I haven’t written about this before, I guess because it was just too awful. For a long time I couldn’t even think or talk about it without becoming upset. However, I’ve just been prompted to do so by reading David Aaronovitch’s article in today’s Times magazine.
David, a successful journalist, has undergone an experience, a medical trauma, so totally unexpected, and so frightening, that although it is a totally different ‘accident’ to mine, is so similar in its tone of total fear that I felt as if I was reading an account of my own ‘episode’ with the names and nature of the medical emergency changed. Mostly it made me feel that I should write about what happened to me, that it was worthy of record. Even if for nothing else, it’s an account that my children will have of something that happened to good old Mum while she was just minding her own business and trying to complete her family.
I suspect this isn’t going to be a short blog. It may be written in parts. I will most definitely have to check some details with my husband, something unique for my blog. It’s always straight from the head or heart for me. But this time I need to clarify things that are fuzzy, still unknown to me, even though they happened to me (sort of like when you’ve been on a bit of a bender and have a severe case of memory loss, but without the preceding fun and “it was my own fault entirely, I only have myself to blame” mentality to follow.)
Immediate family, and some friends know what happened. A surprising amount of friends and acquaintances don’t. It’s not really a conversation piece, although it would make a startling ice-breaker. A couple of times I’ve found myself skimming over it to a friend at lunch or referring to it without explanation over a coffee and them saying “hang on, WHAT happened??!!”.
So, here it is. Short version: I gave birth, crash emergency C-section, a day of recovery, then collapsed and went blind. Totally, completely blind. Imagine it. I’m saying that but actually you won’t be able to. It would be as impossible for you as it was to me in my pre-blindness life. Even I am staggered by it and it happened to me.
This is not the place for a detailed description of Finn’s arrival. Let’s just say it started out ok, went wrong about 3 hours in, and then took on the look and feel of an episode of ER, but without George Clooney, and with my husband in the role of ‘shocked and seriously worried husband’. Not funny, just scary, but I know these things happen all the time so not worthy of description here. That was Thursday September 17th.
On Friday I began to recover from my C-section. (I really hope this isn’t beginning to sound like a Craig David song). Sore, muzzy from the general anaesthetic, but mostly relieved my son was out safe and next to me sleeping in his crib. The two most physically irritating things were linked: “lacerations of the tissues of the upper airway” – a common by-product of being intubated (more ER). In real terms it meant I had a small piece of skin hanging down at the back of my throat that has been scraped off when the tube was inserted into my airway. As you can imagine, it was a bit of a pain and kept making me cough and splutter. Not such a big deal in normal circumstances, but with a fresh 8 inch wound where my bikini line usually is, not the best. Each time I coughed, even a pathetic little half-stifled cough, I felt that I was about to burst open. Just like in the Alien movie. Nothing like any post-delivery, rose-tinted fantasy that all women imagine before they give birth. At all.
So, there I was thinking that was really bad, and how unfortunate for me. A fright, my about-to-be-born baby ‘in distress’, alarms sounding, doctors and nurses moving really fast. It’s never good to be on a trolley that’s being pushed to the operating theatre by people that are actually running. Anyway, I was feeling a bit hard done by, and a bit sorry for myself, albeit relieved.
So, Saturday morning comes, hubby arrives with standard issue bunch of grapes and copy of ‘Hello!”. Conscious of the need to be mobile, and the fact that my catheter had been removed, I asked Rob to help me walk to the toilet as I needed a lot of support with the wound so new. Almost at the loo, I felt a cough coming on, the accompanying sense of panic, and unfortunately Rob had just let go of me to go open the bathroom door. I felt myself blacking out, and by the time he caught me I was totally blind.
From that point on it was just panic. Panic on an epic, hospital drama type scale. I could hear nurses running to help as I was carried back to my bed. I was hysterical, crying, in raging panic. Not long after I was in the ICU, plugged in to lots of monitors. But I couldn’t see a thing. I could just hear this panic going on around me, feel my husband’s hand in mine (where it stayed for the longest time ever – probably hours). I was still crying. Injections were given, nil-by-mouth status assigned, possibilities discussed over my head and all around me. What was painfully obvious to me, and one of the most frightening elements of the whole drama, was the fact that no one knew what had happened to me, or should I say what was happening to me. My head felt like it was splitting open by now.
I was told I might be having a stroke. They might have to operate. I may have a blod clot. I needed a CT scan. I may need an MRI scan. While all this whirled around me, I had only one thought in my head: I am going to die any minute now. I am leaving behind my three little children, one just two days old who won’t even remember me (in fact my 2 year old won’t remember me). I will leave my husband a widower at 43. A single parent.
I cannot tell you, in fact I am welling up now just writing it, how that felt. Those thoughts, experienced in a real, tangible, this-is-happening way devastated and horrified me in equal measure. I was so frightened that my tears were largely fear-induced. Crying in fear is something I’ve never experienced before, and hope never to again. I might be wrong but I don’t think it’s that common. Sadness, pain, grief, yes. Depression, yes. Fear?
