it.

I want to tie a nice little bow on all of this and tell you that everything works out exactly as it should, that someday I’ll look back and understand why my story took this turn. But I’m not there right now.

I’m a pretty raw version of myself. I don’t have a lot of patience. I feel angry. I feel weepy and sad. Sometimes I can see clearly enough to feel super grateful for modern medicine, for my health, for the fact that I’m still here. Sometimes I feel completely fine. Life is an adventure, and maybe this was just another one of the many strange, painful, beautiful things we get to feel during the short time we’re here.

I don’t really know how to wrap this up because I still feel like I’m in the middle of it. I’m still learning what this means to me and what, if anything, it changes. A few things I know for sure: through all of this, I have felt incredibly loved.

And somehow, even in the middle of a really deep heartache, I still feel really lucky.