why i've been gone

Brian has ordered me back to blogging.  I'm not totally feeling like it, but writing has always been my best form of therapy, so I'm sure it will be good for me.  Just to warn you, this is sure to be long and pretty emotional for me.  

I guess I should start by telling you the triple-whammy week I had.  Basically, in one week's time I was told I might have MS, delievered a baby two days later, which was quite painful, and then got scarlet fever three days after that.  One week.  It was horrible.  Really, really horrible.  Well, delivering Layla ended up being okay, but the rest was just awful. 

I don't love this picture at all. . .but this is minutes before we got the news.

So, here's the beginning:

To say that the last several weeks have been the craziest, hardest, scariest and most painful weeks of my life would about cover it.  Thank goodness we got such a beautiful reward out of all of the stuff we've been through.  Sweet little Layla.  Oh we love her.  Her timing?  Well, I know someday I'll look back on it and understand why she came when she did.  It was quite crazy.

I look back on my life three weeks ago and I feel like a different person.  On August 21st, in my 37th week of pregnancy, I went to the hospital because I had trouble talking.  That morning Ellery climbed in bed with Brian and I and we were snuggling for awhile.  Ellery was asking about burping the baby in my tummy and I was explaining what that meant.  I couldn't say the words that I was thinking.  I would try and try but they came out as non-words.  I thought I was having a stroke.  I tried to say, "Brian, am I having a stroke?" as panic started to set in, but instead of saying "stroke" I again said another nonsense word.  Finally, after several failed attempts, I just stopped talking altogether and after a few minutes my speech was back to normal.  Brian did some stroke tests on me, but was concerned enough that he encouraged me to call the on-call OB.  The OB wanted me to come in.  So to the hospital we went.  We were there all day.  After conferring with another OB, the ER doctor and a neurologist they thought that I should have an MRI to rule out stroke-like stuff that I don't know the name of.  

We waited all day for the MRI.  Really all day.  My kids were with my friend Starr, who had just had a baby two weeks before and I felt so guilty that we were taking so long.  I finally had the MRI, which was not a fun experience, and by this time it was about seven o'clock.  We had arrived at eleven.  Eight hours.  After the MRI they told us we had to wait for the neurologist to read the results.  By this time I was done waiting.  I was about to send Brian home to pick up the kids when the OB walked in the room.  Results.  Finally.  

"I have good news and bad news," said the OB.  I interpreted this as meaning they didn't see any signs of stroke (good news) but they don't know what caused the problems (bad news).  I was ready to hop out of bed and get dressed and get home, finally, when he said this next, "The results showed no signs of stroke, but, they did show several lesions on your brain that could be indicative of MS." 

Lesions that could indicate MS.  Mulitple Sclerosis.  As he said those words I could feel all the blood drain out of my body.  I tried so hard to not cry and was successful for a few minutes, and then I decided that I didn't care if the doctor saw me cry.  He looked around for a tissue to give me but could only come up with a scratchy paper towel.  I couldn't even look at Brian.  I had fully expected this to be nothing, just a precaution they were taking.  MS?  I had so many questions but at the same time couldn't really even formulate them to ask.  Plus, the OB was out of his element here.  He doesn't deal with MRI's and MS.  He didn't have a lot of answers.  

The doctors left the room, after giving me a sticky note with the neurologists name and phone number on it and instructions to call him on Monday.  Since I was still pregnant we couldn't do any of the tests needed to determine whether or not it was MS or just something unexplainable, which he said it could also be.  We were just given this potentially devastating news and all we could do was wait.  I stepped off the bed and fell into Brian's arms as our future swirled around in my head.  Visions of me in a wheelchair flooded my mind.  Or me not being able to use my hands.  Or me not being able to talk, like that morning.  I thought of my kids.  How I might not be able to be the mother that I am now to them.  How I might not be able to be the mother I had someday hoped to be.  How Brian might have to take care of me.   Somehow I managed to get dressed. My desire to leave the hospital and pick up my kids was now stronger than it had been all day.

As we were walking out of the hospital I still couldn't control my tears.  A kind nurse asked if I was okay as we walked across the lobby.  I nodded and she sympathetically said, "Did they send you home?"  Oh yeah.  I'm pregnant.  She thinks they are sending me home because I thought I was in labor.  "I wish," is what I thought as I again nodded to the nurse.  Easier that way.  

As we crossed the street and headed into parking lot, holding tight to Brian's hand, I had a moment of clarity through all my clouded emotions.  "Maybe this is all for our good.  Maybe this is a learning experience to bring me and Brian closer together, and closer to the Lord.  Maybe we need this to be humbled and to learn and to increase our faith.  Maybe I don't have MS."  

It was a comforting thought.  It was so comforting, in fact, that I recognized that it probably wasn't my own thought.  But fear soon took over my thoughts again and the shock of it all continued to set in.  

Are you tired?  I am.  I cried through most of this post. . .reliving it I guess.  I could talk about calling our parents that night.  I could talk about how our amazing families fasted for us the next day.  I could tell you how their prayers literally lifted me up at church the next day.  Or how our Sunday school lesson that day was on Job and how  I realized that I can do hard things and that there is purpose behind suffering.  There's a lot I could tell you about the days and weeks that followed.  But, I feel like skipping to the end.  

After Layla was born I met with the neurologist.  He did all sorts of funny tests with my body, asked me lots of questions and showed us the lesions on the MRI.  He ordered a more extensive MRI, now that I wasn't pregnant, that included my spinal cord and my brain again, this time with dye.  He answered some of our questions.  I had the MRI last Friday.  It was an hour and a half.  I was really nervous about having one that long.  But with the help of a little Xanex I did just fine.  After more waiting, we finally got a phone call from the neurologist last week.  There were no lesions on my cervical spine and none of the lesions on my brain were enhanced with the dye.  This is good news!  So, as of now I don't have MS.  I will get another MRI in five months to see if there are any changes.  I have mixed feelings about this.  I wanted the doctor to say, "You don't have it.  Go on with your life.  You're free of this disease forever!"  But he didn't say that.  There is not really any sense of closure or finality.  It's more of a wait and see thing.  Given the latest MRI results, MS is much less likely, but not ruled out entirely.  I have to keep in mind that this too is part of what I have to go through- part of what I have to learn.  Even though I am frustrated, I am very grateful.  

Now that the heat of it has passed, I can see that I did learn a lot through this experience.  And, of course, still learning.  I am so grateful for all those who prayed and fasted for us.  Clearly, prayers are answered.  I am so humbled by the amount of love we felt from so many.  That was another wonderful part of this whole awful thing.  We had amazing support from our friends and family.  We are so blessed.  I am grateful that I can already look back on this experience and realize the blessings that have come from it.  

So, that kind of explains my lack of posting.  That, and I did have a baby.  I knew three would be hard for me.  And it is.  It's just not in the way that I thought.  We are still settling in around here and I am still walking the line of normal life and postpartum land.  Trying hard to stay in normal life, but every so often I loose my footing.  I have loads of posts in mind though and Brian keeps bugging me to do them.  So, I guess I'm back.  It feels good to be back.  

The next story to tackle?  Layla's dramatic entrance into the world.  And I mean dramatic!