I felt compelled to keep pulling my husband close to me so I could speak into his ear and tell him how much I loved him. How much I loved our children and our new baby. It’s amazing how quickly the mind adjusts. I was over the blindness. I was dealing with the thought that a blood clot was on its way around my body, and that soon it would reach my brain and that would be it. I had a limited, yet unknowable amount of time to say everything that needed to be said to my husband.
Once my parents arrived there was the unique and new sense that despite their presence, everything was still not going to be ok. The usual effect of parents turning up when one of life’s panic events is happening is that sense of relief, Mum and Dad are there and now everything will work out, and even if it doesn’t, they’ll still love you and take you home to recover from your failure/broken heart/embarrassment. It helped for sure – we were no longer alone, we had support, there were two more people to ask questions. They were amazing.
If you’re wondering in all this madness what had happened to my new son, he was in the Special Care Baby Unit (or as they call it, Skiboo), possibly being taken care of by the same team that 4 years ago had taken care of our daughter Tess before she died. My brain was exploding with pain and I think some of that was not just the dehydration and the crying, but the sheer volume and intensity of thoughts it was processing. Later ‘new baby’ (we hadn’t named him yet)’ was discharged once we signed him over to my sister. She took him home, to where my amazing family had rallied quickly and was taking care of our other children, and ensuring they kept them entertained and unaware of what was going on. (Big shout to the Harveys, and to Happy Feet).
Eventually a CT scan revealed nothing. I looked perfectly normal. Not a clot in sight. Still blind though. Still panicking. They’d have to send me to another hospital for an MRI scan. So I got my first, and I hope last ride in an ambulance, going full pelt through local streets that I knew. My husband was still holding my hand and the nurse with us was kindly telling me where we were. All I could think of was how surreal it all was. Instead of pulling over for the flashing lights of a passing emergency, I was the emergency. Other mothers with their kids in the car were pulling over for me.
After an interminable wait in the E&R, not the best place to be late on a Saturday night, they gave me an MRI scan. All clear. This was a relief, but it meant that no one knew what was wrong with me, and I was still blind. Everyone was exhausted, it was early Sunday morning, and my parents went home, but before they left there was one ray of light (excuse the pun). As I was wheeled from the MRI room, I sensed a brightness. I still couldn’t see a thing, but I definitely felt light on me. My eyes ached a little. I remember squeezing my Dad’s hand and asking him if we were in a brighter space. I also remember the quiet excitement in his voice when he responded, “yes darling, we are”.
When I awoke I was conscious of two things. The first was that my head was still splitting with pain. The second was that I was too frightened to open my eyes. I could, however, sense where my husband was, and that was so comforting. He did not leave my side. He had slept upright in a chair, holding my hand. A day of inspection followed, eye specialists, consultants and obstetricians passed my bed that day. Still no answers. Lots of possibilities.
By the end of Sunday I was in a room of my own, having been removed from a ward where I was ranting about the other patients talking too loudly. The triviality of their conversation had enraged me. I was very loud apparently, a kind of blind, female Alf Garnett, ranting about complete (bed-ridden, hospitalised) strangers within their earshot.
On Monday I saw bluebells. As the day progressed I began to regain my sight. I recall looking in the direction of the bottom of my bed and seeing purple. A blob of purple. Eventually, as the hours passed I could make out bluebells. My sight came back bit by bit. I watched the sky outside the hospital window and saw an aeroplane to the left, then the middle, then to the right of the sky. I didn’t see it move in-between those places, it just jumped in three stages, in a kind of ‘spot the ball’ type way. The wall signs near my bed appeared upright, then turned 90 degrees, then 180 degrees, then 270, then back upright, as if my eyes were suddenly enabled with Photoshop, or were reacting like a very slow camera lens.
The following 24 hours were a mixture of gradually improving vision, relief, pain, and blood transfusions. The pain came from the fact that my veins, not the best anyway, were now shot to pieces and the nurses were struggling to get the canulas into me. The transfusions were necessary because I’d lost so much blood in the emergency C-section and both volume and blood count were too low. This could have been the cause of the blindness, but who knows? I have never received an explanation from any of the doctors involved, and despite several attempts to gain an answer we are still left wondering.
I can’t really explain how this episode has affected my outlook on life. Obviously, we had already lost our daughter so I knew that we were strong and could move forward and beyond this most unexpected drama. But it was different. It was a first. I’ve often had dark thoughts of the “what if that happened” type, where I’ve imagined terrible things happening to my loved ones. I think lots of people do this from time to time. But from that point on, and in the months following, it was the first time that the imaginary bad thing was going to happen to me. And being a Mum of course, you imagine the worst stuff. The impact on your kids, your husband. Except worse and more vivid because for a couple of days and a bit I had to consider it for real. But this has gradually receded and thankfully happens a lot less these days. Life. Fragile. Surprising. Live it. Value it. I do.
He’s dosed up on liquid Piriton though, so maybe he’ll avoid the ‘mad monkey’ behaviour that poor Connie was driven to with her itching. Calls have been made, generous help offered, other plans cancelled, and he is confined to quarters for now. 
