Katie S. 28

So I’m having a bit of writer’s block lately, most likely brought on by the fact that I’ve been having far more good days than bad which has just gotten me itching to be anywhere but home. However, today Corbin has a little cold so it looks like we are house bound once again. The one advantage to being virtually dysfunctional for the last several months is that I feel as if I have slept through the agonizingly hot transitional months of August and September and all of a sudden I have woken up in the fall! Beautiful, glorious, crisp smelling, sweater wearing, hot chocolate sipping, pumpkin pie scarfing fall! Here are some pictures of our weekend fall activities. The first one is Corbin in his groovy chicken costume with Nana Vickie, the second is Corbin and his buddy Grace at Walden Farms and the third is Corbin painting a pumpkin with Aunt Paige.  Hooray for fall and hooray for being able to keep down all of my Halloween candy and pumpkin cheesecake!

I went to my first counseling session yesterday, and I may or may not talk more on that at a later date, but right now I’d like to share a charming little anecdote about yours truly and the particularly humiliating day that I had last Friday. Let’s see, how to start? Well, the first thing you should know is that when I’m uncomfortable I have a bad habit of joking about inappropriate things. The second thing that you should know is that all types of doctors, nurses and people who work with doctors and nurses make me uncomfortable. So back to Friday. Through his company Chris got me the number of a person who I can talk to about the emotional aspects of hyperemesis, and on Friday morning I called to make the appointment. As the receptionist was taking my history she mentioned that she knew my husband through Centerstone and that he was very nice. She then asked me if I wanted the insurance submission to be confidential since he worked on the databases and had the potential to access my patient information. Now I’m not exactly sure why, but something about this question made me very uncomfortable, and true to form I responded by blurting out, “Well its not like he can have me involuntarily committed just for seeing a counselor….right?” After which there were about five minutes of icy silence followed by a curt, “do you have the insurance 1-800 number?” I honestly don’t know what compelled me to say something so stupid. Chris has told me several times that people in the mental health profession aren’t so big on the crazy jokes. And I should have known from previous experiences that sarcasm doesn’t always translate over the phone, particularly when you are speaking to people who aren’t familiar with your general tone and demeanor. So yeah. Foot in mouth syndrome struck again and I immediately started gearing up to spend the first half of my counseling session discussing what is and is not an appropriate topic to joke about and why I am harboring such ill will toward the extremely mentally unstable population of middle Tennessee.

Later on that day I had an appointment with my OB, and since Corbin was still napping I decided to brave it on my own. The appointment itself went very smoothly. The doctor found the fetal heart beat with the Doppler on the first try and she was pleased with my weight gain in light of how sick I have been. It wasn’t until I was sent down the hall to get my blood drawn that things took a turn for the worse. I don’t know if it was because I had too little to drink that day or if it was pregnancy hormones playing tricks on my mind, but as soon as the nurse inserted the needle into my skin my entire body went limp and I started to black out. She asked me several times if I was still with her…and I could have sworn that I answered, but within seconds another nurse came bustling into the room with cold wash clothes and a can of Sprite. It felt like they kept the needle in my arm for an eternity, but when it was finally pulled out I saw that the vile was completely empty. Apparently I was too dehydrated so my veins were not giving up any blood. for the next ten minutes I had to sit in the freaky blood drawing chair sipping Sprite through a straw and trying to regain my composure. When I was finally able to stand up I was led into the waiting room, which was teeming with expectant young fathers waiting for the call to come back into the ultrasound room. I was then instructed to use the courtesy phone to call someone to come pick me up since I was clearly in no condition to drive. As I sat there waiting for my mother I felt like that kid who peed his pants in gym class and had to sit in the nurse’s office until his mommy came to bring him clean bottoms. And my embarrassment reached new heights when I overheard the ditzy young receptionist loudly apologising to another patient for the delay in her blood work because, “the nurse had a girl, like, pass out on her or something.” Gee, I wonder who that could be? It couldn’t be the blonde in the corner with the massive white bandage on her arm who looks like she might keel over at any minute..could it? I felt like all eyes were on me when my mother finally pulled up in front of the building and I sheepishly slunk out to the car. Now I will concede that pregnancy in general is fraught with humiliation, but usually it comes later in the third trimester. And what is even worse is that I now have to go back to get my blood drawn some day this week when I am feeling better. Oh sure, that’s what I want to do with my good day, be poked, prodded and humiliated all over again!

I know that I have been saying the same thing over and over again for the last few months, and I apologise for the repetition, but right now my head, like my body, is stuck in an uncomfortable place. Its hard to see outside of my own situation. Its hard to remember a time when I didn’t feel the way that I do right now. I’ve let emails and phone calls go unanswered for weeks, partially because I can’t always talk when the nausea is really bad, and partially because I allow myself to believe I am disappointing people when I can’t be positive or report a lasting recovery. To all of my dear friends who have been praying and sending encouraging words my way, please forgive me for not responding and please know how very appreciated you are.

