After Birth, Part 2
"I was devastated, flattened. I hated him for saying those words."
About After Birth:
After giving birth, a severe medical event challenged everything I knew about myself. It sent me down a road of physical recovery and self-discovery.
After Birth is my story, told in parts because it’s A LOT.
Click this link to read Part 1 before you dive into Part 2 (I highly recommend)
2.
The machine said, "Stay very still."
I must have passed out. I didn't remember getting to the hospital. People were buzzing around me. Square fluorescent light boxes passed above me like cars on a busy highway. My husband was beside me, trying to keep up while pushing a lime green stroller.
Eventually, my husband stopped, but I turned left into a stark room with a steely white machine. A South Asian man in blue scrubs fiddled with my ears to remove silver studs from the piercing holes. Another stood at my feet, waiting until the studs clinked into a metal tray.
"One, Two, Three." they counted.
My body floated up, hammocked in a sheet. The men placed me on a table at the machine's opening. After a few minutes, I began moving into the machine head-first. My heartbeat started to thump in my ears. I could feel it beating as if it was punching its way out of my chest.
"Don't worry, Miss Shondra," The machine said, "stay very still." Then, the only sound I could hear was mechanical whirring.
I passed out again.
I woke up in a room that smelled like a pack of bandages. Gravity had me pinned to the bed. I was nestled in white sheets and had on an adult diaper.
A wall-mounted TV was in front of me. A beech bedside table and a matching cupboard were to my left. On my right was a two-seater brown couch; my husband was sitting down bottle-feeding my baby.
My chest folded in on itself. I watched someone else doing what I wanted to do more than anything. I wanted to reach out and hold my baby to my breast, but I couldn't move.
When my husband noticed I was awake, he stood up and said, "You had a stroke." and started to cry.
"I'm sorry-" I said.
"Don't say that!" He wept.
There was a knock on the door. "Good Afternoon, Mrs Shondra!' A petite middle-aged Filipina rushed in with a warm smile and a sing-songy voice.
"Time to take your medicine." She handed me a tiny paper cup. I took it with my right hand and looked inside. There were two small pills, one brown and one pink.
"What is this?" I asked.
'It's Warfarin1, Ma'am, blood thinner", she said, 'You need no more stroke'. She handed me a cup of water and waited for me to swallow.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"I'm Nurse Irma. Ma'am." She smiled at my son," He is so beautiful! You will get better soon for your son." She was sure and kind. I warmed to her immediately.
While she straightened the blanket, a tall, dark-haired man in a white coat opened the door, knocking simultaneously.
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I didn't like how he said "the body" as if I wasn't there.
"Hello! I'm Dr. Punaker." His voice was booming and imprudently cheerful. He walked up to the left side of the bed.
"Mrs Shondra," he smiled at me, "you came in with signs of a brain injury. The MRI scan showed an ischemic stroke2."
"Ischemic stroke?" my husband quizzed.
"A blood clot on the right side of the brain. This is why the left side of the body is weak." I didn't like how he said "the body" as if I wasn't there.
"How?" I asked.
"Well, it can happen, you know-" he replied.
“Why did this happen to me?” I said, raising my voice.
"She was on Clexane3-" My husband said.
"I injected myself every day!" I cried.
Two years before, an X-ray had shown blood clots in my legs. I was diagnosed with Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT)4 and took a course of a blood thinner called Clexane that cleared the clots. When I got pregnant, my doctor put me on it as a preventative measure.
My husband rubbed my right arm, "We were told she should stop after giving birth-"
"Who told you that?" Dr Punaker responded sharply.
"The Cardiologist came into my room after the delivery and told me I didn't have to take it anymore. I asked him about it."
He paused. The short silence that made my skin tremble.
"Well, if that's what the Cardiologist told you-"
"He did-" I looked at my husband, whose mouth was wide open.
"Are you sure?" Dr Punaker looked at my husband as if I wasn’t in the room.
"Yes!" I shook my head and released a slow and audible inhale and exhale.
"Should she have stopped the Clexane?" My husband asked, "Is that why this happened?"
"I can't say that. She wasn't in my care, but if the cardiologist told her to stop, I can’t go against that."
Dr Punekar's reaction made me feel like I had fallen into quicksand and was being buried alive. My husband put the baby in the stroller, stood upright, picked up a pen and started to fidget with it. This is why I knew he was feeling it, too. Someone had seriously fucked up.
