REALLY Rough Day - Explained

***Text in this color authored by Shena***

Work & Play
I am actually writing the events of Monday on Wednesday. This was the first chance I've had since I lost everything that I had typed on Monday. I’m sure that it doesn’t say the same thing, and I’m also sure that it doesn’t have the same emotion that I had on Monday (I’ve had two days to think things through), but it is close. I also should warn you that this is a fairly long entry. You might want to get a refreshment or come back later when you have some time.

Not much happened at work on Monday before I left at about 10:30 to meet Shena at the doctor's office. It was her 10 week appointment which is the first time that you can hear the baby's heartbeat, so she asked me to come. When Dr. Lowe came in, he pulled out his little heart monitor thing and started trying to find a heartbeat. He took a minute or two looking around, but didn't find anything right away. No big deal, Kelson's was hard to find in the beginning too. He didn't seem concerned at first either. After trying for another minute or two, he asked the nurse to get the portable ultrasound machine so that he could look for the heartbeat instead. He still couldn't see one, so he said "I don't want to give you any bad news until I'm sure, so let's have you go to the full size ultrasound room." Up to that point I hadn't really worried about it. I didn't feel like I should be concerned, maybe I didn't understand the gravity of the moment. Shena kind of looked at me funny after said that, but it just didn't seem to hit me yet. After a few minutes, we moved in their and the ultrasound nurse looked around on her big machine. It just took her a few minutes of looking for her to say "I'm sorry to tell you that I can't find a heartbeat. It looks like the baby has stopped growing. I guess Shena had been building up for the moment, because she immediately started crying. I don't think either of us had even considered that this might happen. I know I did while we were pregnant with Cade, and maybe a little with Kelson, but the thought really hadn't crossed my mind. I'm sure the nurse probably hates that part of her job. She gave Shena and I a few minutes for Shena to compose herself and to allow her to get dressed. For the rest of the say, she did pretty well. We went into Dr. Lowe's office so that he could talk to us for a few minutes. Explain what he thought the problem was and what needed to happen next. He said that he felt it was a blighted ovum and that Shena had two options on how to take care of it. The first was to wait and let her body discharge on its own. He said there was no telling just how long that might take. It could be anywhere from one day to two months. He also said he had a drug that he could give her to speed up the process, but that 95% of the time after he gives someone those drugs, the next time they see him they tell him to NEVER let them do that again. Very painful and very messy. He recommended that she go ahead and get a D&C done as soon as possible. The longer she waited, the more likely she would have to go through the cramping pain and mess of it happening naturally...PLUS in the meantime she would still have to deal with the nausea and hormones that she was dealing with while she was pregnant. We decided to have it scheduled for Wednesday because she didn't want to miss the Relief Society dinner/program that she had spent so much time on that was happening on Tuesday. We left the doctor’s office and she asked me to go and get the kids at Plummer’s. Dede was surprised when I walked in the door, since I wasn’t the one that had dropped them off. Shena drove straight home because she just didn’t want to face anyone. Not embarrassment or anything like that, she just didn’t want to have to explain it all and get emotional again. She asked me to ask Dede to call Leesa and Susan and Ashley so that they would know and wouldn’t ask too many questions when they saw her and make her re-hash the thing over and over. Dede was a good sport about it. She had been through it too, so she could empathize. I took the boys home to get some lunch. Shena had scheduled a park play date with Danny and Cody Crockett at Country Park at 1:00. I told her that I would take the boys if she wanted because I had called work to tell them I wouldn’t be back in the rest of the day. She said no, she wanted to take them. She had decided that she wanted to go on with the rest of her day as it was planned (including piano lessons at Williams’) so that she wouldn’t spend time thinking about it. I ate lunch after they left, and I probably could have gone back to work, but for some reason I didn’t feel like facing everybody at work either. I didn’t feel ready, so I stayed home the rest of the afternoon and watched the crew knock down trees in my yard and worked from home a bit.

Looking back on it all, I can’t believe how hard it has been. I remember hearing about others having a miscarriage and would feel badly for them, but I didn’t realize just how hard it was. I was certainly taken back by how much it hurt me. Probably the hardest time I had with it came right after I talked to my mom (see Arellano Update for an explanation). Shena put on a “brave face” all day. She tried to convince me and everybody else (including herself) that it wasn’t affecting her too much. I know it wasn’t true entirely, but I also know that it definitely could have been much worse.

Shena kept saying “It’s not like I have felt the baby move. I wasn’t really ‘attached’ yet,” and so on. We also realized that we hadn’t even picked out any baby names. That might not seem like a big deal to you, but we had picked out Cade and Kelson’s names by this point of the pregnancy for them. It also would have made it harder, I think, because we would have felt more of an attachment by calling the baby by a name. And then what would we have done with those names? It would seem a little weird to me to still use those names for our next child. It’s amazing to me how these things work out. I know that if the pregnancy would have continued, there was probably something wrong with the baby and who knows what we would have had to deal with then. Months of hospitalization? Downs syndrome? As hard as this is, I’m sure it is much milder than what we WOULD have had to deal with. I also feel badly that I am so worked up about losing a baby we didn’t even know, when I think of people who have lost kids after knowing them for 10, 15, 20 years or more. THAT would be tough. Shena and I can work through this one.

Enough of the depressing news…even though that was therapeutic, I need to go on. LIFE goes on.

