Hopefully This Will Be The Last Downpour For A While

It took a few days of standing very still but I’ve moved back from the outer limits of my sanity. I will never again be in the position I was on Wednesday so, two full days later, I’ve been able to forget and forgive everyone involved without any serious reflection on one of the most stressful days of my life.

Just let every little thing slide.

On Wednesday my girlfriend had a surgical procedure called a cervical cerclage which, if successful — and so far it absolutely has been — gives our child a much better chance to be born healthy and at full term. She didn’t have to do it, but she did and it will cause her some discomfort until the birth. She was brave and I’m proud of her for doing it.

She was also anxious and impatient and sleep deprived and panicked and obnoxious and angry. All of which, in my opinion, was completely understandable, and given the circumstance even reasonable. Especially because of her lack of any sleep before the procedure, and not having eaten — it turned out fasting, despite being told to do so by one of her doctors, was unnecessary.

Completely reasonable, but my problem during the day itself was her reactions lacked any humour. Her reactions seemed as much about controlling the room as they were about being tired and hungry. Unnecessarily fasting for twelve hours instead of six is a reason to be pissed off, but it’s not something you can change or fix.

…I started out writing a narrative about her freak outs, anger, and generally spoiled behaviour… and maybe I just did, but everything I wrote, and deleted, just seemed petty and like I was ‘writing for the sake of writing’.

So here’s what happened… in a nutshell.

We got there at 8:30am. She acted exactly how I thought she’d act right up until she freaked out because the surgeon she thought was going to perform the surgery was on holiday. While I was sitting in the ICU Day Surgery waiting room assuming she was getting ready for surgery, she actually spent an hour in the interview room crying, yelling and threatening to leave.

We got to pregnancy ward just after 1pm, and she put on her gown. After thirty minutes I was told she was going into surgery, so I left to get some lunch. When I told the nurse I was diabetic and hadn’t eaten since 7am she was horrified. So I had a craptastic chicken salad in an edible bowl (bullshit), and a nice walk around the campus.

About 2pm I looked through the main gift shop, and found a nice card for her. I wrote some stuff in it, and drew four stick figures… one for me, one for her, one for her son and one for the new baby. When I went to go back up, the elevators were all out of service.

So I walked up eight floors, with a diabetic foot which, by the end of the day, was pretty much useless.

When I finally got back to the recovery/preparation room around 2:30pm I found my girlfriend still in there. She had freaked out again, banning two nurses from the room. She absolutely would not do anything if they were near her. I have no idea why. I don’t think it mattered.

Eventually she calmed down. Basically when the nurses agreed to leave. I was fed up at this point. I was tired, my right foot felt like it was full of wet sand, I couldn’t talk my girlfriend off the cliff she seemed to have climbed all on her own, and my only meal had sucked. So at 3pm, as they prepared the anaesthesia needles, I kissed her and finally left for the TV room.

Except for my lunch break — which I took thinking she was heading in for the surgery — I had been holding her hand, figuratively and literally, for seven hours before they took her off to surgery.

The surgery itself took only thirty-five minutes.

I was in the recovery room when they wheeled her gurney in. She’s cute when she’s unconscious. And that’s when I noticed the cat. On the drive to Ottawa we stopped at a truck stop for gas. There was a display inside of stuffed cats with huge eyes. So I bought her a black and white one with green eyes, and gave it to her when we walked into the hospital.

She had brought it into the operating room with her, and was still clenching it in her sleep.

While she was barely conscious the new doctor came over and explained what had happened. My girlfriend tried to give him some grief, but she was mumbling and too cute for any of it to be effective.

By 5pm we were back in the ICU recovery area. We were discharged at 7pm, and home by 8:30pm.

We go back in ten days for another ultrasound.

Aside… I don’t like referring to her as “my girlfriend” all the time, and Convenience Store Girl (CSG) doesn’t make sense anymore, so from now on it’s My Girlfriend and Mother Of My Baby (MGaMOMB)… if you had a cold it’d kind of sound like megamom .

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