Friday, October 14, 2005

The Doctors' Scarves

Downstairs again, the same doctor and nurse told us that there wasn’t any heartbeat. They told us this carefully, watching to see if I would cry again. Another doctor came into the room to tell us about the options. She said, I see you had a positive result for Trisomy 18, what odds did they give you for that? One in two, we said, and she said, “Wow! I’ve never heard a result as high as that!” I felt a little proud.
She said, “Well, that’s it then. A result as high as that. Well, that’s about definite. And now this happening. Well.” It was all settled. “Oh they never make it,” she said, “kids with that? They get seizures and everything. They never make it.”
A third doctor told us about the procedure. She was young, and had a scarf wrapped around her head which was all black and white stripes.
She was telling me they might perforate the bladder or the bowels, all those things tucked in behind there, she said, or they might go too far and cause infertility. Something about your belly button, if you wake up and they’ve done keyhole surgery through your belly button, well, you know they’ve perforated something.
“These are very small risks,” she said, “but we have to tell you about them. They very rarely happen,” she said, and knocked on the plasterboard wall.
I wasn’t paying attention, I was slowly realising that the scarf was not just black and white stripes, but zebras, crowds of zebras, all fused together and wrapped around her head.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am so sorry for your loss, Jaclyn. This must be a hard time for you and I admire your courage to stay active and to keep writing - and perhaps that is the only way to move through this?

I haven't read your blog before but stumbled across it today looking for more information on your books, which are great and touching and entertaining, no small feat. So I was saddened to read these entries, and moved that you chose to share them with your readers. All my thoughts are with you and your family.

4:19 a.m.  
Blogger Jaclyn Moriarty said...

Edie, thank you so much for this lovely, thoughtful comment. It was so very kind of you to write this.

2:47 p.m.  

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