"Will I get better?" I asked.
I looked to the doctor for the answer I wanted. When he paused, my breath went shallow and quickened.
"The brain damage is quite severe; I don’t see you making much of a recovery." He looked down at my legs and then up at me, "I'm sorry."
The words he used, "brain damage", entered me like a hurricane. I was devastated, flattened. I hated him for saying those words.
When the doctor left the room, my husband still fidgeted with the pen. “I'm going to find out what happened,” he said. “but I need to get you out of here first.”
The following day, my husband went to pick up my Mother from the airport. When I had the stroke, she was flying from the U.S. to meet her new grandson. She would only find out what happened after the eighteen-hour flight. I was very much looking forward to seeing her, but not the look on her face when she saw me.
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Nurse Irma came in and held the door wide open, "Good Morning, Miss Shondra! Nurse Rasha will shower you, OK?" A young Indian nurse with long dark hair came through, pushing a wheelchair. Nurse Irma smiled at me and closed the door once the nurse was in the room.
Nurse Rasha brought the wheelchair to the bed and said, "Come."
I looked at her with a furrowed brow. We stared at each other briefly until her eyes brightened with revelation.
"OK," she said. She pulled the white linens back, took my right arm, then my left, and swung them over her shoulders as she wrapped her arms around my lower back. She heaved me up, slid me across the bed, and gave me one more heave, lifting me onto the wheelchair.
I wanted to escape this room, this reality and this life
The fluorescent lights came on as we entered the wet room. When Nurse Rasha wheeled me towards the shower, her mobile phone rang the tune Kalvare. She reached into her pocket, answered her phone and, without a word, left me alone in front of a mirror.
Under the harsh lights, my brown skin looked grey. My left half was sloped, and the left side of my face was melting. My shoulder disappeared into a lifeless limb with a slack hand. My left leg dropped outward, only held in by the wheelchair. This was the first time I'd seen myself this way.
Despondency and humiliation swoll up inside my chest. I wanted to escape this room, this reality and this life, but I was in front of a mirror, and I had no choice but to see myself. I was grateful for the obstruction my tears provided to this view. I was now a blurry rendering of myself, dripping in grief and swimming in sorrow.
Nurse Rasha came back to find me distraught. She crouched down and put her hand on my back.
"Oh, Mrs Shondra, you lose weight and you walk again."
I wanted to say," FUCK OFF, Nurse Rasha. I just had a baby AND a stroke!" but all my broken spirit could do was sob. I felt hollow and concave. I was deep in despair.
Nurse Rasha untied the blue and green diamond print gown and removed the diaper. My tears fell down my cheeks, landing on my thighs. I watched her twist the shower tap back and forth, back and forth, to adjust the temperature. When the dainty water mists splashed my face, I was awakened. She manipulated my body to wash it, lifting my arms and legs like I was a puppet.
After my shower, Nurse Rasha put me in a fresh gown and diaper. Then, she tucked me into bed and left me alone watching reruns of Frasier. I felt outside my body, watching a woman wrapped in sadness. I waited for my husband to return from picking up my poor, unsuspecting Mother, who was now a part of the plan to get me out of that hospital and back to the U.K.
Thank you for sharing this time with me. Why not buy me a cup of tea?
Warfarin is a type of medicine known as an anticoagulant. It makes your blood flow through your veins more easily. This means your blood will be less likely to make a dangerous blood clot
An ischemic stroke occurs when the blood supply to part of the brain is blocked or reduced. This prevents brain tissue from getting oxygen and nutrients. Brain cells begin to die in minutes.
Clexane belongs to a group of drugs called anticoagulants. Clexane stops unwanted blood clots from forming and can stop any blood clots that have already formed from growing bigger. Clexane does NOT break down blood clots that have already formed.
DVT (deep vein thrombosis) is a blood clot in a vein, usually in the leg. DVT can be dangerous. Get medical help as soon as possible if you think you have DVT.
I listened to both parts back to back. Thank you for sharing your story with us in such a brave piece. But then 'story' isn't the right word. I don't have the words. I have deep respect and admiration. You are an inspiration.
This is a DAMN good piece friend!
I hate that you experience(d) such hardships but am grateful to his powerful bit of art and how it reflects your life ❤️