My Pregnancy Tumor: the pain in my neck.

This post is about the gross side of pregnancy not the beautiful hand-knitted booties side of pregnancy so if you aren't ready for a dose of reality, take a pass on this one:

After all of the wonderful pregnancy symptoms I have suffered through over the last nine months one symptom stands above the rest as being the most horrible.

I'm not talking about morning sickness, bloating or edema (none of which are fun). I'm talking about my pregnancy tumor aka: pyogenic granuloma. Google it, it's fucking gross. I don't have any photos of mine but if I did I wouldn't post it for you because frankly its way too embarrassing. But I did draw you a picture of it on paint and trust me, its a pretty accurate representation.

This is my awesome paint picture. I'm proud of it.

So it started as a tiny little bump on my neck that I thought was a pimple. It just showed up one night. After a couple of days it was bigger and looked like it was full of blood, so then I thought it must be a blood blister. Instead of leaving it alone I pricked it with a pin, thinking I could let out the blood and it would go away. It didn't go away. I thought maybe a drop of blood would come out but instead it bled for twenty minutes and didn't get any smaller.

I went to my family doctor and she told me what it was and that approximately five per cent of pregnant women get them. We decided to freeze it off with liquid nitrogen like you would a wart. Supposedly that works sometimes. It didn't work on my tumor. It just made my tumor angry and it got bigger. I was still optimistic at this point that all it needed was another hit, so I went to the doctor a few days later and we tried to freeze it off again. And again this angered my tumor and it got even bigger.

So for over a week it kept growing and I went through a ton of band aids covering it up every time I left the house. As if walking around with a blood-filled tumor on my neck wasn't bad enough it would also decide to rupture like a volcano at night when I was sleeping and I would wake up covered in blood and looking like an extra from The Walking Dead. Pyogenic granulomas have their own supply of blood vessels and when they bleed they really, really bleed. The last time it burst it took me over an hour and a half to get it to stop and I decided I'd had enough. By the time I went back to the doctor it had grown to the size of a blueberry! The doc sent me to see a plastic surgeon to get it removed.

To remove these things the doctor freezes the area around it and then performs a curettage and cauterisation (they cut it off and burn the wound). I was worried about having a local anesthetic while I was still pregnant, but I was also worried about the damn thing blowing a gasket while I was pushing in labour...as if bleeding from down there isn't bad enough. I was also sick of wasting what little sleep I was getting at night on blood clean-up. Still, I would have waited until after the birth and let the damn thing double in size again if the doctor hadn't assured me that a little freezing at this late stage in pregnancy isn't dangerous for the baby.

The procedure took only a couple minutes and I was sooooooooo relieved to walk out of the surgeon's office without the red blueberry on my neck! Of course I never gave any thought to the after pain and my inability to take pain meds right now. Once the freezing wore off it did start to hurt and two days later it is still very sore. But today was the first time in a month that I didn't have to leave the house with band aids and scarves covering my neck.

Hopefully all you future preggos out there will fall into the 95 per cent of people who don't get a pregnancy tumor. I wasn't that lucky, but hey it could be worse...according to the Internet many pregnant women get them in their mouths or on their lips. THAT would be waaaay worse.