My eye is twitching. This only happens when there is pretty heavy stress. I thought about doing this the other night, record the events that led us to where we are here I mean. The reason my eyes twitch? I suppose this is quite obvious. I guess I’m nervous. It sort of freaked me out then, to remember it all, in much the same way that it freaks me out now.  My head is hurting and I’m hot suddenly, can feel every muscle in my neck and shoulders, they tense and I’m having a hard time sitting up straight.  Damn it. Not sure how far I will get with this today, it’s just that the whole thing has been running on over and over in my head since we talked last week. He said he’d feel guilty if…I said that it was a choice we’d make together.

We were married in November. It was a great time. Matt came from England and Anna came from HK and they saved our lives that week before the wedding. Work was stressful for both of us. The details were threatening to kick my ass. How many people would show? Would we have enough tables set up? What if someone dropped Mary’s China? Friends were coming from all over. It was going to be great or really terrible. It turned out great thanks to the many friends and the Faulkner/Quimbos…

It was January when I started to feel bad. My lower back was painful, often. It was affecting me at work.  I called a doctor and was able to get in to see her. She found nothing. She suggested a more permanent mode of birth control. I said no thanks. Truthfully I was a bit upset that she asked. Ultra sensitivity can make you see things in a warped sort of way. Tests were scheduled. I went. They said that my uterus wall was rather thick and they’d have to do a DNC (scrape to clean). I scheduled the procedure and complained to M and to V about it. They understood.

Maybe it was a week later that I counted the days. I had taken a test weeks before (secretly and for wishful thinking) and the doctor had done so as well when I went in and both were negative. Not much time had passed since but I thought maybe that I was late. I bought a cheap test from a dollar store and after work I went straight home and took it.  The line turned pink as soon as the liquid crossed its path, then there were two lines. I just kept saying, “oh my God,” over and over again.  I had just taken a home pregnancy test and it read positive. We were going to have a baby.

When Hubby came home I hugged and kissed him and asked him to go to the restroom.  He said that he was really hungry and I said ok, but please just go to the restroom first, maybe wash hands but go…

The test with two pink lines sat on the top of the rubbish bin next to the toilet. I waited in the living room biting on my nails. He came back in and asked if that meant what he thought it did. I said yes or just nodded my head but I had tears in my eyes and he was smiling.  I searched his face for something bad. There was nothing of the sort there. He was happy. He said we had to make sure- get to the doctor quick.

The next day we made an appointment with an OBGYN. My doctor called, she was surprised to have missed that- she bid us good luck.  Her receptionist recommended a doctor. We were lucky to get an appointment for the next day.  It was a Monday when I took the hpt and it was Wednesday when we met Dr. G.  He was a nice man. He kind of reminded me of Frank. Funny, he had been stationed in Germany. There was a meeting in his office. I could not make myself say the word ‘vagina’ when asking about symptoms. Looking back now I see that this frustrated him. Shoot, looking back now I see that a lot of things frustrated him.  There was an exam and pee in a cup and he confirmed that we were indeed pregnant but it was best not to tell anyone until after eight weeks.  We were about six, he said. 

We kept the news to ourselves until our next exam with Dr. G. He said that all looked well and we heard the baby’s heartbeat.  I was lucky and did not have any morning sickness.  I was gaining weight fast though so I tried to slow it down. He said my weight was fine but with my calculations if I gained what he said was ok- I would pass 200 lbs. by week 40, no way man.

My foot and leg started hurting one day which bothered me because I had read in the book to watch for symptoms of blood clots (something that can happen to some women in pregnancy) and this was one, a symptom, I mean but the pain went away so I let it go. My head hurt. Dr. G said that it was most likely hormones- and that headaches were quite common in the second trimester which is also something that the book said would happen.

At some point in April I woke in the middle of the night in pain. I went to the loo and was fine sitting but standing at the sink I could not keep my eyes open from the pain, even in the dark my head hurt quite badly. I went to the office and sat on the sofa. I held my head in my hands and rocked my body forward and then back. Leaning forward did not help, lying on my side did not help and it hurt so badly that I thought my head would pop. I had to wake up Hubby. 

