Day 20: Difficult Time in My Life
I think we have had several difficult times since we have been married. The birth of Jessica was probably one of the most traumatic when we first got married.
I can close my eyes and still remember that day. I had just dropped James off at work. We only had one car at that time. I stopped at a little store in North Houston to get a drink and get some gas. I was inside the store and went to the restroom. That is when I felt something was wrong. I looked out of the restroom and told the cashier to please call 911 that something was wrong with the baby. I was 26 weeks along with Jessica. The ambulance came and took me to the closest hospital on that side of town.
I had to get one of the nurses to call James at work., This was before we had cell phones. Since I had to go by ambulance, I had left the car at the little store. James called his friend Larry to come get him to take him to where the car was. Once he got the car, he got to the hospital as soon as he could.
At the meantime, the Dr. in the ER was asking me about where I was originally suppose to deliver? I told him , "The Woman's Hospital " So he called over to the hospital and talked to my OB?GYN and they got the operating room set up and was waiting for me. While this was going on, the weather was turning bad outside and had a Wind Advisory in effect so they could not Life Flight me like they were going to do. So they started asking all sorts of questions, one being if i want to have the baby at their hospital? I had what was called "An Abruption of the Placenta" this was stressing Jessica out. So they delivered her by Emergency C- section at 12:38 pm. She was 2 lbs. 7 oz and 15 inches long. Once they got her stabilized they sent her to the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) over at The Women's Hospital" by way of ambulance.
I stayed in the hospital for a week since I had lost a lot of blood and had a C-section. James went back and forth between the two hospitals to visit Jessica and me. Jessica finally came home December 22, 1990. She weighed 9 lbs 5 oz by the time she came home.
I think the second most difficult time in my life was when we found out that Jessica our 9 year old was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and they didn't give her but a year to live with treatment. I think that was definitely a true test of my faith at the time. I didn't understand why God would take my baby away. She lived for 14 months after going through radiation and chemo treatments. The doctors were barely giving her a year. Turns out she had two types of tumors in her. The first one was Astrocytoma which is a very deadly type of brain tumor. She also was diagnosed with another type of brain tumor as well on her spine. We are thankful that we had the time with her that we had.
When she was a baby and was in NICU the Dr's gave her all sorts of medicine to help her to develop her lungs and just to be able to keep her alive. I have no proof but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that whatever drugs they had her on is what caused her to develop cancer. Of course I have no way of proving this because they didn't do a study on the babies at that time. However, it would be interesting to find out how many of the babies who received treatment eventually were diagnosed with cancer.
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