But He Made It Out… With A Bullet In His Back

Jailbreak, jailbreak
I got to break out
Out of here
Heartbeats they were racing
Freedom he was chasing
Spotlights, sirens, rifles firing
But he made it out…
With a bullet in his back.
“Jailbreak”; AC/DC, ‘74 Jailbreak’ (1984)

This past Sunday night I finally sat down with friends, for the first time in almost a year, and spoke out loud about what I’ve been going through since April.

I spoke about the pregnancy, about my relationship with my girlfriend, about how I’ve sacrificed friendships and how my recovery has stalled.

I cannot remember the last time I’ve been with my friends. Any of them. I’ve been in such a panic, I’ve been so focused on supporting my girlfriend because of her high-risk pregnancy, I’ve been paralysed.

For the first three months of her pregnancy the fear was miscarriage, she had two before having her son four years ago. So twice a week we were travelling to emergency rooms in the very early morning. I was convinced each week would bring the end of our child.

I had spent the previous four years of my life trying to avoid situations where depression was the only outcome, and for three straight months I was living inside a string of depressions. Every single time I thought we had reached a point where things were getting better — three or four or five days without my girlfriend feeling pain, or finding blood in her underwear — I was crushed on day four, five or six when we ended up in the emergency room at 3am waiting for the doctor to tell us if it was a miscarriage or another false alarm.

And it was another false alarm after false alarm after false alarm. For three months, twice a week or more, there was another image thrust into my head of our baby being flushed. There was never enough time to come to terms with the baby being out of danger, before being jammed into another scenario where his life could be over. There was never enough time to be thankful for the continuation of the pregnancy, because the threat to its continuation always came back.

Except in July I was told the threat of miscarriage would be reduced to almost nil if my girlfriend underwent a surgical procedure called a “cervical cerclage”. And it was my girlfriend who told me about it. If she had the procedure in week fourteen of the pregnancy, the baby would have a serious shot at getting to full term.

I was very proud of my girlfriend, and incredibly thankful she’d be willing to live with the pain of the cerclage if it meant our baby’s survival. All she’d have to do, in order to make it work, was follow a few unbreakable rules — no driving, no walking, no lifting, no unnecessary standing and no stress.

And after going through the procedure she broke every one of the rules. She had replaced the constant fear of miscarriage with the constant fear of the cerclage breaking because she decided her boredom could only be alleviated if she drove around the county. Or because someone needed their shifts covered at the store, so she’d end up standing behind a counter for eight hours.

Every single time she went for a drive I counted seconds, minutes and days off our kid’s life. Every rule she broke, and every time she broke it, meant the cerclage was weakened. It meant a miscarriage was more likely.

And it has almost happened. She’s in the hospital right now with a baby which will be born almost two months premature because the cerclage has slipped away to almost nothing.

So, again, I was in a panic. I have been in a panic. But more than panic, in addition to the panic, I’ve been fighting against my girlfriend for seven months. I’ve been unable to recognize the forest because I’ve been beating my head against a tree while being pelted with rocks by the woman carrying my son.

My girlfriend is currently a patient in the high risk pregnancy department of the Ottawa General Hospital. She has been there since Tuesday, October 21. So ten days. She’s there because the doctors are convinced if she were to leave, and come home, the cerclage would fail and our son would be born too quickly, and without the tools necessary to live. His chances of surviving, they tell her, are much better with her surrounded by nurses and doctors.

But when they tell her “we strongly recommend you stay here in the hospital”, she hears “it’s okay to go home”.

And she’s planning to come home in four days. She also planned on coming home a few days ago, she told me over the weekend she was coming home on Tuesday, depending on how some test results.

When she told me I yelled at her. It was the first time I’ve really been angry with her. And it has been a very long time since I yelled at anyone. But I’d had enough.

So I yelled. “…you are not coming home. There is no fucking way you are coming home. You are staying in that fucking hospital until this kid is born. Our kid has a much better chance at surviving if you’re there. You are not coming home.”

She wanted to come home because her four-year old son had the flu. Now she wants to come home because she’s bored.

Several doctors have told her the best chance for our son to have a healthy life is for her to stay in the hospital. Basically what we’re doing is giving the kid as many days and weeks as we possibly can. He’ll be premature, right now it’s about timing. Thirty weeks is better than twenty-nine. The cerclage is far too damaged now to last much longer. If she comes home it’ll disintegrate in days, not weeks.

If she stays where she is, maybe we can get to thirty-one weeks.

But the panic surrounding me isn’t about the baby, it’s about her. I’m not panicked about the kid being born with or without properly formed lungs, the panic I feel is about my girlfriend changing her fucking mind every other day about whether or not she’s going to stay in the hospital.

I’m spending everyday trying to think of things to say which might convince her to stay. I’m calling her three times a day just to keep her spirits up, I’m travelling to Ottawa three times a week to spend eight hours with her to keep her spirits up. But I’m really spending every second thinking of how I can convince her to stay in the fucking hospital.

I’ve gone from spending hours in hospital rooms and corridors wondering if our kid would last the night, to watching my girlfriend burn through what seemed like a gift because she couldn’t sit still, to listening to her complain about boredom and how she’d rather be home folding clothes than be in the hospital where our kid has the best chance at being safe.

…my grandfather took me out for lunch last week. He asked about my girlfriend. After I gave him my standard answer, he leaned over and asked if I had anyone to talk to about what was going on. I almost fell apart. I told him ‘yes’, but I don’t. Not out of choice, but because I’ve been so consumed with making sure my girlfriend and our son survived another day, every other relationship has disappeared.

My recovery has been compromised, my diet has turned to shit, my blood sugar is sky high, I can’t put two nights of sleep together, I’m constantly in pain — I haven’t been able to lift my right arm above my shoulder for weeks, but I can’t speak to anyone about my problems because when I start to think about my problems I feel guilty because my girlfriend is going through so much more.

But I did manage to speak to someone. I had to force myself, but I did manage to invite myself to my friends’ home, and they were happy to see me. And, eventually, I was able to unload a lot of what’s in this post to them.

And they made the point that out of the eight months I’ve been dating my girlfriend, seven of them have involved this pregnancy. I’ve been thinking about that, but it never occurred to me someone else might be as well.

My friend, who gave birth to a girl eighteen months ago, also made the point she’d be tying her legs together if it meant giving her kid another week inside.

I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I don’t know where I stand with my girlfriend. I don’t even know if what’s going on between us can be called “dating”.

I do know that if she comes home on Tuesday our relationship is going to fundamentally change. Because I can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing. I’m just not sure what happens next… whether or not she does come home.

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