Ages

So it is 2 in the morning and I can't sleep.  I am sort of half awake so pardon my grammar.  I have had some insomnia over the last month or so.  I just can't stop my mind from racing at night.  Tonight I was laying in bed thinking about the last 4 years.  They have been maybe the most life changing 4 years I have experienced.  I think I am a different person then I was prior to 2007.  I sort of grew up.  Or at least grew into a new age of my life.

Before 2007 I was still "the student".  I was out of university, but I still had that frame of mind.  Absorbing the knowledge of others, I suppose.  Taking life a little too seriously.  Assuming I knew my place in this world.  Not bending on my ideals.  Having ideals and having a lot of carefree random fun.  In in April 2007 I lost my first baby to a miscarriage.  I think after that moment I moved into this new Age.

From April 2007 - Present, I have experienced the following:  I bought a home, I became engaged and then married, I got a good job, bought a new car, my traveling became structured vacationing or work travel, I had 2 pregnancies, lost a child, experienced the sensation of not breathing on my own,  learned to live with a pick line, has experienced daily visiting nurses, took in my little brother, was revitalized 2 times after my heart stopped, became a mother, watched my son live in a bubble for 2 months, experienced postpartum depression and severe anxiety attacks, went on disability and maternity leave, lost my grandmother, lost my good job, learned about unemployment,  watched my son take his first step, went to the ER for the first time in my life, went back to the ER, sat in a waiting room while my son was in surgery, watched my son say his first word, lost 3 dear family pets, grew closer to John,  watched my son turn into a little boy, learned more about myself, became confused, learned how insignificant and small I am in this world and excepted it...

I know it is kind of jumbled, and there is not a lot of detail about any one event.  That is what has been going through my mind at night.  Those are some of the thoughts that race through my mind.  Reviewing my recent life.  I think I just needed to write it down.  Life is just a little too much sometimes.  I don't regret a day, but it can be overwhelming.  Just my life, just one life.  How overwhelming is it to think that there are billions of people in this world.  All of them small and insignificant, but with such a huge internal existence.  It really is a strange reality.

My Life and Death Part III

So I haven't blogged for a while.  I have been meaning to finish writing about my first pregnancy for a long time.  I think this will be the last part.  I just wanted to write about grief.  I don't think grief comes in stages that pass.  I think grief comes in waves that ebb and flow.  Sometimes it is overwhelming, emotional, painful and sometimes it is numb but it is always there.  Especially the grief from losing a child. I shouldn't say that.  All I have ever lost is a child.  I don't know the other types of pain.

When I left the hospital I didn't go home.  I actually never returned to the apartment where I lost my Marlee.  While in the hospital John and I began the process of closing on our first home.  Luckily most of the work was done before the hospital stay.  John handled what was left.  The house wasn't ready to move into so I stayed with my parents.  This turned out to be a more practical solution anyway.  I was sent home on an IV and I really needed assistance doing day to day activities.  They turned their living room into a bedroom for me because I could not use the stairs.  I felt helpless and empty.  I was a child and not a mother.  I was alone.  

Every day the boxes I had kept my emotions, pain and grief in began to open.  Each new box brought new tears, new pain, new anger.  Days felt like years.  Lonely empty years.  I would wake up in the night and feel that Marlee was not there, was not with me, inside me and I would cry.
I stayed with my parents for about a month and then moved into my new home.  It was hard to see the room we were going to turn into the nursery.  It was a storage room for a while.  Now it is an office.  I am sitting in her room now.  Every time I sit here I think about it being a little girl's room.  With toys on the floor and hand drawn pictures on the wall.  It is like she is here, with me.
My first summer after my loss was extremely difficult.  I would have wildly uncontrollable melt downs.  I would cry at the site of a baby on TV.  I would fold the clothes that we had bought for her.  I wished to be with her.  I didn't want to live.  I wish I had died in the hospital.  I couldn't stand the thought of waking up another day.  She was with me always, but it was like she was behind glass.  I knew she was there, but I could never touch her, hug her or hear her laugh.  Everyday I thought about what she would be doing if she was here with me, what she would look like.  I wish I could have held her.  I wish I could have known her smile.  I wish I could have looked into her eyes and told her I loved her.
Weeks passed, months passed and years passed.  I still think of Marlee everyday.  I still feel empty.  Her life was torn away from me.  I still have nightmares about the day I knew I lost her.  I still think about seeing her lifeless little body on the Ultra Sound screen and not seeing her little heart flicker.  I miss her.
John and I decided to try to have another baby.  I secretly thought another life inside me would make me feel complete again.  Less empty.  It didn't.  My son is my life.  I love him more then I thought I was able to love.  He makes me want to wake up in the morning.  He makes me want to live.  I still feel empty though.  I still miss Marlee.

