Life and Death

Chapter 1

You wake after sleeping for the better part of two weeks, and you feel no pain. You know there is something wrong but you can't quite put your finger on it. A nurse walks through the door happy to see you are awake and cheerfully spreads the word. You quickly assemble the facts, you gave birth and something went horrendously wrong, I mean why else would you be intubated on total life support.

Things are brought to your attention and you grasp everything that is being said, and are thrilled when they tell you that your daughter is ok. You notice a wrap on your right forearm and wonder what could have happened, you feel no pain so you let it go.

As you lay in bed drifting in and out of sleep you feel like you are flying, free to soar to the sky. Then once again you are grounded, the nurse asks you to push the button on the Morphine PCA (patient controlled analgesic) and you obey. They then say it is time to change your dressings.

You watch with curious eyes as they unwrap your forearm and reveal a large oval of skin. This skin looks inhuman it is as black as coal yet you cannot feel a thing. Several areas around your arm are missing the skin, after asking you are informed that it was where the skin was ripped due to the paper tape being removed.

Once they rewrap the arm despite it being covered, you still see this monstrosity they say was the result of an IV infiltration. This makes absolutely no since to you, as you had seen what IVs look like when a line goes bad when you were actively a nurse. You once again dismiss this as they ask you to scoot down on the bed so they can inspect your most private of areas.

Now this, you feel, excruciating pain radiates through your posterior as they slowly unpack your vaginal dressings. They clean the blood the best they can as the doctor comes in, he is not the man who delivered your child. When you ask about him they explain he has been removed from your case.

Then you clench your teeth as they repack your dressings to help control the blood flow from the scabs they removed by pulling the previous ones out. This is the first day you have come to realize the severity of your injuries. This the first day of the shame you feel that you are no longer truly a woman.

You found out that you already had a D/C and due to all the damage from the birth prevented them from being able to repair the walls of your vagina, it would be left to heal third intention. (It would heal from the inside out with nothing binding the tissue in place.) Now you ask a nurse what it looks like down there and she shakes her head no. You beg her and request her to be brutally honest. You are not expecting her answer and feel like your chest will collapse as she simply states raw bloody hamburger meat.

Once you are completely alone you cry, you sob, and you know you will never be truly back to normal. The worst part for you is that you can't even remember how it happened, you don't remember labor, and you certainly don't remember delivery. You do however have a recurring memory that comes as quickly as it leaves, leaving you asking what and why, making you feel like dying would have been a better outcome than this.