Vachon and crew came out to work some more. I posted the updated pictures of the progress. They were having a good ol’ time out there with their bobcat. I think there was more playing going on out there than work the way they were laughing and cutting up. Whoever was driving the bobcat was going full speed through the woods, just knocking down anything in his path. It wasn’t all a good day for them, though. In the back left corner of my lot (as you face the house) there is a drop off of about 5 or 6 feet where someone (a long time ago) had come and dug into the hill, for fill dirt probably. They were using the “hole” to push some of the trees and debris into. When I saw the way they were working, I thought to myself “they are going to drive that bobcat off the ledge, there. Sure enough, I was in my office working for a while and realized that I hadn’t heard any chainsaw noise for a bit. I looked out the window and saw the three of them (another of Vachon’s crew had shown up) tying a tow rode around a tree and the bucket of the bobcat. They left two wheels had fallen off the edge of the hole, but luckily there was enough fill in the hold to keep it from rolling, but they were stuck and couldn’t get it out. To make a long story short (you are probably tired of reading by now) they got the bobcat ½ way out, this time the back two wheels were off the edge, and it was teetering…almost falling backward. Vachon had to bring his dump truck back into the woods and it still took 20 minutes to get the thing pulled out. Maybe they should have quit for the day at that point.

About an hour or so later, I was talking to my neighbor John on his deck. We were talking about what I was doing and which trees I should have them cut down, etc. The crew was back to cutting down trees (4 of them now). One guy was dragging branches to the back of the lot, another was using the bobcat to push the trees the direction they wanted them to go as they cut them down, one had the chainsaw, and the last guy (Chris) was also pushing on the threes, looking out for the chainsaw guy (Sean). Next think I knew I heard “Owww…aaaaahhhhh!” And I saw Chris come sprinting out of the woods, his hand holding his left arm just above his elbow. “My arm! My *bleep-ing arm is all *bleep-ed up!” He then started totally flipping out…running around the truck they had parked next to my house, looking around like he didn’t know where he was or what he should do. The other two guys came running out of the woods to check on him, Vachon just calmly walked over and talked to him trying to get him to calm down. I decided I should run inside to grab a towel to wrap his arm in, halfway to the backdoor I remembered that they had taken the deck off the house and it was now about a four foot step to get into the house. I about broke my neck trying to cut in my dress shoes towards the front door. By the time I grabbed a towel and went back outside, they had found a towel or something in one of the guy’s truck and had wrapped his arm in it. Chris and the other guy jumped in his car and he squealed off to the urgent care to have his arm looked at. Sean, who had the chainsaw at the time, was pretty messed up. He was convinced that he had just caused his buddy to have a lame arm for the rest of his life. I asked him what happened and he said that Chris was pushing on the tree he was cutting when the tree started to pinch the chainsaw blade as it fell, so he tried to pull the blade out and when he did Chris’ arm came down as the chainsaw came up and it got his arm. Sean was positive that he had hit bone because the chainsaw had “bounced back” when it hit Chris’ arm. Vachon said he wasn’t so sure. He said he looked at the arm and it didn’t look that bad. But Sean was freaking out. They decided that they had had enough for the day and they should quit before somebody got killed. John, Vachon and I were pretty sure that it wasn’t too bad because we never did see any blood running down his arm like it had cut a major artery or even a whole bunch of veins. Leon called me later that night to let me know that they had put some stitches in, but the doctor said it was the best place on his arm that he could have been cut. Not much there but meat and skin…no major vessels, no tendons, etc.

Llano Update (Cheeto's Brood)
The weather was beautiful today (73 and sunny), so when Shena and the boys got back from the park and piano lessons, the boys and I went out and walked around in the yard. We played on the deck a bit and also on the equipment that Vachon had left behind. Cade had been dying to get close to it and sit in the bobcat, so I let him for a few minutes. We played out there for about and hour or so while Shena took phone call after phone call from friends and family. There were several times that she was on two different phones at once. It was nice to see so many people were worried about her. We really have made some good friends in the last eight months. The boys spent about 3 hours outside today, which is pretty unusual for them. They usually don’t get that much time outside, but it is good to see they like it so much. It makes me that much more excited to get some of this backyard cleared so that they can play out there. We will have to get a fence put up back there so that Shena can send them out and let them play and she not have to worry about them. I know they would love it if they could do that.

Arellano Update
Mom is in San Diego with Adam & Melissa and Ethan. I called her on her cell phone to let her know what had happened. I opened with “Hi. What are you doing?” Bad question. Her response: “We are just sitting here watching an ultrasound video of little Emma/Emmanuel moving around.” That was tough. At that point I didn’t want to tell her what had happened, but I didn’t know how to get out of it. I let her know, and she of course said she was sorry. I don’t know if it made it any worse for her that she was watching that video at that particular moment, but it sure made it harder for me. At that point I thought about how we weren’t going to get to see one of those videos for this baby. She said she was going to call Lettie and Marcos and Lettie Adam and Melissa know.

Christensen Update
Then Shena had an embarrassing moment with her mom. She received flowers with a note that said “Wish I could be there. I’m sorry. Love, Mom.” Both Shena and I immediately thought they had come from Cherie. She called to say “Thank you” and Cherie said she didn’t send them. I think it made Cherie feel bad. But Shena was embarrassed and didn’t mean to put her mom on the spot like that. Cherie promised to send flowers when she had surgery on Wednesday.

Daily Report - See Earlier Posting