Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Before Brad@Home: Monkey in a Diaper

The news of my wife's pregnancy was a joyous and blessed occasion which I ruined.
When my wife's belly appeared on the screen, I gaped like a lobotomy patient. The sun was just rising, and I had (despite my preparation) a mildly plane hangover. Also, as our baby plans were still officially a year or so off, I wasn't quite prepared.
I moment passed as I thought, "Is that monkey in a diaper?"
My coffee hadn't taken effect really either.
Once the caffeine hit the cortex, I believe the conversation went something like this:

Blinking into the computer with dawning comprehension, I said "Wait...really?"
My wife's head drops into frame, the head of the baby-picture is still visible. "Yeah, I found out last night and the doctor confirmed it this morning."
"Uh, wow."
My wife is beaming, "Yeah, pretty crazy, huh?
"Yeah, how does this affect your blood clot situation?"

A few months before, we'd done a sprint-length triathlon and she had started to feel lethargic and odd. She pushed through it and finished the race, but it was strangely hard for her--considering that she had done 2 other such triathlons over the last few years and had no such issue. When the feeling didn't pass, she began what would be a series of pokes and prods from doctors, and various MRIs to discover that she had a small battalion of blood clots in both of her legs. She had no history of blood clots up until this point. See, my wife had been taking a medication called YAZ, which seems to have a few unfortunate and seriously intense side-effects. There are currently multiple lawsuits pending. 
They found the majority in her upper legs and thighs, but dozens of little dots showed up in her lungs as well. We were told that her lungs were taking care of it so far, breaking down the clots before they could become a big problem.
He put her on medication and explicitly warned us that the medication my wife was taking was very bad for pregnancies. We assured him at the time that we had no immediate plans to have kids.

So, in regards to the baby news I was hearing, it was definitely something that needed to be discussed, but as I watched the excited light slowly dim in my wife's eyes over the wonders of the Internet, it occurred to me that I could have waited a bit before bringing it up.

When I say it occurred to me, I mean days later. In the moment, I kept pushing. 

She had stopped taking the original medication and the doctor was going to give her a new one that was safer. Over the next few days she had some tests done to confirm that the Christ had shielded us and the baby was Okay. The only issue was that the only medication that could treat dangerous "deep vein thrombosis" (blood clots in her legs) and not harm the baby were injections that had to be given in the stomach twice a day.

So we began our new, grand adventure: One of us on the other side of the world, the other jabbing sharp metal into her abdomen.

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