On the Death of our Unborn Child...Continued

Today is a little better. Sherri began writing a letter to our unborn child. We both believe that it had grown and lived inside her for three months before it gave up its struggle. It turns out that the sack in which it was growing was just too low in Sherri’s uterus and so it just couldn’t survive. The letter she was writing took her most of the day. She said that she was inspired to write something after reading my previous journal entry. I thought that what I wrote was too dry and journalistic. I’d been thinking about writing something personal as well. But she sat down to write in her little notebook that she always writes in, although its usually for writing pieces that will go in her scrapbooks. I think she might be planning to put the letter in a scrapbook page dedicated to our lost one.

Sherri and I would often talk to the fetus in the evening. I would lay on the bed with my head near her stomach. Sometimes we’d sing to it. I would always kiss Sherri and the baby (Sherri’s stomach) goodbye in the morning before I’d head to work. Being self-employed and now working from home I hadn’t been doing that so early. But Sherri would make sure that before she’d head to work that I would kiss and talk to her stomach, which I like doing.

Its very easy for me to cry when I read her letter and when I think about these other things. Sherri was going to write for her Christmas list that each person buy her a children’s book because I had said, being the bibliophile that I am, that I wanted to build our child its own library. That would have been very nice, I thought.

She wants to try again when we can, and so do I, but right now its too hard to think about such a thing. Sherri was in more pain with the cramping yesterday than she had ever been in her life. She began cramping at 7:00 yesterday morning. And as it got worse I decided to call her gynecologist’s office. She was supposed to be scheduled for her DNC today, but I knew that Sherri couldn’t wait.

The nurse to whom I spoke asked me to bring her in at 11:00. We thought that we needed to bring her to outpatient surgery, so we took an elevator and walked there, slowly—she had to stop several times. I wanted to get a wheelchair, but we didn’t know if we could just take one and there was no staff around to help us. We were told shortly after we got to the outpatient surgery center that she needed to go to the gynecologist’s office several floors down. Fortunately the nurse at the center called someone, a very nice woman, to bring up a wheel chair. We made it to the gynecologist’s office and finally we were admitted and then we had, eventually, after a Dr. Rankin examined her, to head back to the outpatient surgery center.

All this time no one had given her anything for the pain and it was growing worse and she was crying and when she did go to the bathroom a lot of blood was coming out from her vagina—apparently the miscarriage was in full swing.

Finally we got a bed in the outpatient surgery area, but she wound up laying there for a half hour as people came in and out to do things (take blood, EKG, etc.) but nothing for the pain. With each cramp she doubled over to the side and I just held her hand and rubbed her back. I didn’t know if I had been helping but she said she was very glad I’d been there. Where else would I be? Its my wife! I keep telling her this.

When she was wheeled back to be prepped for the DNC, an asshole of an anesthesiologist refused to give her anything for the pain because she didn’t sign some paper that she had never been given. Eventually a female anesthesiologist who saw her crying her eyes out from the pain and the contractions gave her something. The women nurses and all were very kind and understanding. All the gynecologists at St. Clair hospital are men, it seems. And after this experience she’s going to find a female gynecologist, and one that probably works out of a hospital near here (Washington or Canonsburg).

I had to sit in the outpatient surgery waiting rooms (there are two, one for in-surgery where the doctors come back to tell you how the procedure went, and another where you sit and wait for your loved one to recover) for a total of three hours before I could go back to see her. I thought that she had some reaction to the anesthesia or something. But no, she’d been awake for almost an hour as I sat out there waiting. What a fucking crock. I was getting fed up and with all the stuff she told me about it made me even angrier. I suggested to Sherri that we write a letter to the hospital, copying it, of course, to the gynecological unit there, to tell them how bad a situation it was for us. At some point while we were trying to make it to the outpatient center the second time, we had to stop and register and these old men, who were volunteers, were looking at her and each other and saying that she didn’t have an appointment all the time sherri was buckled over in a wheelchair while I was attempting to register her by speaking with some woman who kept telling me over and over that no one called her. I kept saying I don’t care, she need to get to outpatient. Sherri looked up at one of the old guys who were complaining about the lack of appointment and said, “I’m having a miscarriage. I don’t need an appointment for one of those!” This of course sobered up the old gentlemen and one of them took her post-haste to the outpatient center. I followed there shortly after my dealing with that woman.

I can’t believe the lack of communication and the lack of proper procedures for handling such situations. Its appalling. But a letter I shall write. Well, at least that’s the intention.