I can’t go on. It is difficult to recall what comes next.

Peace.

the next day:

It was two in the morning if I remember correctly when I woke Hubby up.  I did not want to go to the hospital if it was just a headache that would pass but it felt to be more than that.  I should say here that we’d been in to see Dr. G since the headaches started and he assured us that this was normal. The last visit that we had with him I told him that they were pretty bad and was he sure that they would go away. He said yes. On one hand I felt foolish, like I was being a baby and on the other I was puzzled, this seemed so bad.

At the hospital they found a kidney infection and gave me pain medicine for my head. They did not however find any reason for such pain.  They did a CT scan and I let the medicine take me away to a much calmer place but as soon as I got up off of the table and started to walk the pain was back and just as bad as it had been before. I was crying by this point, frustrated because while on the table I had thought there was relief. The ER doctor called Dr. G, he said to come in the next day or maybe the day after that.

I was a mess by the time we made it in to see him. I could barely walk and the tears were falling without me. The pain medicine made me feel bad and I had not slept much at all. Dr. G said that in order to see a neurologist right away he would admit me to the hospital. We went straight in. the nurses were very nice and a seemingly unending number of tests were begun. I had an MRI and then an MRV. I want to say that it was a few days until Dr. A found something. I can just remember the relief that there really might be a cause.  I had a blood clot in my head.

Dr. A was this funny man who actually carried around a little black bag. He would come in and rummage around in said bag and pull out something to cover my right eyes with while I did whatever with my left hand and things like that…he answered our questions in the simplest ways. But we liked him.

Us: Is this the cause of the pain?

Dr. A: It’s possible.

Us: Will it go away?

Dr. A: Maybe, we’ll give you a blood thinner.

Us: What causes this to happen?

Dr. A: I don’t know.

Us: Is it the pregnancy?

Dr. A: Maybe, I have another pregnant patient with the same condition.

Us: Is this life threatening?

Dr. A: Not anymore, because we’re treating it.

Later when we moved away and met a new neurologist he was quirky as well. He did these tests by poking me with a safety pin. He had big shaky hands and it was his voice you heard when you called the office and got the answering machine saying that they were out to lunch or closed early on Thursdays or whatever. His receptionist scolded us in this weird off hand way because we were late- never mind that we’d only just moved there and could not find the place- and so the experience was all too uncomfortable for my liking. Needless to say, I never warmed to him and we did not see him again.

Dr. G said something about the pain lasting the entire pregnancy. I did not let myself even begin to believe that. I wish that I would have come to terms with that possibility though because the continual let down of treatments or medicines not working really wore me down.  I was in the hospital that time for about two weeks. We saw a blood doctor that is what we called him- he was a hematologist. He spoke very slowly while getting a family history from me and then he ordered a million tests. He found no reason that I would get a blood clot. We also saw a doctor whose specialty was pain management. I think at this point that they thought that the nerves behind the neck were tense and crushing something and so causing the pain to be worse, something like relief was needed. It is hard to remember all that now.

There would be shots in the back of the neck to unclench those nerves and hopefully this would bring relief. At that point it helped a little, enough that I could eat and so it was time to go home.  I was on too many pain meds and the pain doc and Dr. A were prescribing different things over the next few months to try to help me to make it through the day. We had the shots in the neck a total of three times. The second time helped and the third did not. We decided not to continue them as the procedure was difficult to take, I could not feel my head and the pain was dulled but it was really a strange sensation and there was a risk to baby that we just did not want to take anymore. 

