I was 21 when an ectopic pregnancy almost killed me

• At 21 I started feeling excruciating pain and hours later found out I had an ectopic pregnancy.
• My tube ruptured while I was in the operating room, and the surgery ended up taking five hours.

I was writing a term paper when the pain began. I didn't know then that I was pregnant or that it wasn't viable.

All I knew was that it was impossible to focus with a deep and searing pain on the lower left side of my abdomen. I Googled things like "What side of your body is the appendix on?" and "What other internal organs can burst suddenly?"

I ricocheted madly from my desk to the bathroom to my dorm-room floor and back again for just over seven hours before I went to the emergency room.

It was April 2005, I was 21 years old, and an ectopic pregnancy almost killed me.

Before this experience, I had never even heard of ectopic pregnancy. I had no idea that an egg could implant in the fallopian tube or even outside the uterus — sometimes jumping so far as the outside of the intestine. It wasn't until I was recovering from the surgery that I came to understand how deadly ectopic pregnancies were, how few people in my sphere had heard about them, and how they happen in about one in every 50 pregnancies.

The pregnancy was confirmed at the hospital

I was triaged with a rapidity I'd never experienced before and was informed within an hour of my arrival that I was pregnant.

They took me for a sonogram and put cool gel on my belly, but the technician furrowed her brow and reached for the intravaginal wand. They couldn't find the embryo.

They admitted me. I writhed in agony on a hospital bed while I waited for their OB-GYN specialist to come into work so we could use the big and fancy sonogram machine, hoping it would help solve the mystery of my affliction. The night passed in a haze of unrelenting pain.

The sonogram machine was the size of four standard office cubicles and just as inviting. When they pointed to a small dot on a fuzzy black-and-white screen and said, "There, do you see it?" I nodded my head, but I was lying. I didn't see anything.

The fertilized egg had implanted in my left fallopian tube, which explained why it felt like someone was trying to inflate and twist it like a balloon animal.

They told me I could have a shot of some medication to get rid of it. They let me eat a muffin, my first bite of food in over 18 hours. Then they informed me that my liver enzymes were elevated and the medication was off the table — it would have to be surgery. But I'd eaten a muffin, so I'd have to wait another 12 hours.

I was in a panic

Waiting was an active thing as I attempted to mitigate the panic I felt at going under the knife for the first time in my life and live with the most intense pain I have ever felt.

I might have been afraid if I'd known what was happening while I was asleep. My fallopian tube ruptured while I was on the operating table, and a surgery that should have taken 45 minutes took upwards of five hours.

When it was over, the world came back to me in pieces. I could hear the beep of my heart monitor. The fluorescent overhead lights were a blur as I blinked my way back to the surface of my consciousness. A nurse was holding my hand. "There you are," she murmured, withdrawing and giving me a pat on the shoulder. "We almost lost you."

It wasn't until hours later that I realized I'd nearly died.

Even though the scar tissue on my fallopian tube meant I would forever be at an elevated risk for another ectopic pregnancy, the doctor left the tube there. "In case you want to have children one day," he said.

I didn't know then that I was 10 years away from conceiving naturally and miscarrying. I didn't know then that I was 13 years away from holding my newborn son in my arms. All I knew was that I was deeply grateful to be alive to feel a new kind of pain: the pain of healing.

Jennifer Lane is a California-based writer and acquisitions editor. When she's not writing plays or books or poems or reading plays and books and poems, she and her partner are chasing their spirited toddler all around San Diego.