“I couldn’t leave the kids alone with him. He couldn’t drive. No pick-ups, no drop-offs. Resentment built between us. We were told our children had a 50% chance of getting it too. All we could do was wait, and watch, and worry. It was too much to comprehend.”
‘One random afternoon, I got a text from my husband. It’s bad. I thought, ‘Will I be a widow?’ I should’ve been at home breastfeeding. Instead, I was meeting with geneticists.’
‘Suicide is always a viable option,’ I read the Snapchat my 16-year-old son sent his ex-girlfriend that morning. ‘How is your day going?,’ I texted him. I didn’t tell him she had sent it to me.’
“He said his dad was picking him up, and that he would be okay. I thought to myself, ‘He’s going to be with his dad, he will be fine.’ I heard his dad scream and the phone went dead. I pushed the pedal to the floorboard, and then my phone finally rang.”
‘Society to working moms: Date your spouse! It’s important to keep your relationship fresh. Hire a babysitter, they charge 22+ dollars an hour, so take out an extra mortgage to afford this.’
“Go back to work 6 weeks after having the baby. The baby you spent 9-10 months growing inside of your body. Make sure to break the glass ceiling and excel at your job – you can do anything a man can do! It is your job to show society this! Show the world that women can do it all. Rise to the top of your career.”
‘Your heart rate is fast and it skips. We don’t know why. You are young, you will grow out of it.’ The appointments were worthless. The doctor wrote me off as a hypochondriac.’
“I was angry. Enraged is more like it. I realized my major problems started at the end of 2013. What had I done differently that year? I had birth control inserted in my arm. It was just a hunch, but I knew deep down I was right.”
‘We noticed Milena was randomly limping, would have a sore tummy, and always wanted to be picked up and carried around. She started to scream at night.’
“He said ‘There are a couple of reasons why your child may not be able to walk. How could all of the doctors have missed this? Why her? What did I do wrong?”
‘He helped me make it to 25 days clean. And then I got the call, he had been robbed and shot in a parking lot. My world crumbled. Why him? Why now?’
“We ended up talking. I opened up about my grief and he shared that his father had passed away. We started dating and against all odds, and at seemingly the worst time, 2 months later with not even 90 days clean… I found out I was pregnant.”
‘Nothing prepared me for my wife’s cesarean. Nothing. Reaching from a gaping hole in my beautiful wife’s stomach was the head of a bloody, powder white, child-like creature.’
“I recall Mel lying naked in front of a handful of doctors after they finished. Blood dripped from the sides of her hips; her stomach like a deflated balloon. But nothing shocked me as much as the next day.”
‘I would think, ‘I have time for me later. It’s their time now.’ The doctor confirmed I wasn’t dying ‘at that moment’ and sent me home. I laid across the receptionist’s desk sobbing, begging them to help me.’
“Looking back, I saw it coming but thought I could power through it. Well, even the strong need a break, and because I wasn’t taking one, my body did the work for me. It was a slow-moving storm that turned into a hurricane, and I went down. Hard.”
‘I knew something was very wrong by the way the doctor was acting. The police came, and I couldn’t understand what was going on. Why were they there?’
“They wouldn’t let me fly with her, and looking back, I now know it’s because they didn’t know who had hurt her.”
‘I woke up being wheeled to the ICU in the worst pain imaginable. All I could silently mouth was ‘How’s my baby?’ I needed a doctor to believe me.’
“I was frustrated and angry. I know my body and I know that this isn’t a migraine!”
