A good man...

Okay, so all these changes in the weather, I think, are making me sick. I woke up yesterday with a sore throat and a headache. Today, I have the added joy of a stuffy nose and an earache. And I have a yucky cough too. The Honey will tell me it is due to the fact that I never sleep. That I am wearing myself out. But, I will have you know that I just woke up from sleeping for six hours. All in a row. That is two days worth of sleep. I will say that my mind feels a bit less foggy today than it has been in a long time. Maybe I should really see my doctor, and get something to help me sleep a bit more regularly. I need to see him anyway, about these bruises I keep getting from out of nowhere. I am beginning to look like someone beats me up on a regular basis. I started taking extra iron, figuring it was just from not eating very well lately. That is not working. At least not yet. I woke up this morning with a huge new bruise on my thigh. I am pretty sure I know what caused that one though. The hubby thinks of tickling me as foreplay. He thought he might get some loving last night. I went to sleep. I am glad it is not shorts weather today though. Because where he grabbed me, I now have a huge purple bruise. Oh well. I will call my Doc sometime this week. How weird is it, that I do not see a GP for all my medical needs? I actually will only see my OB-GYN. Of course, when I call him, he will bitch at me about being late for my pap-smear and for refusing that mammogram. That is why I keep putting off an office visit with him. He will also tell me that I am not sleeping enough, and bitch at me about losing so much weight so fast, and not getting in to see why. I know why. Stress. Well, stress combined with the fact that I am finally starting to reclaim my self worth. I need to add some exercise to the weight loss though. And he will bitch at me about that too. It is so funny. I remember the first time I met my Doc. I had realized I was pregnant, and needed to find a new doctor as I simply refused to go back to the man that left me in full blown labour for over eighteen and a half hours without even bothering to check why I would only dilate to a two. That was the least pleasant experience of my life. (Physically anyway.) (Well, that and the fact that his nurse threatened to gag me if I didn't quit screaming and scaring the other women who were in labour. It really wasn't my fault. I had all back labour, and no drugs, and off the chart contractions to which they added pitocin. Assholes.) So, my sister recommended her OB-Gyn. I made the appointment, and waited for it. I then slipped and fell down a flight of stairs about two days later. (The stairs were metal, and it had been raining, coupled with the fact that I am a klutz.) I laughed it off, but about two hours later I had a lot of pain in my abdomen. I was scared. I had already gone through a miscarriage, and did not want to deal with the feelings of sadness and failure that another would bring. I wanted this new baby, so I took myself up to the Emergency Room to see what was going on. I was already convinced that I was going to lose this baby as well. They did a pelvic and confirmed my pregnancy. (I could have confirmed it for them by puking on one of them. Morning sickness starts for me the day after conception.) They told me everything looked okay, but asked if I wanted to go ahead and get an ultrasound while I was there. I said yes, and so they called in the tech. She came in wearing her pajamas, as it was about three in the morning. As she started the ultra sound, she turned the screen away from me, so that I could not watch. I was convinced that something terrible was happening. She claimed that she was getting glare from the lights. The ER doctor talked with me afterwards, and told me that everything looked good, but the pain I was feeling was due to the scar tissue on my uterus being stretched quickly. He said that my uterus was growing very rapidly, and I should take some Tylenol, get some rest, and see my Ob-Gyn within three days. The next morning I called and got my appointment moved up. That same day, the hubby decided he didn't want another child, and disappeared. (He went to Montana for about a week and a half, but that is a whole other story.) The day after that, I went to my first appointment, scared and alone. I was still convinced that the tech had been hiding something from me during my ultrasound, and was trying to prepare myself for some very bad news. I got weighed, and a nurse checked all my vitals. And I sat, and sat, and sat. Eventually a nurse came back, followed by a man with the kindest looking eyes I had ever seen. He introduced himself to me, and asked all the pre-exam questions that doctors ask. He performed a pelvic, and I was surprised at how very gentle he was. (Trust me, not all Ob-Gyns are gentle.) We moved rooms, and I lay back so we could do an ultrasound. He too, turned the monitor away from my field of vision. He stared asking me questions. Lots of unimportant stuff, like if I worked, where I had gone to school, etc. He then slipped among all the banal chit chat the most important and life changing question I have ever been asked. "Do twins run in your family?" I told him that I have fraternal twin half-brothers. I don't know why I didn't pick up on what he was trying to tell me. He told me that I could now tell people yes when asked that question. As it hit me what he was saying, he turned the screen so that I could see. He pointed to two tiny black spots. They were about the size of grains of rice he said. My babies. My twins. I started crying. I couldn't stop the tears. He asked if they were happy tears, or sad tears. I told him I wasn't sure. I confessed that the hubby had disappeared at the thought of one more child, and that I wasn't sure if he would ever come back with two more on the way. I told him that I was working sixty plus hours a week, and still, I didn't know how I would ever be able to afford two more babies. And then I looked again, at the image of those two tiny dots on the screen, and I told him I wanted my babies. He put his arms around me, and let me cry. He told me that we would be a team, and we would make sure that I got my babies. I went home, still feeling the shock. I told my father in-law who promptly told me to have an abortion, quickly. (He later very much regretted saying that, and cried many bitter tears that he had ever suggested such a thing.) I called the hubby back, as he had called from Montana to see what the doctor had said. I told him that he could stay in Montana, because I was going to keep my babies. (He did return about a week later. He said he wanted to come back as soon as he had gotten there, but as he had taken his brother to pack for a move back to Omaha, he had to stay long enough to finish.) Over the next months, I saw my Doc regularly. He always had a smile for me, and asked how "OUR" babies were doing. He had a private talk with the hubby, on his first visit with me to the Doc. (I still do not know what they talked about, but I know that I never had another appointment that the hubby missed.) I was in and out of the hospital numerous times, for pre-term labour, dehydration, and various other minor complaints, which would always lead to a minimum over night stay. My Doc would always come and check on me. It may have been three in the morning by the time he finally made a visit, but he always did. My doctor rescheduled his family vacation that year, as he said he was unwilling to let anyone else deliver his twins in his absence. When we lost our sweet Casey, my doctor was shattered. He came to her funeral, he cried while holding my hand. He wrote me an untold number of prescriptions, for depression, to help me sleep, for anything he thought might help make it easier on me. I never used them, but I accepted them with the knowledge that he was just trying to help. He would call occasionally, while it was still fresh, just to check on me. If he saw me in a store, he would unabashedly wrap me into a hug and cry some more for my loss. He is a good man. When I found out I was pregnant with my sweet Kylie, he was thrilled. He forced me to come to far too many appointments, just to be sure that nothing was going wrong. He checked me into the hospital for every little thing. He made me do a huge number of ultra sounds, and non-stress tests, all in an effort to comfort myself, and his self, that this time everything would be okay. He joked that he would not perform my tubal ligation until I had a baby for him. (He claims that I make the most beautiful girls ever born. And his wife refused to have any more after they had three sons.) The day Kylie was born, he made that joke again, as I was being put under for him to tie my tubes. I groggily informed him, that as I would be unconscious, I would not know if he actually did the procedure or not, but that if I had another child, he would pay for it from conception through a minimum of four years of college. He told me we had a deal. I am quite sure he did the surgery. (Though he still to this day refuses to tell me for sure.) He still hugs me when ever he sees me out in the "real" world. He still has pictures of my daughters on the wall in his office. I really like that man. I think I will call, and go in and get that pap smear after all. That's all, Bye.