The Week That Sucked

It was one week last March, the 14th to the 20th, the week that went from sucky, to suckier to suckiest. I pleaded to God, "Let’s stop with all the sucking!" I needed to know things would return to normal, where every day didn’t involve a missing heartbeat, a found lump or an ambulance ride to the hospital.

Sunday: This was my second day of watching my boys, ages 2 and 3 ½, on my own while Brian and my nephew Dan painted our family room. I was eight weeks pregnant, and I felt like crap. Thursday, I had said to Brian, “This is the worst possible weekend for this.” But after six long years living with that ugly dark paneling, I decided to suck it up.

I had to keep the kids out of the house, which made it harder. The first day, I drove up to New Hampshire, chased the kids around a McDonald’s off I-95, visited my mom at work and stopped in at my brother’s house in Nottingham. That night, the smell of paint was still strong, so I went right to bed. This morning, I took the kids to the bakery downtown, but before I could sit down with them I almost passed out. I broke out in a cold sweat and started shaking. I felt like I hadn’t eaten breakfast, but I had. After I drank some milk and ate a few cookies, it passed. But my stomach still felt gross. Somehow, I made it through the day.

Monday: I awoke refreshed. The nausea was gone, and I couldn’t wait for my first midwife appointment. She spent about 40 minutes with me. Then I hopped on the table and said, “I’d like twin girls, please.”

She laughed. “I have twin girls, it’s great!” As she talked about the fun she had with her now-grown daughters, she hunted for the heartbeat. And hunted. She left the room and came back with another machine. “That other one doesn’t work very well.” She hunted some more.

“Well, your uterus is tipped,” she explained as she put the equipment away. “That can make it harder to hear an early heartbeat. And it’s only week eight. So don’t you worry!”

“OK!” I promised. As she did the breast exam, I told her about an odd lump I’d noticed a few months before. In my apparent Pollyanna mode, I expected her to feel it and say, “Oh that’s just a fibroid.” But she didn’t.

“Here’s the name of the breast specialist over at the Breast Center,” she explained. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Don’t you worry!

Tuesday: I told my all-time favorite babysitter about my sucky prenatal appointment. She sympathized, then mentioned she would be off for a week in April. Since we were on the topic, I mentioned September, when her daughter would enter first grade.

“Well. I’ll probably want to get a job with more hours,” she conceded, staring at the calendar.

Wednesday: I started the day off in my therapist’s office, mentioning the missing heartbeat, worrying about my lump, but mostly fretting about losing my all-time favorite sitter just a month before my due date. The nausea was gone and I felt great, but thoughts of my possible cancer and my babysitter-less future riddled me with anxiety.

When I came home, I had a message from the midwife’s assistant, with the dates for my breast ultrasound and consultation. I had to wait four weeks.

I called the breast-appointment-making representative and explained that I didn’t want to wait that long if I didn’t have to. Couldn’t I get an earlier appointment?

“I don’t know if we have anything available at all, at all, at all.” Her sing-song speech pissed me off. “No, there’s just no way we can get you in any sooner.”

I felt my anxiety begin to mount into panic, but then she said “I mean, you don’t think you can wait until tomorrow?”

“My appointment’s April 22,” I said.

“I have you down here for Thursday, March 18 at 9:30 a.m. for a breast ultrasound, then 11:15 for the breast consultation.”

Confused but relieved, I almost cried. I chalked it up to a divine miracle or a shithead midwife’s assistant.

Thursday: The specialist was cute in an aging fratboy kind of way. He felt my breasts and, using a felt tipped marker, made about eight Xs on each one. “I only felt one lump,” I told him, unnerved.

“Well, we might as well check them all out.”

After the ultrasound, the specialist explained that it all “looked like” breast tissue. “After you have the baby, come back in and we’ll do a mammogram.”

“But, are you sure it’s not cancer?”