From April to June it was all bad.  There was the pain and being disappointed in test and procedure and such over and over and there was the side effects of the pain meds.  I lost weight, this would normally be a good thing but there was the constant worry for baby. We had to see a specialist every Wednesday and they saw something on the ultra sound- we were worried, they were worried, should we get this test now or wait until he was born? It was an awful trying time.  I was sick from the meds too, anything I ate came back to haunt me and there were other problems that I won’t mention. The body is not meant to be bombarded with pain meds and you wrestle with this quandary; pain meds to ease the pain and pain meds that make you terribly sick or get to baby in belly but every doctor we saw said he was alright and the thing they found in the ultrasound had nothing to do with pain meds but still. Every time that I took anything I worried for him. I was out of it a lot and sometimes the stronger stuff made me go off. I moved from sofa to bed to lawn chair to sit beneath the trees at 208 and back again.

The worst thing for me was that I could not talk to hubby. Any conversation at all stressed me out, I did not have the strength to deal with anything and so I left him alone to carry the weight of all that was happening to us; the worry about the baby, finances, not knowing what the clot really meant to my health, his worry for us, everything.  I knew it was happening but I did not have the strength to help him and that hurt, a lot. It still does really.  Another thing was that people sort of forgot about us when we left the hospital the first time, I guess they thought that we were alright. But those were the darkest days because they were lonely. Towards the end Miss E. would come around to care for us, after the baby came as well. She was an angel. C’s mom came to clean for us one day which was a great help. I did not know then though how hard this was all for hubby. I did not know he had cried on the phone with his friend’s dad. He felt very alone and he really was so I suppose.

In June hubby’s friend’s mom came to take care of us. It was in this time that I started to get my strength back. He did not have to take care of everything and go to work at the same time, he was eating better because she made sure to make healthy meals and give him plenty of care. Things started to turn around. That was it; it was a turning point for us. Until baby came I was better, not great but better. We kept seeing doctors and had more tests; I was giving myself shots everyday. I had it in my head that the blood clot would go away. I thought and I think that Dr. A said this, but I thought that when we had the baby I could take something stronger and the blood clot would go away.  In the end that was not the case though. 

Baby came in September and there is another painful story there, no pun intended. We induced and I hoped to deliver natural but we had a c-section instead. I stopped taking pain meds and within the month we were moving to another state.  The baby was and is completely healthy although in the beginning in between one state and another he was not getting enough to eat- he would nurse- but he needed more and after months of trying we went to formula- he is huge now and well, very well but we were scared for a while. There are some painful feelings of guilt and fault there that I just carry around with me everywhere, just here in my chest, it feels heavy and sometimes it feels as though I can’t breathe.  On the upside we did get that test for him that the doctors wanted to do before and it was all clear, thank you God.

Our new doctor worked mostly on getting my blood levels right. We never did though. He did a lot of tests trying to figure out why my blood had become so thick- he never found an answer and after a few months we moved states again. Now my doctor has me taking aspirin. For a while she talked about me being on blood thinner for the rest of my life. This is a trial period. If my blood is ok in a few weeks then I will be in the clear but if we get pregnant again she thinks that whatever OBGYN I get will want me on blood thinner as a precaution.  The last MRI showed the blood clot was still there and that the blood flow had worked its way around it- not 100% but sufficient, unless of course I get another one in my head- if that happens the word used was, catastrophic. 

Here is where the story gets iffy.

We want to have another baby. Dr. G gave a talk on our last visit about better birth control- it felt to me that he was saying don’t get pregnant. I asked him if the same thing might happen and he said that it was very likely.

So what if it happens again?

Hubby says he will feel guilty if I get sick again- I say it is our decision to make together so there is nothing to feel guilty about. It is likely that if we get pregnant again that I will just have to take shots – and this would prevent another clot. I am not sure how the existing clot would affect me when in the second trimester there is more blood flow and headaches because of that. Am I willing to chance a few months of bad headaches? Can I take care of baby L if that happens? How bad will they be and are we willing to take these chances?

Next month we will see what shape my blood id in, thick or thin or normal.  Then we will see a high risk OBGYN. We will know more and we can find comfort in that.

At this point I am not sure what we should do.  We both realize that some people can’t have kids and should we just be grateful for baby L? Are we just being selfish? I am asking for wisdom, I am looking up, so to speak, and begging for it.