“Push on my belly.”
On the surface it seemed like such a simple request from my wife. Once I completed her request, I’d never seen a her in so much pain…and I had previously witnessed her giving birth to our two children. After a little more pushing and prodding it was clear something needed to be done. When your wife is a doctor it is hard to listen to her give herself medical advice. Was all the pain and nausea simply symptoms of her first trimester of pregnancy? Could it be something more serious, like appendicitis? We needed an doctor to access the situation, someone other than her.
We hopped in the car and drove twenty bumpy and agonizing minutes to the Women’s Hospital. We arrived, checked in and were sent to triage.
After receiving a CT scan to help diagnose her belly pain, it was time to sit…and wait. While waiting in the triage room there was not much to do. My wife had been given some medicine to help with the pain, then we were told to wait as the doctors checked the results of her CT scan. Over the course of the next few hours, we flipped through several TV channels: American Pickers, Scared Straight, Wizard of Oz, and finally landed on the movie Fight Club. It had been well over a decade since I’d last seen this movie, I’d passed it up while flipping through channels many times before, but for some reason that night I was drawn to it. I clearly remember one scene where Brad Pitt’s character (Tyler Durdin) holds a gun to the back of a guy’s head and threatens to shoot him. After a few minutes Tyler lets the man go. He then goes on to talk about the new appreciation that the man will have for his life. He says,
“Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel’s life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.”
At 1AM she was wheeled away for surgery.
She returned to the room at 4AM. After she was back in the room all was not better. She was not doing well coming off the anesthesia. She was alternating between thinking she was the doctor and giving orders to the nurses about her care, dropping F-bombs about the entire situation and vomiting into a bucket next to her in the hospital bed. Finally things calmed down and off to sleep she and I went.
After a trouble free surgery and a couple hours of sleep, the next morning was quickly upon us. It was time to see what type of stress the surgery had put on the baby and check the baby’s heartbeat. Our doctor that morning was someone that had our complete trust. Just a year earlier he’d delivered our second child and once someone delivers your baby, there is a life long bond you carry with that person. Our doctor arrived in the room wheeling in a Doppler machine. He pressed the microphone to my wife’s belly, no sounds were heard. “Don’t panic, don’t panic,” was all I could say to myself, over and over. I gauged our obstetrician’s behavior to help me know how to react. He was calm, so I stayed calm.
There was nothing left to do but cry.
Wonderful, beautiful movement! Our little baby was fine and kicking away. I have never felt a greater range of emotions than I felt that morning. From the deepest darkest place I didn’t even know existed to a mountaintop high feeling of pure joy.
We continued to cry, but now it was for different reasons. Once the doctor left the room, we spent a great deal of time trying to come to grips with all that had happened in the last 24 hours. One thing that kept flashing back to in my mind was the scene from the movie Fight Club we’d watched the night before.
Tyler Durden made a good point. Never in my life have I appreciated the joy that is watching a baby move inside my wife’s belly quite like I experienced that morning. And even though it was a stale bagel with a plastic tub of peanut butter smeared on it, Tyler got it right… my breakfast tasted better than any meal I have ever tasted.
-Pete
