Going through old email today looking for an address for a holiday card, I happened across a reply someone sent me to a message titled "possibly bad news." And I realized by the date stamp that two years ago today, I received my crappy NT scan and maternal serum screening combined results. Two years ago today, I was sitting at this same desk working (with my gestating baby's last ultrasound pic up as my computer wallpaper, no less) when the perinatologist called to say my baby had a one in five shot at having either T18 or T13.
Hanging up the phone that day, I had absolutely no idea how badly everything would go after that. I had not yet done any research on trisomies 18 and 13, hadn't had to make any difficult choices yet. I didn't know that if it turned out to be a worst-case scenario diagnosis, that it didn't guarantee me an ok ride the rest of the way after that either, that there would be horrible and serious complications in the termination itself that would permanently alter the course of future pregnancies. Finally, it would have been completely outlandish, the idea that just a year later my uterus would give out and rupture. If that had been my fortune, I'd have squinted at the soothsayer and laughed. Who has so many worst-case scenarios happen in a row like that? How many times does probability just have to let you know you are its bitch?
And then just as suddenly, I was no longer probability's bitch. Little A was ok despite her early birth and the uterine rupture. Aside from being unable to have more kids, I'm ok too.
But I realized upon seeing that "Possibly Bad News" email that I still have absolutely no idea where to file that year of hell that started with the crappy NT results in 2005 and ended with a crash C section for Little A in 2006. I don't understand why everything went so wrong. Perhaps even more strange, I can't really grasp how it finally went right, either. Is God benevolent? Or is God a mean girl/queen bee, whipping me around at whim.
I'm grateful, but utterly confused. No answer I can fashion does the questions formed in 2005-2006 justice.
So I cried at seeing the old email, but it wasn't very cathartic, just a few strangled sobs. I feel like I've got rock salt and dirty snow slushing around in my chest and now I have to run off and pick up the girls from preschool/daycare. Hopefully I won't look like too much of a basket case when I do it.
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"If that had been my fortune, I'd have squinted at the soothsayer and laughed. Who has so many worst-case scenarios happen in a row like that? How many times does probability just have to let you know you are its bitch?"
How true are those words? I could have written those words myself.
I just found your blog today and I wanted to let you know it is helping me cope. Last tues. I received the results from my first trimester combined screening, I had a 1:<5 chance that my baby has trisomy 13 or 18. I had CVS done on thurs and got my FISH results yesterday, our baby has trisomy 18. We will say goodbye to her on Friday. It is the hardest decision I have ever had to make in my life.
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