I think of her hugging her baby brother, playing with her cousins.  When my son reaches various milestones in his life I think about her.  How I will never be there for her big days.  I am not there for her first step, her first word, her first dance.  I feel like I have abandoned my daughter in exchange for life.  I wish she was here.  I wish I could know her and see her.
It is hard.  I think I bother people when I talk about her.  I am not the only woman who has had a miscarriage.  I just seem to talk about mine a lot.  My life often revolves around my loss.  A lot of people don't like hearing about it.  I remember shortly after I lost Marlee talking to other women about "pregnancy stories" at a baby shower.  People sort of ignored me.  I wasn't talking about loosing my child, I was talking about morning sickness, ultra sounds and doctors.  The same thing everyone else was talking about.  When I spoke people looked at me funny and ignored me.  Even now, when I talk about my "first" pregnancy compared to my "second" people don't like to hear what I have to say.  People don't like to hear that I grieve for a child I never met.  They either do not understand my pain, or choose to ignore it.  I just don't want the world to forget her.  I don't want to forget her.  She is my daughter.

Regret

I was looking through my old journal.  I wrote this a few weeks before I lost Marlee in 2007.  I clearly was having issues with morning sickness.  Shortly after I miscarried I remember looking at it and I have been kind of scared to write in my journal since.  Please don't mind me, in a weird way this is therapeutic for me.  Here is what I wrote:


Eat, double over, eat, double over...  Meet me in paradise.  I will never see you there... Every thing smells like sweet berry vomit.  I can't.  My headaches are gone.  The bad ones are gone. The spot and bugs and invisible images are gone.  The voices are gone, the sparks are gone.  The adventure and love and beauty are gone.  The trees fell down and died.  The perfect trees.  The water froze over.  The homes fell down.  The money destroyed them all.  The child eats me from the inside out.  But I need reason.  I have it but I don't.  I am not me.. I am her... I summond her and lost myself.  I invoked a spirit with the price of my life.  You cannot return a gift from paradise.  Double over.

My Life and Death Part II -"...for in that sleep of death what dreams may come."

I remember waiting to go into the OR for my DNC.  I remember the nurse telling me I would be out soon.  I remember seeing the nurse and doctors pushing me into the room lifting me off the bed and laying me on the cold operating table.  I thought I was screaming for them to stop.  I thought I was crying.  Thinking back I couldn't have been because even if I was concious, I couldn't breath enough to yell out or cry.  After that I was out.

When I woke up what happened over the next couple of days was the closest thing to a living hell  and heaven I have experienced.  I am not a religious person.  I cannot really put the events into chronological order because time lost all meaning.  I was in a waking dream. Eternity was now and everywhere.  There was no past and no future.  There is peace in that.

I remember first thinking where is my baby and where am I, in that order.  Then I remember taking a breath and nothing happening.  Nothing at all.  People in uniforms quickly reconnected several tubes.  Breath came back, but it was painful. I noticed then that my face was full of tubes to breath for me.  I had to think of every breath.  Every breath brought pain.  My OBGYN came in and told me my heart had stopped and I had died in the OR.  He also told me how riddled with MRSA my body was.  It was in my blood, my lungs, my heart, my brain, my spine and anywhere else that mattered.  During my week in the ICU I would hear nurses outside my room discussing my imminent death between shifts.

I could not cry or mourn my daughter's death, because if I did I would stop breathing.  My days were spent counting breaths and having tests done.  The tests were bad.  The worst is what I believe is called an air gas test?  I don't really know what it is for, but they took a needle and put it in my wrist, and it felt like they were scraping it around in my veins.  I am cringing remembering it.  When ever I was able to sleep I would always be woken up by x-ray technician lifting my onto a cold metal slab.  Th IVs were horrible as well.  I woke up one morning with three in one arm and two in the other.  The worst IVs were those in the hands and wrists.  The worst medicine was the potassium.  They had it pumping into my arm through an IV, it burned.

Every thought that made my cry I had to box up in my mind.  Put it in a box and concentrate on breathing, look at the monitor, look at the numbers, listen to the beeps, wiggle my toes, breath, repeat.   Talk to the nurse, does she have a family, whats her name, why is she here.  Listen to the girl dieing in the next room, she had cancer, she sounded young, a girl, maybe a teen, maybe she doesn't drive yet, maybe she never made love, maybe she has a dog, maybe the dog will miss her... don't cry, put that in a box.

