Ectopic pregnancy often fatal

It’s been a long time since I’ve worked in the ER, but some stories stay with me. One such story belongs to a woman in her early 30s. After a year of trying to conceive, she was finally pregnant. Then she started spotting. When she developed severe pain and almost fainted while putting their toddler to bed, her husband brought her to the emergency room.

It didn’t take long for us to identify an ectopic pregnancy. The fertilized egg had implanted in her fallopian tube. Our obstetrician took her to the operating room, where we found large amounts of blood in her abdomen. The surgeon removed the...