“The only way to be sure is to do a biopsy,” he explained. “Pregnancy raises estrogen levels, and estrogen feeds tumors, making them grow faster. If you notice any changes, give me a call. I can also do a biopsy using local anesthetic, if you’re nervous about it. I don’t think we need to do that, though.”

That night, Brian worked late. I got the kids into bed then curled up on the couch to find something on Tivo. Against all good sense, I selected an episode of Chronicle, our local news magazine, about the head of the breast cancer department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who was now battling breast cancer herself. She had noticed a very slight dimpling in her breast in the mirror one day. So she had a mammogram, which turned up nothing. Then she had an ultrasound. Also nothing. Then she asked a colleague to do a biopsy anyway. It was cancer, and even though she found it so early, the show documented her going through months of chemo and radiation.

I ended the day on the couch whimpering, hearing “estrogen feeds tumors” over and over in my head, and eating chocolate ice cream.

Friday: While my all-time favorite sitter watched the kids, I cleaned the house like a madwoman, scrubbing toilets, mopping and lugging the vacuum cleaner from floor to floor. By the time she left, my low-back ached, and I couldn’t wait to take a well-earned load off.

But first I headed to the bathroom. John was napping, but Ben followed me in. So when I saw the blood, I tried to maintain my composure.

Even though it was just a small amount, little more than a speck, the stringiness and bright red color sounded an alarm in my brain. I remembered that I hadn’t felt nauseas all week. My heart raced and my breath quickened. My hands shook as I struggled to push the right buttons on the remote to start a video, then to dial the midwife’s number.

“Do you have any cramping?”

“Well, my low back hurts, but ...”

“Come on down and we’ll take a look.”

I called Brian. “I’m bleeding a little,” I told him. “It’s probably not good.”

The midwife examined me. She didn’t bother listening for the heartbeat, but said there was very little blood and the cervix looked fine. “I’ve schedule an ultrasound for you at 5:30 in Danvers,” she said. “Are you OK?”

“No,” I said, “I’m not.”

Brian came with me for the ultrasound. I watched the technician’s expressionless face as she moved the probe around. After forever she said, “There’s no heartbeat here. I’m sorry.”

“Why did I tell Ben?” I sobbed to Brian. “How could I be so stupid to tell Ben so early?”

Even though I was just eight weeks pregnant, I had mentally invested myself in that pregnancy. I thought about names, dreamt that it might be a girl, thought about the season and what I’d wear through each trimester. Brian and I talked about how fun it would be to have an October baby, a newborn to bring to Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations. I never thought about miscarriage.

I felt like a fool. For my first two pregnancies, I told close family members during the first trimester, then told the rest of the world. But this time, in my overconfidence, I had told everyone: neighbors, friends, the checkout girl at Stop ‘n Shop, my lawyer, moms at Ben’s preschool. Even my kids. For the next few weeks, I would pay for that, as I had to retell the bad news again and again and again.

My midwife called when I got home. “You can either let the miscarriage happen naturally, or you can schedule a D&C.”

“Well, since I have a history of hemorrhaging, would I be safer with a D&C?”

“Oh,” she said, as if she hadn’t thought of that. “That’s a good question. Let me call the doctor and I’ll call you back.”

It turned out that I did need a D&C, since the risk of hemorrhaging at home outweighed the risks of a D&C. “Why didn’t she know that, what if I hadn’t asked?” I asked Brian. “Why am I the one thinking at a time like this?”

My mom and I lingered over dinner while Brian took the boys upstairs for a bath. She had come over so Brian and I could leave for the hospital at 6:30 a.m. “I should go help Brian,” I said, trying to force myself to stand.

Then we heard it, the loudest thud followed by John’s steady scream.

“Kris, come here, please, right now, Kris!” I found Brian and John sitting on the stairs. “I fell and slammed John’s head against the stair! I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do ...”

John’s two-year-old forehead grew to the size of a softball before my eyes.

I thought for a second, then said, “If we don’t know what to do, then I’m calling 911.”

(to be continued)