I saw my Grandma Roth.  She was in a blue light, it was not blue, it was another color that is not real but it was her aura.  She was with another woman, a tall strong woman I did not know, she held a blanket.  They wrapped Marlee Kay in the blanket and loved her and loved me.  A tall man in a long coat came.  I did not say goodbye because there was no reason too, Marlee Kay is with me even now in my heart.  Why say goodbye if she is always with you?  I left the light.  The man took me through a series of crumbling structures when we emerged from the final structure there was a tree.  We seemed to be standing in front of one of my childhood homes.  The tree was huge.  We watched a branch crack, pop and fall from the tree and land in its twisted roots.  It twisted into the roots and became a part of them, supporting the life of the tree.  Death was beautiful.

When I woke up I felt sad, peace, trapped, found and then lost again.  I craved death.  I wanted to be a part of the roots tangled with Marlee for eternity.  Loving.  Life changed.  Everything became abstract except the energy of life and the universe.  To die would to be pure again, to be away from what isn't real.  Time, Buildings, Money, Work, School, Food, Clothes, Religion, Politics, Vacation, Location.  Everything lost all meaning for me.  None of it was real.  I am still coping excepting the reality of some of these things, these unnecessary inventions of mankind.  Get over it people!!!!  Love you family!!!  The End!  That is it, there is no more.  You are important in NO other way, but in loving your family(which doesn't mean blood relations) you are the most important person.  You connect with every life you encounter.  Every connection will come back to you on you death bed.  When they say on your death bed life flashes before your eyes, they do not mean the vacation you took to Disney when you were 7.  Life is the connections you make and the love you disperse, so be wise.

John came in, he brought a CD player from Aunt Laurie's house.  It had a Beatles CD in it.  I listened to it.  The nurse liked the Beatles, so she let John stay in the ICU past visiting hours.  He wanted to hug me, but I had to many tubes.  I cannot even imagine his side to this story.  He has told me bits and pieces.  Like I said in my last post.  What happened to us is very difficult to revisit in conversation.

I wanted death, all I had to do was stop trying and I could die.  Stop counting the breaths.  I learned another important lesson in the ICU, instinct.  My instinct trumps my wish to die.  I craved death so bad it was one thing that at one point I could not box in and I started crying, next thing I knew every doctor on the floor was in my room because all of my monitors went off.  Every time I woke up from sleep I was disappointed.  I wanted to return to no pain, peace, no time and Marlee.  I knew John would be okay, I knew it would work out for him eventually if I was gone.  He would mourn, but life goes on.  Life went on for me as well.

I became stronger,  I could stop counting, I went "home"

My Life and Death Part I

I felt like writing.  Not much has happened this week other then work, so I thought I might write a bit about what has happened to me over the past couple of years.  I have always thought of myself as someone who really has a grasp on who I am and how I fit into this life.  In the last three years my life has been torn apart put back together and torn apart again.   I had to leave the understanding of myself and my life behind and grasp on to pure instinct to stay alive.  All that makes me who I am I had to box up in my mind and leave behind.  I am still trying to re open the boxes, three years later.  I use to write a lot.  I kept a journal, I wrote poetry and short stories.  That all went into the box.  Writing about this topic tends to be to difficult for me.  I do try.  I get out a bit, then have to stop.  Even when talking about it with friends and family, it never comes out as a whole, but in bits and pieces.  I think I may drive people crazy with it.

For those of you who do not know, in the winter of 2007 I found out I was pregnant.  It was unexpected but not unwanted.  John and I were certainly scared, but excited too.  We knew a baby would be a challenge at the point we were at in our lives, but we knew everything would work out because it always does.  I still believe that.

My pregnancy was uncomfortable but nothing uncommon.  I had some pretty serious morning sickness all hours of the day.  The doctor said that was a sign of a healthy pregnancy.  Early into my second trimester I began to feel great again.  I was staying with a friend, Andrea and her roommate, Brad in Canada and they made me a real dinner one night.  I was able to eat everything they made for the first time in months.  I remember feeling so good.  That dinner felt so good.  I thought I was in the clear and the rest of my pregnancy would be a breeze.  I was with Andrea in Canada for about a week.  I was suppose to go home for the weekend and then return to Canada for the following week.  It was our company's annual user conference so I needed to be up there more then I usually do.  I didn't mind.  I enjoyed staying with Andrea.  We would have a lot of girl talk, watch period movies and pig out on Swiss Chalet chicken.  I always looked forward staying with her.

