Monday, June 4, 2012

Ready to go


I had my last St. Louis appointments today, the ultrasound looked good, Anya is about 5lb 13 oz, and her head is down! Still no extra fluid! The ultrasound OB even commented that her lung to head ratio was better than it had been before. The lung to head ratio is how they check severity, the standard practice is to use the number they find at the 24 week ultrasound to discuss prognosis, for whatever reason they do not take later lung to head ratios into account. Basically he brought it up to say ‘This doesn’t change anything but at least it does not look worse.” Sorry for the clinical lesson!

My primary OB is very confident that I will not go into labor before I can get down to Florida. The past couple of days I had been worrying about every pain, but I am not dilated at all, so the risk is low.  When I had Arwen none of this mattered, because I live less than two miles from St. Joseph. This time I have to go on a fifteen hour car ride, not including the every two hour walking breaks I need to take to keep my circulation going. My greatest fear has been delivering at some unknown hospital on the way, hoping I could get to a facility that would understand the basics of CDH care. I am pretty confident this is not going to happen, but I will breathe easier when we get into the Gainesville city limits!

Three weeks or so from today I will not be pregnant anymore. This is bittersweet, everyone I know who has been through this says to enjoy the pregnancy as much as you can. I have tried to do this, but it has been really hard. I am not patient; I always want to be looking ahead to the next big thing with normal situations. I just want to see what happens next; and to find out what my life is going to look like. It has been four months since I could feel confident in what the future holds.

If I have learned anything from this pregnancy it is to chill out. It reminds me of when Mom was sick, after she was diagnosed with lung cancer, we came home one day to find a neighbor had put a rain gauge or some such thing in her flowerbed. This was a big pet peeve of hers, and she would get all irritated about it, going on a rant, but not doing anything. This day, post cancer diagnosis, she walked over in her frail condition and pulled it out of the bed, and leaned it up against their house. She looked at me and said firmly “if they say anything, just blame it on the brain tumors!” Major life-altering diagnoses pretty much give you permission to give many aspects of normal life the finger. Worrying about what people think of you is the first one to go!

There have been many times in the past few months when I hear someone complain about some mundane issue, and the individual is really stressing out about it. I do not have this problem now, and I imagine I will not for a long time; hopefully I will take this ability to my grave. Anya is in
God’s hands, he has been leading us on the path he wanted us to follow with her care. In light of this it is absurd that I would obsess over traffic, how clean the house is, or if I will or will not get a bonus this year.  I don’t sweat the small stuff. I am happy to have reached this place, I am more forgiving of myself than I have ever been. It is an odd thing to be peaceful. I keep wishing I will hold on to this when we are in the NICU, but I am not holding my breath.

So now we are ready to go- Saturday morning we will start driving, arrive in Gainesville on Sunday, my appointment will be on Monday June 11th in the morning. I will post when I know when the induction is planned! From then I plan on updating the blog more often than I have so far, my goal being daily. I won’t necessarily update Facebook, so check back often. Thank you so much to everyone for your thoughts and prayers!

1 comment:

  1. Kelly, I have been following your bloc for a bit now and just realized that you are in gainesville, fl. I live in Jacksonville. I have a dear friend who is down there right now with her 3yo CDH survivor, Camden. She is on FB and I know she would love to talk and be a great support - plus she is at U and F NOW! Her bane is Devon Mickler Roell. Look her up..... her and Camden would be a great support system for you both! Much love and many prayers being sent your way. XOXOXOXO, Mary Riker

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