From
August 23, 2010
Near-death experiences are supposed to scare us, but I'm not so sure they scare us as much as they scare our parents!! When I was born, it was an icy December Sunday and my family was headed to church. My mother announced she didn't think she was going to go to church because she wanted to stop by the hospital on the way and have a baby. Everyone was quite excited except for my dad who had just discovered a flat tire on the family station wagon. But somehow he got it fixed and I ended up being born a couple hours later. Problem was, when I was born I couldn't breathe. I was whisked away from my mother while the doctors tried to clear my lungs, nose and throat.
 |
| Me, newborn |
Three days later my mother asked when she was
going to get to see her baby. The nurse looked at her and said
incredulously "You mean no one has brought you your baby yet???"
When my mother finally did see me, she was shocked. She was positive that
a mistake had been made and they brought her the wrong baby. I was
the fifth child and up till then all of her babies had been bald. When
they brought me in to her I had long, dark hair. She was sure this had to
be a mistake because the woman who shared her room had dark hair and her baby
was bald!!
My parents worried about this for quite a while but the hospital assured them I was the right baby. As a small infant, I developed the measles, not once-- but twice. My fever was so high, my parents were convinced they were going to lose me. I was not expected to survive. But somehow I made it through. I must have been a stubborn little baby but my parents say I was so peaceful they thought God would take me away anyway because I was just too perfect. By the time I was two, my hair was a golden blonde and I blended in with the rest of my siblings. But my parents still worried about my health.
My parents worried about this for quite a while but the hospital assured them I was the right baby. As a small infant, I developed the measles, not once-- but twice. My fever was so high, my parents were convinced they were going to lose me. I was not expected to survive. But somehow I made it through. I must have been a stubborn little baby but my parents say I was so peaceful they thought God would take me away anyway because I was just too perfect. By the time I was two, my hair was a golden blonde and I blended in with the rest of my siblings. But my parents still worried about my health.
 |
| Me, age 2 |
At one point when we lived on San Juan Island,
my parents thought they almost lost me again when my little brother pushed me
off a barn loft when I wasn't ready for the rope swing. My head landed on
a nail and my only memories were of my oldest brother and sister discussing
which one of them was really going to get it now!!! On the island, the
doctor made house calls and I was patched up with a few stitches and managed to
survive once again.
When I was little and attended elementary school
a big bus would occasionally park outside the school and on those days I knew I
wanted to be absent. Those were the days when all the children got their
hearing tested. We would wear headphones and raise our hand (left or
right) depending on which ear we heard the sound and when it started and
stopped. I hated those tests because I was invariably the first one to be
called out of the room for additional testing. That meant I had to
go into the big bus and do it all over again.
The teachers and audiologists would send a note home to my parents informing them that I had failed the hearing test and should be tested by a private doctor. My parents would say "But she seems to hear just fine!" In their minds, when I was called to do the dishes I didn't seem to hear them but if they shouted out "Ice Cream!" I would come running. So they just figured it was selective hearing and perhaps I just wasn't paying attention to the audiologist.
This went on for years, and every single year I was humiliated because all the attention in class always focused on me as I would be escorted out to the big bus. Sometimes I just put my head on my hands on my desk and waited because I knew I was going to fail the test anyway.
Once we moved to Bellevue, the school was a little more adamant about getting my hearing professionally tested and it turned out there was indeed a hearing loss. It was decided that it wasn't 'selective hearing' on my part but that some vowel sounds (like I and E) were just easier to hear. They also determined that I heard better through the bone (conduction) behind my ear than in front. It had been decided that having had the measles twice before the age of two months with extremely high fevers and having come close to death, had damaged my hearing in some way.
But all the excitement over my
health wasn't over. Just after my 20th birthday I was working in a
restaurant and not feeling very well. The boss noticed and
suggested I go home. "You're looking awfully pale" he
said. Being a tenacious person I continued working anyway for several
more days. Then on about the third or fourth day at work I suddenly had a
feeling that something was definitely not right. I became extremely weak
and for the first time ever, asked if I could go home. A ride was called
for me and for several more nights I cried into my pillow because my
abdomen hurt so bad. Not one to make a big deal, I finally asked my dad
if he could take me to a doctor. It was close to dinner time so we
weren't sure if we could get in to see anyone or not, but since a friend
of my family's was a doctor they took us in anyway.
When we got to the doctor, he looked at my dad and said "Why wasn't she brought in sooner??" and immediately sent me to the emergency room where within minutes I was operated on for a ruptured appendix. The ruptured appendix had caused leakage to spill into the abdominal cavity, causing something called peritonitis, which would basically cause gangrene in my abdomen-- I was being poisoned, would go into septic shock (blood poisoning) and would die very quickly in my sleep. I thought only little kids got appendicitis!