That weekend I came home.  A friend of John's invited us to go to church that Sunday.  This is all I remember from that weekend. We do not really go to church.  I am an atheist and John is Catholic.  When he feels like going I will occasionally go with him just to keep him company.  This only happens about once or twice a year.   This time I went with him.  The service was uneventful.  About half way through a little boy, about three or four years old, turned around, looked me straight in the eye and asked me, "Are you Lucifer?"  It was kind of creepy.  Looking back on the events to follow, it was really creepy.  I do not believe in good and evil, black and white, god or the devil.  I do believe that we humans, just like any animal, can sense when something is terribly wrong.  I think this little boy might have caught on to this, I think that is what he was trying to tell me.

The next morning I was still feeling great so I went to work (in Canada) and planned to spend the week.  Monday night I went to Andrea's house as usual.  She had a little get together that night.  Nothing crazy just girls hanging out.  This is when it started.   It was like I dropped, fell, completely fine to completely horrible.  The moment it happened was visible because the girls noticed I turned grey.  The nausea came storming back.  I could smell everything, just like earlier in the pregnancy.  I had a horrible pounding headache.  I went to bed early and hoped tomorrow would bring better health.

Tuesday morning I woke up still feeling like I had been hit by a train.  I did not go to work.  I stayed at Andrea's and slept the entire day waking up only at times that the nausea overcame me.  That is all I remember from Tuesday.

I slept in Wednesday and then convinced myself that I was well enough to go to work.  When I got there I sat at my desk and my boss, Linda, walked by, took one look at me and told me I need to go home.  I did.  The drive from the office in Burlington to my apartment in Tonawanda, NY was about an hour and a half depending on traffic and the border.  It took me about 4 hours that day.  I felt like I was going to pass out.  I had to keep pulling over to rest.  I kept telling myself that if I could just get as far as the border I would be okay.  There is a hospital right at the border so I think that was my logic.  When I got to the border the border agent took one look at me and knew something was wrong.  My parents live right over the border.  I think if they didn't, he would have not let me go.  I went to my parents house.  No one was home.  I went up stairs, called John to let him know where I was and then fell asleep.

John and I slept at my parents that night.  Honestly that Wednesday felt like it spanned about 4 days.  The next morning John drove me back to our apartment.  Thursday afternoon in addition to the other symptoms, I started wheezing.  Breathing was becoming difficult, especially when I lied down to try and sleep.  I tried so hard to sleep.  Night came.  I kept waking John up to tell him I couldn't breath.  I had a fever, a high fever, I was hot.  John took me to the ER.

I remember sitting in the waiting room.  A soap opera was on.  I don't watch soaps so I don't know which one it was.  A woman in the soap opera just lost her baby.  I panicked, John turned the channel.  I could feel everyone in the room.  I could feel their pity and pain for me.

The ER that night was uneventful.  I felt horrible.  More sick then I ever felt.  They watched me, tested me, medicated me and told me I had the flu.  The ultrasound could not find my baby's heartbeat.  The doctor said it was because of the position of the baby.  I now think that is bullshit.  I later found out that on my paperwork from that night someone stated that they did indeed find the heartbeat.  This is also bullshit.  They sent me home.

Friday was hell.  I was tired, my fever was rising and when I would lay down to rest, I could not breath.  That night John slept in the spare room to try and make me more comfortable.  I rotated between the bed and the coach trying to find a position I could breath in.  I remember crying and wishing I wasn't pregnant so I didn't have to feel the way I did.  I regret that.  Shortly after I fell asleep.  I woke up to a warm sensation, it was blood.

John took me back to the ER.  I hadn't "miscarried"  I was just bleeding.  They couldn't tell if the baby was dead or alive.  I knew.  That night was long.  The whole time I lay in the ER.  Each new shift of doctors, nurses and residents would come and require a re-telling the explanation of my condition.  I was still bleeding.  They still didn't know if my baby was dead.  I still had a high fever.  I still couldn't breath.  They put my on oxygen.  One resident with an African accent seemed concerned.  He wanted to test me for MRSA.  He seemed angry no one had tested me yet for MRSA.  It turned out that is what I had.  I would later discover that the MRSA was everywhere.  In my lungs, in my heart, in my blood and in my baby.

An OBGYN finally came to the ER to see me.  She sent me for an ultrasound.  I waited alone in a hall, waiting to go into the ultrasound room. I was scared.  I was wheeled on a hospital bed into the dark room where the machine waited.  The technician began her scan.  As she captured the images of my baby she would write letters over the image and draw arrows to different parts of my baby.  I asked her what they meant.  She looked upset.  I cried.  It was very hard to cry because I couldn't breath, but I did.  I don't know when my baby died, but I found out she was dead on Friday, April 13, 2007.  Her name was Marlee Kay.

I would die the following day.  I will write about that in part II.  I think I have to stop writing now because this has gotten pretty long.