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I’ve tried to get a handle on my feelings for the past several days.

I wish I knew where to start. I wish I knew how to process the fact that I could have died Thursday morning, alone, in a pleather recliner at the OB’s office.

I bet you’re probably thinking that I sound melodramatic. But the fact of the matter is that anaphlactic shock is a deadly reaction to a drug or substance that stops your breathing. The fact of the matter is that I was not adequately informed of the risks to me or my unborn child before this treatment was administered.

The fact of the matter is that the nurse was unprepared. She was not sitting close to me; she had her back turned. She did not react quickly enough to get the epi pen in my thigh before I started to pass out.

There was nothing in the room to monitor Shaggy if (when) I reacted poorly to the test dose of iron pouring into my veins. The doppler, fetal monitor and ultrasound machine all had to be fetched and moved over from across the building, leaving me to wonder for at least three agonizing minutes if my son’s heart was beating.

I told two friends about the incident on Friday, friends who are both part of the medical profession. One asked, horrified, if the office called 911.

No, they did not.

When I told them, quite calmly, that it felt as though I was dying, the woman who is a nurse responded thusly:

“That’s because you were.”

I was taken aback by that, but then I remembered the faces around me as I lay in the chair, oxygen in my nose and my own heartbeat racing with adrenaline and fear while I waited for the reassuring sound of my child’s lifeblood pumping through his body deep inside me.

I’m trying to reconcile those faces with the actual doctor, who breezed into the ultrasound room an hour after my reaction and condescendingly told me that I “never actually stopped breathing” and that this kind of thing happens “all the time.”

All the time? What the fuck? Why wasn’t I told that? Why wasn’t I given the opportunity to say no, thank you, I’d rather eat some liver?

And let me tell you this: I could tell by the reaction of the other staff members when I was writhing in pain and struggling to breathe that this does not happen “all the time.”

I am so very, very angry.

I wish I could take away a lesson from this, a lesson that life is precious and it can all vanish in an instant, with one push of a plunger.

I do know that, but I’ve known that since my father bled to death in front of my very eyes four years ago on Aug. 26.

I know that my daughter could have been left motherless because someone decided to take a risk on my behalf – a risk I would never have taken on my own.

I have just a few more days before this same doctor will come at me wielding a knife. She will be responsible for bringing my precious child into this world, and for making sure I make it out of that operating room healthy, for the sake of not one little baby, but also a three-year-old girl who thinks of me as the sun to her moon.

Before I left the office by myself on Thursday, swollen, disoriented and doped up (because no one thought to let me know I might need someone to drive me home if something when wrong), I was told to come back today for monitoring.

This morning I was ushered into a room by the same nurse who slashed open my thigh, failing to get the first does of epi into my system.

She tentatively asked me how I was, and said that I must have been scared.

“I was scared,” she said. “So I can only imagine how you felt.”

No. No, she can’t imagine what it’s like to feel her throat close up and watch darkness set in.

I don’t have to imagine it either, because I know what it feels like now.

The monitor shows a happy Shaggy, flipping and swimming inside me, healthy heartbeat bouncing off the walls of my belly. My uterus, however, is still quite unhappy about the situation, and is contracting fairly often.

Yes, I am close to my due date, and yes, I have had contractions recently that scared me.

But I really didn’t need any extra help in making this delivery come any sooner that it needs to.

My husband is due to walk in the door any minute, and I hope that I don’t fall apart when I see his face for the first time since my world shifted in a way I cannot – and likely will never be able to – articulate.

However, I don’t think I will.

Because I am just still too fucking angry.

And on Tuesday, when I finally see my midwife or my doctor, they will know the full force of a ferocious mother.