I was in the hospital for several days that time and I remember one day all of my brothers and sisters came into the room to visit me. Most of them were older and lived in Seattle and Bellevue and had come quite a distance to Whidbey Island. I remember that I started to cry and they were all telling me that the pain would go away. It wasn't the pain, I tried to tell them... it was because they came and I had never thought that I was important enough for them to drop what they were doing and come all that way to see me. It truly touched my heart.
I was sent home with an open wound to allow drainage and had to change my own dressings and bandages daily. It was my first medical experience and I realized it wasn't all that bad. Once again I survived. I was told I had a strong will. But I still wasn't done with hospitals.
It wasn't until I was an adult and had children that I sought actual professional help from the University of Washington for my hearing. I constantly worried about not being able to hear my babies when they cried in another room (before baby monitors were invented). The doctors told me that I had a partially-fixated footplate in both ears, the worst one being the right ear. This meant that the one of the three tiny bones in the ear that normally move easily, was not able to fully move. One of the bones, the stapes (stirrup) was partially fixated and so I was experiencing a moderate hearing loss. How I learned to speak well and get by all those years growing up was a mystery to everybody.
My right ear was operated on, a steel prosthesis placed in my ear and it is now the better of my two ears, with normal hearing. You would think that over my lifetime all these experiences would haunt me about mortality but they never did... not even the car accidents, or the swallowing of a bottle of pills during a particularly unhappy period of my life. But I can only imagine the fear my parents went through.
 |
| A classroom c. 1968 |
The teachers and audiologists would send a note home to my parents informing them that I had failed the hearing test and should be tested by a private doctor. My parents would say "But she seems to hear just fine!" In their minds, when I was called to do the dishes I didn't seem to hear them but if they shouted out "Ice Cream!" I would come running. So they just figured it was selective hearing and perhaps I just wasn't paying attention to the audiologist.
This went on for years, and every single year I was humiliated because all the attention in class always focused on me as I would be escorted out to the big bus. Sometimes I just put my head on my hands on my desk and waited because I knew I was going to fail the test anyway.
Once we moved to Bellevue, the school was a little more adamant about getting my hearing professionally tested and it turned out there was indeed a hearing loss. It was decided that it wasn't 'selective hearing' on my part but that some vowel sounds (like I and E) were just easier to hear. They also determined that I heard better through the bone (conduction) behind my ear than in front. It had been decided that having had the measles twice before the age of two months with extremely high fevers and having come close to death, had damaged my hearing in some way.
 |
| Me, 1982 |
When we got to the doctor, he looked at my dad and said "Why wasn't she brought in sooner??" and immediately sent me to the emergency room where within minutes I was operated on for a ruptured appendix. The ruptured appendix had caused leakage to spill into the abdominal cavity, causing something called peritonitis, which would basically cause gangrene in my abdomen-- I was being poisoned, would go into septic shock (blood poisoning) and would die very quickly in my sleep. I thought only little kids got appendicitis!
I was in the hospital for several days that time and I remember one day all of my brothers and sisters came into the room to visit me. Most of them were older and lived in Seattle and Bellevue and had come quite a distance to Whidbey Island. I remember that I started to cry and they were all telling me that the pain would go away. It wasn't the pain, I tried to tell them... it was because they came and I had never thought that I was important enough for them to drop what they were doing and come all that way to see me. It truly touched my heart.
I was sent home with an open wound to allow drainage and had to change my own dressings and bandages daily. It was my first medical experience and I realized it wasn't all that bad. Once again I survived. I was told I had a strong will. But I still wasn't done with hospitals.
It wasn't until I was an adult and had children that I sought actual professional help from the University of Washington for my hearing. I constantly worried about not being able to hear my babies when they cried in another room (before baby monitors were invented). The doctors told me that I had a partially-fixated footplate in both ears, the worst one being the right ear. This meant that the one of the three tiny bones in the ear that normally move easily, was not able to fully move. One of the bones, the stapes (stirrup) was partially fixated and so I was experiencing a moderate hearing loss. How I learned to speak well and get by all those years growing up was a mystery to everybody.
My right ear was operated on, a steel prosthesis placed in my ear and it is now the better of my two ears, with normal hearing. You would think that over my lifetime all these experiences would haunt me about mortality but they never did... not even the car accidents, or the swallowing of a bottle of pills during a particularly unhappy period of my life. But I can only imagine the fear my parents went through.
 |
| My oldest child |
Some of that payback came when my daughter was
diagnosed with a ventrcular septal defect (VSD) -- a hole in her heart.
She suffered other cardiac anomalies as well and spent many days, weeks, and
months in and out of hospitals. That is another story.
Sometimes things are meant to scare us so that
we realize how precious life really is and how much we mean to those who really
care about us. I wish it didn't have to be that way, but unfortunately it
often is. That is why we need to tell the people we love how much we love
them and do it every single day. It is just too important to ignore.
This picture was taken when my family lived in
Vancouver, WA, where I was born. That's me, bent over trying to buckle my
shoe so that I looked good for the picture. Who would have ever thought
what would be in store for this family? Or any of its members?
But we love each other and that bond will be with us forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment