The Rise of A Phoenix

Chapter Nine- Scalpels And One Last Gift From A Ghost

Now I was slightly worried. I hadn't had a menstrual cycle in almost two months, despite taking a regular dose of birth control pills and I'd only had s*x with Tommy once three months ago, after my second graduation from college. I can't be pregnant, can I? It's not physically possible, is it? Oh, come on Brittany, really? Your math doesn't work here. You must have missed a dose somewhere. I guess it all comes down to the urine sample. What's done is done. Rose came back in with a catheter kit and helped me strip my clothes off. Panic set in as I remembered that my hips had locked up the last time I had to get a catheter put in.

“ Do this gently, Rose, would you please? My hips are stiff.” I asked.

“ Of course. I was a urology nurse before I moved down here to the ER. You're still going to feel it going in, but it'll be pressure not pain.”

“Okay, let's get this done. I want to know if I'm really pregnant. If I am, it would be my last gift from the man I loved. It would be a happy memory of someone I lost.”

The catheter went in, the sample was drawn, and Rose left to take the sample to the lab. I was tense in anticipation of the results.

The results eventually came back and were not what I was expecting-I was pregnant. The attending physician came in to run an ultrasound to confirm the results of the urine test and he said that I was eight weeks.

Seeing the proof on ultrasound was surreal because I desperately wanted to be a mother but doctors had told me that might not be orthopedically possible.

“Congratulations, Mom. It's the most beautiful thing in the

world.”, the attending physician said as he hit the keyboard key to print me the first sonogram. I held it and whispered,

“Hello, my growing darling. I'm making you a promise. I promise to love you, fight for you, and carry you when you can't carry yourself and the world is too much to handle. I'm your mother no matter what.”

Hemingway, thank you. I promise to love and cherish the child we made together. They will always know that their father loved them even though he couldn't be there to watch them grow on Earth. Thomas Yrechko, you are my Hemingway, my friend, my love and my angel. Thank you for this beautiful gift. I love you and will always be the Plath to your Hemingway.

Dr. Hamlin came in to assess me pre-op, and I cried, saying,

“I'm sorry, Doc. Now you have two lives in your hands instead of just one.”

To reassure me, he said,

“I know. We'll take care of you both. Congratulations. We'll just have to move quicker than we planned so we can do this correctly while keeping the fetus's exposure to the anesthesia minimized. You might be the first combination of labral repair and hip replacement surgery I've had, but you're not the first pregnant woman who’s had to be on the table. You both will be fine.” he said while he marked my hips in surgical ink.

“I just want my child to be healthy and not disabled like me. My birth and what happened in my childhood is not a fate I'd wish to repeat if I can prevent doing so.”, I replied, my voice trembling.

“I understand completely. We've got to get moving here, though. You've got a date with me and a new hip. Let's get you walking pain free again. You're going to need to be able to do that.” he said, smiling.

I handed my sonogram to the nurse, saying,

“Keep that safe for me, please. I need to be able to mount it on the goal board since I'm not going home right after. Another reason why I need to fight and all that.,” I said with a smile.

The consent form was signed already, so the anesthesiologist came back in and gave me IV sedation before the nurses wheeled me back to the OR.

They got me back there and I folded my arms over my chest as the nurses lifted me up onto the table, almost as if I was trying to protect the baby growing inside me from what was going to happen. I had only technically been a mother for a few hours, and it was already awakening things inside me I didn't know existed.

I looked down at the oxygen mask laying on my chest and said,

“No turning back. Let's get this done. I'm all yours now, Dr. Hamlin.”

“Well, you heard her. Let's get this done. Count backward from ten out loud, Brittany.” Dr. Hamlin commanded, military style.

Placing the mask over my face, I started counting backwards from ten. I didn't reach the end before becoming unconscious.

The surgery was going well until they made the incision into my right hip. That's when disaster struck. The arthroscopic camera wouldn't fit.

“ There's too much scarring. I can't get the scope placed. I really didn't want to have to do this traditionally. It makes the surgery longer than I originally planned and I have two lives at stake, not just one.

She's already been under anesthesia for two hours. I won't be the one who makes her lose her child. I have to make an anterior incision instead of doing it laterally. Let me close the first incision.” Dr. Hamlin said this confidently, but his nerves made him feel differently. He looked at the monitors reading my vital signs.

Everything is still stable. I have a feeling that if I can't get her off the table in the next hour though, it won't stay that way. Okay, I'm closed on this first incision. Perfect.

“Okay, I've closed the left incision. Shift her to the right on the table. She isn't even. Thank you.” Dr. Hamlin pulled a ten blade scalpel from the tray held by the circulation nurse and deftly cut into the skin above my pelvis. He had to cut a clear path through my hip muscles in order to get the anchors placed to fix my labrum and connect the tissue to my femoral head, which was slightly difficult because I had a femoral rod in that hip. I had broken it in three places because I had been pre-osteoporosis in my early twenties, and as a result of childhood surgery, had lost some of the bone mass and density in my hips, making them brittle and prone to breakage.

“Wow, I'm surprised. I honestly thought I was going to have to replace this hip. It looks good so I don't have to. Small miracles never cease to amaze me in this line of work. It's anchored to both points now.” He said this as he started tying off the suture thread.

Forty minutes to spare. It was difficult but I got it done. We'll see what happens when the obstetrician sees her in a few weeks. It would break my heart if I did this to her and she lost her baby or it ended up disabled like her. Dr. Hamlin thought this as he closed the incision and stepped back from the table to make room for the nurse who was placing the catheter in my body.

“Catheter went in beautifully. Let's get her off the table.” the nurse said.

The anesthesiologist turned off the anesthesia and the nurses lifted me off the table slowly and onto a gurney. They wheeled me out into recovery and left me in the PACU nurse's hands.

“Mmm…how's my baby? Did we both make it? Everything hurts, especially my lower back. I think I have to pee. Ow…wow. Oh, Jesus.” I said all this as I exhaled a pained breath. Everything hurt and I wasn't supposed to be laying flat according to postoperative protocol, at least from what I had read prior to surgery.

“ You had a catheter placed. It's the internal pressure that's making you think that you have to pee. Obstetrics will be in to see you when you leave here and go upstairs to the orthopedic floor. Right now, we have to get some liquid into you because they won't let you upstairs until you hold down liquids. Here's some water and grape shaved ice. Let's get that into you and see how you do.”

“I don't think I can. I feel nauseous. I need a bucket. Seriously. I'm gonna puke.” The sentences barely made it out of my mouth before I started to vomit.

“Here's the basin. Let's get you cleaned up and then we'll get you something for the nausea and vomiting. It's okay. This is supposed to happen in the early stages of pregnancy. The surgery you had this morning doesn't help matters much either.”, the nurse said sympathetically.

“This is hell. Ugh. Baby, please don't do to me what I did to your grandmother. I put her through hell for the six months I was growing in utero.” I said while bent over the basin.

“Let me go find you some clean scrubs. I'll be right back,” the nurse said. Thirty two weeks left to go. Ha. If I make it to the 24 weeks gestation mark, I'll know that I'm doing something right. As long as I take care of myself, I should make it full term. My mom didn't make it all the way with me, but that doesn't mean history has to repeat itself. I'm not young like she was.