Betrayal or Rebirth?

I'm back, but not in the greatest of moods. I'm a little angry today. Angry with my body, angry with it for betraying me. I feel betrayed every time I look in the mirror. I feel like I have been on a roller coaster ride since having baby Sam back in July. A non-stop merry-go-round of curves and spins and tilts and whirls that I have had no control over, but have clung on to the ride for dear life.
For those of you that don't know, Sam was born on July 22 naturally, but aspirated meconium while in the womb. Long and short of it, he ingested his own bowel movement, which can be like a caustic burn to a newborns lungs. I watched in horror that night as he was whisked away from me and placed under oxygen, all while struggling to breathe. I didn't get the joy of putting him to my chest, I had to bond with him on a warming table with tubes and monitors coming out of every direction from him. Everyone assured me that his case was very minor, but that it had to run its course. But nothing prepares you for seeing your baby boy that you have carried safely inside you for 9 months, all of a sudden at the mercy of machines with bells and whistles going off when you are trying to have a tender moment with him.
Sam was hooked up to oxygen, monitors, and an IV for almost a week. I held him for all of two minutes before he was whisked away to the special care unit of the nursery. When they wheeled me over to his nursery two hours later, I trembled and quaked as I sobbed over his little body that was under what looked like a cake plate, with his chest racing to breathe. The nurses held me, Bill held me, everyone assured me he would be fine, but I wasn't prepared for this, was I?
We spent a week in the hospital, taking two steps forward then one step back. All the while, my body and mind were sleep-deprived and trying to recover from anxiety of childbirth. I ached to bring my baby home, to have him away from the monitors, the bells and whistles, to have him in my arms away from the fluorescent lights of the special care unit. It felt like a nightmare I would never wake from. Bill and I stayed in this little hospital room for seven days trying to keep our spirits up, and trying to bring our baby home.
Finally a week later, we were able to bring him home and as I rejoiced and put Sam in his going home outfit, he projectile vomited all over me and the room. I was told I had just overfed him probably, but little did we know that again, we were in for another trauma.
We had Sammy home for almost 7 weeks by the time we got the other diagnosis. I, at this point, had barely slept, had seen my doctor for anxiety more than once, and was convinced I was a failure at being a mother. I couldn't seem to recover. I was exhausted and Sam was an easy baby. He was just projectile vomiting on occasion, but it was enough to scare me. I mentioned his vomiting at one of his follow-up visits and my amazing doctor, suggested that we have him checked for pyloric stenosis. Feeling that we were just airing on the side of caution, we took him to Upstate for a sonogram. Sam was perfect for the sonogram, even cooed at the tech. But she came back with devastating news, he had pyloric stenosis and we were being admitted at that moment for emergency surgery.
My mind raced. I thought we had gone through the eye of the storm and come out the other side? Now here we were, being wheeled into the children's hospital and being hooked up to the dreaded monitors again. My stomach ached and my heart hurt. How could my baby being going through more issues? Was I a bad mom? Was my anxiety truly telling? How would I ever sleep again without good drugs? My mom and Bill and Dad held me up again through this ordeal. As they carried my baby boy out of my arms and down the hall to operating room for "routine" surgery on a 7-week-old, I crumbled. I just sobbed, uncontrollably, for only a few moments. Then waited for what seemed like an eternity in the waiting room for word from the doctor that he would be fine. When the doctor finally came in, I jumped on her to hug her in relief. But my insides were still not relieved. Again, I was feeling like I was on this spinning merry-go-round, and was unable to get off. Sam was fixed, but we had to stay another day for him to recover. The familiar monitors in the recovery room brought me back to the dreary days in the hospital after he was first born. I was transfixed on the numbers on the monitors, entranced by the bells and dread overtook me. We were here again. I was trying to
keep my baby safe and to be a good mother to him, and I was failing....again.
To me, it felt as if my insides were melting. My mind was playing tricks on me. I had barely slept in months now, despite the help of my parents, aunts, sisters, friends and husband. My mind carried on when I did sleep, and I had a nagging feeling that something wasn't right with me now. But how could we deal with another crisis? Maybe if I just got back to work, got back on some routine, my body and mind would go back on track too, and all would be well. I was supposed to head back to work on Nov. 4 at a new job in a new school and of course that brought its own fair share of anxiety. But the pain in my stomach got to be worrisome and I chalked it up to gallbladder issues due to my pregnancy. Just one more thing to deal with, but I was going to deal with it before I started work so I could start on a clean slate at a place I was looking forward to working at. I wanted to be back in a middle school and this school felt like home. My amazing doctor again, sent me for tests on my gallbladder. Those showed a healthy gallbladder but some abnormalities with my liver functions....however nothing to be alarmed about. I was to follow up with a GI doctor.
Well, the pain got increasingly worse, and sent me to the ER on my first day back to work, then back again and admitted the following week. After a week of testing and attempted testing due to my high blood pressure (which is a whole other blog entry), I was finally allowed to go home with hardly any answers other than my liver was enlarged and it could be a number of things. A liver biopsy would be the only way to get answers and it took me 10 days to get one because of my blood pressure.
When I took Sam in for his four-month check-up, that amazing doctor had to deliver me the devastating news. She told me the news was not good, that there were several malignancies in my liver and possibly in my breast and that she had set up multiple appointments for me the next day, including with an oncologist. The words all just whizzed through my ears. All I heard was malignancies, and I started blubbering. This was it, my drive to the doctor's office would be the last time I did something without cancer on my mind. It was the last ride of innocence for me. The last time I sang a song carefree and didn't listen for the message in the song. The last time I looked at the trees and thought of them as monotonous and tedious. Now I wouldn't take anything for granted. The fresh air, the singing of birds, the cry of my baby in the night. All things I wanted to experience every day in every way...because I had cancer now and this changed everything.
So that is how I got to today. I've had two rounds of chemo now, two shots, met with doctors, had multiple blood draws, had a port implanted, pulled my hair out, shaved my hair off. I have lived a lot in these past few weeks and if you add the events from July and September to the trek, you can probably understand why I feel betrayed by my body.
I look in the mirror and I don't like what I see. A body that is bloated from chemo, stretch marks that haven't gone away from months of pregnancy, scars from a port on my chest that are healing slowly, and my hair shorn into a GI Jane cut that I hate despite however many people tell me I look beautiful. I don't look beautiful, at least not to me. I look tired, I look beat, I look like I have seen better days. My shorn hair is three different colors, my glasses don't seem to be working as well, and most days I dress myself in a Betty White track suit and call it a day. I just can't seem to muster the energy to put the pretty into me. But as I look at these scars, the shorn hair, the stretch marks, I am reminded of how hard I have fought these past five months to keep my sanity, to be a good mother, to have a healthy baby who thrives now. My anxiety, while annoying, led me to taking care of both my baby and myself. They say always trust a woman's, a mother's intuition. And it's true.
My body and my mind may have betrayed me in this whole journey and worn me out in every way shape or form, however it has also awakened me in ways I never would have imagined. I'm trying to look at this journey as one of rebirth instead of betrayal. One where I get a second-chance to smell the roses, I get the fire I need to do what I love (write), I get the time to enjoy every giggle and coo from my baby boy. I may be exhausted and a little less for the wear, but I'm here and I'm doing it...and I've got this.