This is the pulse of a dead woman

August 2000 Age 17

“This is the pulse of a dead woman”

I heard the tiny doctor say as his hand flew to the special blue button on the wall under the hinged plastic in the private ER room where I saw two nurses in a row turn white as a ghost and run out of the room after examining me..

Code blue

The tiny room flooded with people. What I later learned was called a crash cart with electric paddles burst through the door and was  stationed in front of me.The sound it made coming through the metal door with it’s metal frame was indeed a crash.  My necklace fell to the ground. My clothes whipped off and the Dr started rubbing my chest with his fist as people flurried and didn’t say a word. The sound of held breath.

Warmth enveloped my body as people were pushed aside and replaced with the same Filipino nurses from before, this time with hot blankets and warm IV bags that made a discernible, distinct line of demarcation that travelled from my left hand all the way to the tips of my toes, my pregnant belly, mouth and face, ears, hair and where my underwear used to be as the warm saline met my chilled blood.

The next words said in the room once everyone started to file out were the tiny Doctor again.

“Don’t expect the babies to survive”

Babies? As in, plural? 

“Babies?”

“Yes. It’s always twins with Hyperemesis Gravidarum. But there’s no way they’re alive after that.”

Hyperemesis Gravidarum. Someone said a word for what was killing me. Someone saved me and he had words for what what happening to me. I said the words over and over in my head like when I would practice for the spelling bees I always won. Trying different cadences and rhythms of reciting the letters until the word etched in my brain like a feeling along with it’s definition. Hyper, meaning Excessive. Emesis is the medical word for puke. Gravidarum, meaning the state of being pregnant. 

I thought it was going to be twins.

I survived and so did my one survivor.

It took 7 more excruciating months of dying every day and being kept alive every day by Total Parental Nutrition administered through Central Lines I had in my neck, chest and biceps. I didn't eat a single meal for 7 months and was tortured by being sick every 5 minutes regardless.

This is a central line, or PICC line from my third pregnancy, the healthiest one.

I went into Canadian record books as the worst case of Hyperemesis Gravidarum in medical history that didn't result in death. Living in a teaching hospital meant daily groups of student doctors turning the lights on at 7am to remind me that as a patient in a teaching hospital I am subject to observation by students and do I have consent for them to examine me internally?

Every morning I'd lift my hospital gown and hear one nervous medical student a few years older than myself, almost always male, in a group of half a dozen standing around observing nervously, a pregnant teenager with a life threatening condition nobody can cure and she's just being kept alive and tortured.

They had an obligation to comment on how normal having hair on my nipples and belly button was and to not worry about it. Each time they said it by wrote I would imagine them in class talking about the vulnerability of Women and body hair and to do something to reassure them that they're not unusual and what a load of total shit it was that they couldn't just ignore it like the rest of my normal body like they all didn't also have nipple hairs in the room we're not talking about.

The risk to a fetus of introduced infection from unnecessary pelvis exams makes this practice unbearable to consider as a singular issue. The psychological impact of these circus freak show performances I learned to sleep through and just lift my gown in the air for definitely caused the carrying parent undo stress and they could have used this opportunity to teach a teenager how to say No thank you sir!

If I could go back in time I would have thought of ...let's see...what's 5 days a week by 30 weeks...150 sassy comebacks.

Weekly ultrasounds as well! Bloodwork 3 times a day to balance the nutrition in my bags. Hourly blood pressure cuffs. Surgery. Blood Sepsis that made them give me 12 hours to live and I survived, diapers, a bedside commode, being 99lbs and preparing to become a parent for 7 months.

That's just the short story of St Paul's hospital because I start to black out as I write and it's happening now my Darlings.

Love, opal