My current state of despondence can be largely attributed to one simple fact. I miss Corbin. I have these good periods of time where I can take care of him for an hour or two, but it feels like I am babysitting and its just never enough. I don’t want to settle for an hour with him here and there, I want to be the one who is responsible for him all the time. I want to be the one who changes his diapers, feeds him his meals and takes him outside to play. He’s started calling my mother Nana-Mommy, and on a few occasions he has dropped the Nana all together. I know its nobodies fault, and I have no right to be hurt. But I still am. I’m his mother. I love that kid so much it literally hurts, and it breaks my heart to think that he might not know that right now. I make a point to tell him every chance I get, but he is so young and words don’t mean as much as actions do for a child his age. After being sick for almost two months now I’ve run the gamut of emotional responses and I’ve finally just landed on angry. Last weekend, during a particularly awful afternoon of being sick and alone Chris came into the bonus room where I was lying and began taking video game equipment out of his laptop bag. I asked him what he was doing and he told me he was deciding what he wanted to do while Corbin took his nap. I promptly stood up and poured an entire glass of water on his head and then ran down stairs to throw up. I still couldn’t tell you exactly what made me so angry in that moment. I just became so full of rage so quickly that I was already running down the stairs before I really processed what I had done. It sounds terrible but in that moment I was furious with Chris for doing this to me, for being a part of the process and yet so entirely removed from it that he still has a choice in what he wants to do next. Right now I do not have that choice. Its not about what I want to do but what I am capable of doing, which is often very little. I’m tired of being dependant and vulnerable and sick. I’m tired of having to ask for forgiveness from everyone that I love. I want to be the capable one, the forgiving one and the dependable one. But I’m not. I’m constantly in need of help, of mercy and forgiveness. And I am acutely aware that God is trying to sanctify me through this experience. Trying being the operative word. He’s trying. I’m fighting Him. But He has sovereignty on his side so I guess the odds are stacked slightly in his favor. We are currently looking into some counseling options for me through Chris’ company. The research we have done on hyperemesis suggests that the emotional side effects can be almost as traumatic as the physical ones. Whether or not I would actually be able to sit through a session or even drive to one is still iffy at this point, but I recognise that I am not as emotionally equipped to handle the sickness this time around as I would like, so I’m just going to have to swallow my pride and ask for some help.

Yesterday Chris called me from work to tell me that he had heard back from the VP of HR at his company and she was able to get me approved for my full monthly Zofran prescription.   This is an enormous answer to prayers as this is a peak time for hormone  fluctuations and having the Zofran in my system around the clock makes a huge difference in my ability to function.  I still have low points during the day where I’m either throwing up or in the bed, but I also have times when I am functioning almost normally.  Today I changed Corbin’s dirty diaper, got him dressed and ready and was able to take him to the doctor for his 18 moth check up all by myself.  I realize that may not seem like a big deal, but for me right now its a fairly substantial victory.  I still don’t like the idea of being on medication while I am pregnant, but I have to look at what is best for our entire family and trust that it is God, not my ideals, that will keep all four of us safe and healthy.

We knew this was going to be a hard week. Hormone levels climb drastically between the 8th and 12th weeks of pregnancy and I am smack dab in the middle of week 10. This week has been a fight for sanity. The nausea has been so overwhelming during the day that the only escape I find is in sleep. At the height of my nausea something shuts down inside of me and I go into a sort of survival mode where all I can focus on is the spinning of the room and the waves upon waves of movement. Its like the very worst kind of seasickness you can imagine and throwing up, sitting still or lying down do nothing to alleviate the constant and inescapable internal upheaval. Hour after hour with no relief from this overwhelming sickness cause my emotions to go a bit numb. I don’t care about anything but the way that I am feeling. I look through people instead of at them and I can feel myself withdrawing internally. In this way it is somewhat like childbirth was for me. I was surrounded by the support of others the entire time, but in order to withstand the pain there was a certain point when I just had to retreat to somewhere inside my own head.

The worst part about the hyperemesis right now is that it is starting to have an effect on my son. I can’t imagine how hurtful and confusing it must be for a child to see his mother looking so detached and unfamiliar. At one point during the week Corbin came into my room and started to play with the MP3 player by my bed. I could hear myself telling him not to touch it, but there was no confidence or love in my voice. My words were more of a plea to leave me alone. They were full of panic and indignation that his actions had forced me to turn my head thus prompting a powerful new wave of nausea that would toss me around for longer than I could bear. My sweet little boy looked up at me for just an instant with fear and confusion in his eyes, and then he walked out of the room crying, smacking the walls and the door with his hands as he went to show his frustration. I sobbed quietly in my room for the next hour.

I don’t often lose my temper with my child. Its not that he does nothing to frustrate me or test his boundaries, its just that I honestly take a great deal of joy in being his mother, even in the trying times. I feel confident that there is nothing that he could ever do to detract from the overwhelming love that I feel for him, and I think that confidence usually shows in my face whether I am cuddling him or disciplining him. But several times this week, when my son looked into my eyes, he didn’t see any of that. He couldn’t have seen it, because it simply wasn’t there. Something primal had taken over and all I could do was survive. I quite honestly felt like I cared about nothing and no one in the world. Hormones can play nasty tricks on one’s mind, sickness can alter one’s personality and prolonged isolation can lead to depression. These are the enemies with which I am doing battle these days.

That afternoon, when Corbin had gone down for his nap and I had started to feel a tiny bit more settled, my mother and I had a talk about the next leg of this journey. We decided that there are certain times during the day when my door should just remain shut. This was a heartbreaking decision to come to as Corbin and I have been virtually inseparable for all of his life, but I would rather him think that I am sleeping or in the bathroom vomiting than have him see that unfamiliar look of panic and detachment in my eyes again. I know that I can’t protect him from everything, I know that he will know hurt in his life and that only God can truly tend to the emotional wounds that he will sustain. But please oh please God, please don’t let me be the one to inflict them.

I confess that I am weak right now; spiritually, physically and emotionally. I am standing in need of prayer. In my better moments I can smile because I feel confident in His plans for hope and a future, I can cling to His promises. But when the sickness returns I feel like I am immediately swimming in a sea of doubt and despair. I am overwhelmed with guilt because I am so blessed to be having another child, but all I can focus on is what the pregnancy is doing to me right now. Its as if I am existing as two different people these days. Two different people who would be best served by reconciling into one person who can be honest about her suffering and her doubts during the good moments, and who can find at least a tiny bit of hope and rest during the bad.