Love For Two

Chapter Twenty Three

I wake up to the smell of coffee coming from the kitchen. I get out of bed to see if Tanner was in there. "Good morning, honey." There he is standing at the stove cooking breakfast. "Good morning." I tell him. I walk over to him and put my hands around his stomach and lay my head on his back. "Did you have any more bad dreams last night?" at this point he knew my dreams were frequently happening. "I don't know, I actually can't remember what I dreamed about." I didn't know if that was a good sign or bad one. I went into Elena's room to get her and bring her into the kitchen with us. Just as I walked back in, Tanner had set our plates on the table. He made us bacon, scrambled eggs, sausage and pancakes. I put a piece of bacon, a pancake and a spoonful of eggs on a plate for Elena. She enjoyed the yummy food her dad made her. Tanner looked at me with a smile. "I made you an appointment with Dr. Jennings to do an ultrasound and take some blood work." I'm so glad he did that for me.. for us. "Alright, when we all finish eating, we can get ready and head to the hospital."

After we finished, we got dressed and headed to the hospital. We walk into the check in room and signed in like we usually do. Tanner held Elena and started to play with her so she wasn't so bored. I loved seeing the two of them enjoy each other. It brings me the greatest joy. We sit there for a few minutes until the nurse comes into the waiting room and calls my name. We walk back to the patient room where I wait for Dr. Jennings to make his appearance. "Mrs. Allison, how are we doing today?" A tall brown haired man in a white coat opens the door and walks in. "Hi, Dr. Jennings, we are doing fine." I reassured him. "So, what seems to have brought you in for a visit today?" I look at Tanner and he looks back at me. "My period has been late for 25 days now, but I am having no symptoms and I took 2 pregnancy tests to see if I were pregnant and they were both negative.. I would like your advice on what we should do next?" I looked at the doctor with tear filled eyes. "Are you trying for another baby?" Tanner and I looked at each other and then we both looked at the doctor. "Yes we are, I was pregnant several months ago but unfortunately, my babies didn't make it." He looked at me with forgiveness. "I am sorry to hear that, I know you must be going through so many emotions and having to deal with that pain." I tried to hold back the tears. "Yes, it has been extremely hard on us both." I answered him. He took a few minutes to look at my charts and to see if there is anything he can visibly spot wrong. Tanner takes my hand and holds it close to him. "Well, let's get you into the examination room and see if we can figure out what is going on." I follow the doctor down the hall into a room that looked too familiar to me. It had a cold bed with a blanket, a tv screen and an ultrasound machine. The nurse brought in a gown for me to put on so the doctor could look at my stomach and see if there is a baby present. I lay down on the cold bed and lift my gown where my stomach is visible. Tanner sits in a chair beside me while Elena sits in his lap and admires the tv screen in front of her. The doctor proceeds to squeeze the jelly on my stomach and prepare for the wand. He places it on my stomach and slowly starts moving it around the top of my stomach. "There isn't anything visible as far as I can see." The doctor kept moving the wand in different positions hoping to get a glimpse of anything in there. Finally, he spots a little round thing in the screen that appears to be moving. "I think we may have something here," he says. "It's too small for me to say that it is 100% a baby, but now that we know something is there, let's get some blood work done and see the results." He cuts on the lights and I sit up. He leaves the room and I look at Tanner. "Do you think there is a chance that I am pregnant and maybe it was too early to know?" I ask Tanner. "Maybe the baby isn't far alone yet and maybe that's why the tests were showing negative, because the baby was too small to detect." I look at Elena and her precious smile. She grabs my finger and starts to kiss it.

The doctor comes back in with a pack of syringes and a cup. He asks me to take the cup and go into the bathroom so he can get a urine sample. I go into the bathroom and fill the cup and and give it to him. He tells me to relax and that he is going to take a few samples of blood to do some tests to see if I'm pregnant. After he's finished he takes the cup and the syringes and walks out of the door. We wait for about an hour and he comes back. "Well, I have some good news and bad news." I was shocked that there was going to be bad news following good news. "The good news is, you are pregnant, but you are only 6 weeks." Tanner and I looked at each other as we started to tear up. I could feel the emotions as we heard the news. "The bad news is, you have leukemia and rH disease. In order for you to have a successful pregnancy, we will need to monitor you every so often to make sure everything is okay with you and the baby. Before you leave though, we will have to give you a RhoGAM shot. You are rH negative and for all pregnant women, we recommend it to prevent your blood cells from attacking your baby while it grows." My heart dropped. My mind was in an entanglement. I didn't know what to say. I was completely at a loss for words after hearing the news he just gave us. "I have cancer? How was this possible?" I felt like there were a million questions to be asked. "We found some genetic factors that change nonstop in the cells of the bone marrow. Now because we caught it so early, we can stop it." If there is anything a mother does not want to hear from their doctor it's that your baby is dead and that you have cancer. The thought of not being able to live to see my child grow up is the biggest fear that I have. I made a life and I want to live long enough to see it.

"Alright so what do you suppose we do? I would like to get the procedure over and done with as soon as possible." The doctor looked at me with reassuring eyes. "We can do the procedure tomorrow if you want." I looked at Tanner and Elena, then back at the doctor. "Could you give us a few minutes to talk, Doctor?" The doctor nodded his head and left the room. Tanner started crying. I hate when he cried cause it made me cry. "I can't believe you have cancer, how.. what? There are so many things going through my mind all at once." I put my hand in Tanner's hand and look at him. "There was so much information given to us all at once and we haven't had enough time to process it. I think the procedure will be good. I don't want to live without either of you or this baby inside me. You all are my entire world and I don't want to even think about you living without me. That's too much heartache for me to take." Let's go through with the procedure first and we'll take it step by step. Tanner looks at me and gives me a forehead kiss.