About a month ago, I found out that the wife of one of my coworkers had developed severe preeclampsia 34 weeks along into her fourth pregnancy. She had never had preeclampsia before, but there it was...the nasty, horrifying preeclampsia monster attacking again. I made a mental note to pray for his wife, and hope for the best.
Well, nearly four weeks have passed since then, and today, I saw my coworker. His wife popped into my thoughts immediately.
"Hey! How is your wife? And, how is baby?" I said unsure if his wife was still pregnant.
As he turned his face toward me, I saw it...the post-preeclampsia stress, the realization of how close "this close" actually came and landed on his wife and child. For the next half an hour, he walked us through the events leading up to severe preeclampsia. Unfortunately, his wife suffered from severe pulmonary edema and subsequently developed congestive heart failure. He rushed her to the ER after her obstetrician blew off three times of reporting she felt she couldn't breathe. In fact, breathing had become an effort just standing still, and the OB never bothered to listen to her breath sounds. The ER physicians took her seriously and eventually treated her with Lasix to relieve the severe edema.
While my coworker's wife's story was scary and horrifying, what was such a big reveal for me is that as he recounted her story, post-traumatic stress took over within me. I kept a relatively calm appearance, but I had an overwhelming urge to go crawl in a dark spot somewhere and curl up in a ball. I wanted to yell, shout, scream, and cry at my outrage toward the Preeclampsia Beast and all that it does to unsuspecting women and their families.
I'm confident that I had an anxiety attack, but I worked through it with some relaxation music...yay for iTunes and some slow breathing. I guess this entry is just me letting some more of it out so I can keep on going. I march one day at a time now to stay ahead of my survivor issues...for now.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Friday, May 09, 2008
not everyone feels like we do
If you're a preeclampsia survivor, you likely have hyper-sensitive hearing now when it comes to that word..........preeclampsia. If you hear it, ears perk up and you instinctively react and start listening. You want to know what's being said, whether it's on the news, in a movie or TV show, or in a live conversation that you overhear......which is what happened to me this week.
I was at my son's school, volunteering for a luncheon being given for teachers (Teacher Appreciation Week). We're relatively new at the school, and I don't yet know a lot of the other parents who are active in PTA, etc. We had some down time after we got it set up and were just waiting for teachers to come by and fill their plates. A couple of the other moms were chatting and they apparently already knew each other, so I was just standing nearby and half-way listening to the conversation since it didn't include me. Until I heard that word. She said something like "and then she's going to the doctor twice a week because of the preeclampsia".
I'm truly a pretty shy person, if you meet me in real life. Not very good at meeting and talking to people I don't know; I almost have to force myself to break out and be social, etc because it's not very comfortable to do so. And I wasn't a part of this conversation at all......but after she said this, and I was standing right beside her, she paused a minute and nothing was said. So the power of that word drew me in, and I said "ooh, you said the magic word to me, preeclampsia, because I had that with both of my babies".
Pause.
Wait for her to say something like "oh, really? What was the situation? Were they preemies?" etc etc etc etc.
Nope, nothing. Just an awkward pause, then she resumes her conversation with the other lady, almost as if I'd not even spoken. The other lady says "when's she due again?" and the first lady says "the 19th". So this tells me that she's about 38 weeks, which is a good thing of course, and quite different from my situations. But something about the way they were discussing this gave me the impression that they didn't think that the PE was all that serious or a very big deal. They immediately went off into giggling over an "argument" about on which day the baby would actually arrive.
I was just mildly irritated at the time, but now that I've had time to think it over, I feel more sad than mad. The words "kindred spirit" come to mind, because as weird as it may sound, that's how I almost instantly feel when I run across another PE survivor, or even hear someone talking about one. The connection of a shared experience, shared understanding of something that a big majority of the world doesn't even know exists. And yet when I reached out to this woman, shared something of myself, it was basically ignored and treated as if it was no big deal instead of as an instant connection and bond.
I just thought that everyone who'd been touched by PE would feel like I do, but apparently not. The community of people who understand is small enough already; it's sad to think that even among the PE survivors and their families, some don't seem to have been touched in quite the same way. Kind of a lonely feeling.
I was at my son's school, volunteering for a luncheon being given for teachers (Teacher Appreciation Week). We're relatively new at the school, and I don't yet know a lot of the other parents who are active in PTA, etc. We had some down time after we got it set up and were just waiting for teachers to come by and fill their plates. A couple of the other moms were chatting and they apparently already knew each other, so I was just standing nearby and half-way listening to the conversation since it didn't include me. Until I heard that word. She said something like "and then she's going to the doctor twice a week because of the preeclampsia".
I'm truly a pretty shy person, if you meet me in real life. Not very good at meeting and talking to people I don't know; I almost have to force myself to break out and be social, etc because it's not very comfortable to do so. And I wasn't a part of this conversation at all......but after she said this, and I was standing right beside her, she paused a minute and nothing was said. So the power of that word drew me in, and I said "ooh, you said the magic word to me, preeclampsia, because I had that with both of my babies".
Pause.
Wait for her to say something like "oh, really? What was the situation? Were they preemies?" etc etc etc etc.
Nope, nothing. Just an awkward pause, then she resumes her conversation with the other lady, almost as if I'd not even spoken. The other lady says "when's she due again?" and the first lady says "the 19th". So this tells me that she's about 38 weeks, which is a good thing of course, and quite different from my situations. But something about the way they were discussing this gave me the impression that they didn't think that the PE was all that serious or a very big deal. They immediately went off into giggling over an "argument" about on which day the baby would actually arrive.
I was just mildly irritated at the time, but now that I've had time to think it over, I feel more sad than mad. The words "kindred spirit" come to mind, because as weird as it may sound, that's how I almost instantly feel when I run across another PE survivor, or even hear someone talking about one. The connection of a shared experience, shared understanding of something that a big majority of the world doesn't even know exists. And yet when I reached out to this woman, shared something of myself, it was basically ignored and treated as if it was no big deal instead of as an instant connection and bond.
I just thought that everyone who'd been touched by PE would feel like I do, but apparently not. The community of people who understand is small enough already; it's sad to think that even among the PE survivors and their families, some don't seem to have been touched in quite the same way. Kind of a lonely feeling.
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