PART 2--THE DOCTOR ON DUTY AT STUDENT HEALTH
I really didn’t like seeing that girl pass out in the waiting room. I was sure she’d hit her head when she slumped to the floor. That’s all I need while the infirmary is on holiday staffing, a kid with a TBI. She’d be on her way to the ER at Yale-New Haven right now if that were the case.
My wife, before I met her, had a traumatic brain injury, and there were complications, multiple body systems, strange neurological stuff…anyway, she had to take medication after that to regulate her heart. She got pregnant, and she wanted to keep her baby…this was all still before we knew each other….so she stopped the meds. She had a bad episode that could have ended in a coronary….well they put her back on the meds, even though they weren’t safe for the fetus. It was a lesser-of-two-evils sort of thing. At four and a half months she lost her baby. Actually, the baby died inside of her and had to be aborted, extracted. At four and a half months. Her body didn’t expel the fetus spontaneously, and she refused to let them dismember it to get it out of her womb. That’s what they usually do. Four and a half months into her pregnancy and of course she loved her baby and held onto ridiculous hope that they were wrong and that her baby was alive. So they induced labor and she went through all the pains of childbirth to deliver a dead baby. She still has the heart condition, and she still takes the same medication. I never, ever want her to go through that again, but she says if I have a vasectomy she’ll leave me. She still believes that something will change, she’ll get all better, and we’ll be able to have a baby. But it’s not worth it…it’s not worth her health or worth endangering her life. I just want it to be over.
I love my wife, and I want to be with her, physically, but I know what we’re doing and I know what the odds are that she’ll eventually get pregnant some day before her heart thing is resolved, because in all likelihood it will never be resolved…I feel like I’m staring at a brick wall, and the wall is fine, more than fine, but I don’t like what’s on the other side of it. I don’t like it at all, it’s ill-defined for me, what the threat is and how bad it really is, but I know it’s there and it’s really scary.
I really didn’t like seeing that girl pass out in the waiting room. I was sure she’d hit her head when she slumped to the floor. That’s all I need while the infirmary is on holiday staffing, a kid with a TBI. She’d be on her way to the ER at Yale-New Haven right now if that were the case.
My wife, before I met her, had a traumatic brain injury, and there were complications, multiple body systems, strange neurological stuff…anyway, she had to take medication after that to regulate her heart. She got pregnant, and she wanted to keep her baby…this was all still before we knew each other….so she stopped the meds. She had a bad episode that could have ended in a coronary….well they put her back on the meds, even though they weren’t safe for the fetus. It was a lesser-of-two-evils sort of thing. At four and a half months she lost her baby. Actually, the baby died inside of her and had to be aborted, extracted. At four and a half months. Her body didn’t expel the fetus spontaneously, and she refused to let them dismember it to get it out of her womb. That’s what they usually do. Four and a half months into her pregnancy and of course she loved her baby and held onto ridiculous hope that they were wrong and that her baby was alive. So they induced labor and she went through all the pains of childbirth to deliver a dead baby. She still has the heart condition, and she still takes the same medication. I never, ever want her to go through that again, but she says if I have a vasectomy she’ll leave me. She still believes that something will change, she’ll get all better, and we’ll be able to have a baby. But it’s not worth it…it’s not worth her health or worth endangering her life. I just want it to be over.
I love my wife, and I want to be with her, physically, but I know what we’re doing and I know what the odds are that she’ll eventually get pregnant some day before her heart thing is resolved, because in all likelihood it will never be resolved…I feel like I’m staring at a brick wall, and the wall is fine, more than fine, but I don’t like what’s on the other side of it. I don’t like it at all, it’s ill-defined for me, what the threat is and how bad it really is, but I know it’s there and it’s really scary.
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