Record downpours

Since last Wednesday, it has not stopped raining in Queensland. Not. Stopped.

Last Wednesday was December 1. It is now December 6.

We have not had more than four minutes of sunshine this ENTIRE MONTH.

I'll tell you where else there have been record downpours. My uterus.

Right, that's really crass. There you go, I acknowledged that, let's move on.

At 2.14am on December 1, I was woken by that frightful fear that I was wetting myself. Now, that hasn't happened for at least two years (joking) but it was weird to say the least.

I ran to the loo, casting a glance at the alarm clock (hence the very specific time reference) and quickly saw that there was a shitload of blood pretty well everywhere.

From 2.14am that day until about Friday night (Dec 3) I bled like I have never bled before. Toilet times, which were frequent, were reminiscent of the culminatory scene in Carrie.

Instantly the word haemorrhage flashed in my mind and I started feeling dizzier as the days wore on. I do not know to this day if that was because I was freaking myself out at the sight of all the blood, or if I was actually reacting to the blood loss.

Every time I went to the loo, it was as if a massacre had been committed in the bowl. Every time I went to the loo, I had to flush twice before the water returned to clear. I know you think I am being melodrammatic. I know the stark, bright red that some blood can colour looks damn frightening when contrasted against the white porcelain.

I know that. But I had a period less than three weeks before - and it was slightly heavier than normal. Now I was spending my days - excruciatingly at work, which was hard but necessary - racing to the loo every 20 minutes for fear the pad would not hold.

(Sorry for any grossness in the next little bit.) There were clots. Big ones. Like jelly. And fleshy. Every time I went to the loo, the sound of urine hitting the water would be punctuated with a staccato machine gun plop plop plop of bright red tissue smashing the toilet water meniscus to oblivion.

Scary.

I rang the doctor, feeling slightly weird as I wasn't technically a patient under the strict definition. On his advice, I had an ultrasound and politely declined the offer of an internal scan while lying on the table (are you off your face?? I am bleeding?!!!) I had a blood test last Friday and another today.

The doc rang tonight and, drum roll, it's nothing to worry about. He doesn't really know what it is, or what caused it, but he knows what it isn't and at last I can legitimately use Arnie's famous Kindergarten Cop line: "It's not a tumour!"

(If it was a tumour, there would have been the pregnancy hormone HCG coursing through my vines. And, sadly, there is none of that hormone there anymore.) It could have been something called an arteriovenous malformation, but they are rare in the uterus and congenital anyway and unlikely to form after a pregnancy.

The weird thing was that my case and symptoms mirror those of another of the doc's patients, and one he saw only two weeks before me. Her bleeding, the same as mine, resolved itself normally.

I have a physiological doppelganger out there and she lives within a 50km radius of me!!! Huh, imagine the ad in the personals I'd have to place to find her...

Anyway, that news is something of a relief.