This
past weekend I began casually packing my hospital bag. I was excited to do this
because I never got to for my first pregnancy. I pulled out the list that I had
eagerly grabbed from the doctor’s office- “What to Bring to the Hospital.” I
first put into my bag a bottle of wine (okay, not on the list) that my husband
and I chose together on a weekend getaway to Vermont not long after finding out
about this pregnancy. I vow to have a fully functioning liver, as well as fully
recovered insulin levels. What better way is there to celebrate the birth of a
new baby than by sharing a long-anticipated bottle of wine with your husband
and whoever else happens to be in the delivery room?
Next I
added a newborn outfit for our little man. He will arrive home sporting a “Little
Brother” onesie, along with some teeny tiny pants and socks. Underwear, two
nursing bras, chap-stick, slippers, flip-flops, some warm fuzzy socks, deodorant,
and a mental note to myself to swing by Lululemon Athletica to finally (years
of desire, but an unwillingness to commit to the price) purchase a pair of
exercise pants as a going-home present to myself. Toothpaste. A toothbrush.
Memories
came flooding back. Just under nineteen months ago, after my husband and I spent a lazy Friday with dear friends,
enjoying the end-of-summer sun and swimming in a beautiful New Hampshire lake,
during the long car ride home I developed a strange, intense illness. Severe
pain in my upper right abdomen, waves of nausea and desperation, uterine cramping,
and eventually vomiting from the pain and general feeling of misery. What I
thought was labor pain (I’d never experienced it before—all I knew was that
labor was supposed to be awful!), my incompetent but well-meaning small-town doctors
and nurses thought was food poisoning. A we’re-going-to-send-you-home-but-while-you’re-here-let’s-do-a
BLOOD TEST revealed that I had suddenly developed Class I HELLP Syndrome, a
pregnancy complication completely foreign to those same doctors and nurses. They
had all at least heard of preeclampsia, but that was not the case for this more
serious variant characterized by Hemolysis, Elevated Liver function, and Low
Platelets (HELLP). So after six hours in the local hospital and twenty-four
hours after my last shower, teeth-brushing, and getting dressed, I was rushed
by ambulance to Tufts Medical Center in Boston.
That
Saturday morning I was told that if my condition hadn’t been discovered, I with
the baby would have been dead in a matter of hours. My husband, however, was
told that even in my current state, while the baby was expected to turn out
just fine, my chances were not so great. He was told to prepare for the worst
in regards to his wife. And so emergency inducement began. More than twelve
hours after my last meal, despite my sickness, I was starving. I begged for a
meal, a snack, a drink, a sip of water… anything. “Please…” I cried to each
doctor and nurse as the shifts changed, always answered with the same
regrettable “no.” Up until that point in my life, if I could have done anything
differently, I would have bought and eaten that vending-machine Snickers bar at
the rest stop the night before. In case of emergency C-section, I was not
permitted to put anything into my stomach. I was put on an IV drip of fluids so
that I wouldn’t become dehydrated, but my mouth
was where I needed to taste something.
That
evening I was allowed to have my lips moistened by way of a tiny wet sponge on
a stick. I licked my lips and cherished the half-drops of water that entered my
dry, sticky, sour, putrid-tasting mouth. After about twenty hours of
ineffective inducement, I was long past the point of starvation, and even my
thirst began to dwindle a little. But my mouth, my throat, and my lips were
dry, cracked, in agonizing want of something cold, something fresh. The taste
of my own dying breath permeated my being.
And then, sometime around 4 AM—forty-six
hours after my last shower and teeth-brushing, twenty-eight hours after first
entering the local hospital, and sixteen hours after beginning vaginal
induction—I came out with a new question. “Can I brush my teeth?”
“Let me check.” My nurse told me.
She left to go ask the doctor. Several minutes later she returned with a hospital-issued
toothbrush and tube of toothpaste, as well as one of those kidney-shaped
buckets used for catching urine, vomit, or in this case, used toothpaste. I
almost cried with joy.
My larger memories of that weekend
are mostly blank: It is more the specifics like this that occasionally come
back to me. This grand event of brushing my teeth was a group effort. Someone
had to help me lean up and over a little, someone had to hold my hair, someone
had to hold the spit bucket, and someone had to brush my teeth. My husband
brushed my teeth for me—of that I am sure. The other roles are filled in with a
fog in my memory.
The wet, cold toothpaste hit my
teeth and began scrubbing away two days of grime, saliva, hospital air, and
tears, all dried and crusted, caked inside my mouth. I closed my eyes and
internally grinned as my mouth hung open. I spit. I rinsed. I cherished every
moment. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, I felt clean. Sure, I was still covered in sand
and dried lake water, my armpits were stubbly, I was drenched in sweat from
head to toe, my hair was greasy, and I had been urinating into a bucket in my
hospital bed for over 24 hours, but despite all this… I was clean. I could open
my mouth and speak without shame at my terrible breath. I could rest my head
and get a little sleep knowing that something in my little collapsing world
right now was right.
The drugs keeping me alive, the
exhaustion, and the starvation probably all added together to create my
hyper-emotional response. My husband doesn’t remember any of this happening
when I ask him about it. For him, this was just a bump along the road amid a
weekend of nearly losing his wife, and also witnessing the birth of his first
child. In those moments, for me, having my teeth brushed was a life-changing
and spiritual turning point. I could make it through this. Eight hours later,
Margaret Grace Means entered the world.
Four days later, I took a shower.
And with that thought, I placed a
nice, new, clean toothbrush into my hospital bag. This baby is due in five-and-a-half
weeks. My eyes widened as another idea occurred to me and I leapt to my bureau.
I located and added to the bag my Preeclampsia Survivor t-shirt. I am ready.
