Chapter 3

The dim light slowly came into focus as Karen began to stir from unconsciousness. She winced from the pain in her abdomen, looking around at her strange surroundings. Then her thoughts suddenly came clear to her. She moved her right hand over her stomach, down, and felt a large bandage covering her lower abdomen.

She looked at the machine mounted on the pole beside her, monitoring her vital signs. There should have been a second one to show her baby’s statistics. Karen lifted the sheet covering her and paused before finally looking. Her slight baby bump was gone. The pain and bandage revealed her horror. She knew what had happened. Her face contorted in unimaginable terror. She whimpered, then sobbed, followed by deep, deep silent crying for her lost baby. She started shivering uncontrollably from being cold while under the anesthetic and from her horrible emotional loss.

The recovery room nurse noticed Karen stirring and tried to give her an encouraging smile. She checked her vitals and found a blanket to warm her up. “Doctor Cooper will be here shortly to talk to you. I understand you were a nurse here at Memorial.”

“Yes, I was a nurse for about twenty-five years. Now, I’m the Chief Instructor at the Nursing School at the Community College,” she sniffled, wiping her tears away.

“Very impressive, my daughter wants to become a nurse just like me,” she commented.

“So does my oldest girl,” Karen said, wincing in pain.

“I’ll give you medicine for your pain.”

“I’ll try to be a good patient,” she said, smiling at the nurse.

“I bet you could tell us a few war stories from your years working here. Doctor Cooper will be with you in a moment.”

Karen felt lonely, dejected, and mad at herself. “I gave birth to three perfectly healthy babies; what went so wrong this time?” She muttered. Depression was already starting to infiltrate her consciousness. “Dan will hate me for losing our baby; I just know it! He’ll hate me so much and stop loving me. How could he ever possibly forgive me?” She said this to an empty room, wiping away more tears.

“Hello Karen, can I come in?” Doctor Cooper peeked into her room.

“Of course you can.” She grimaced in pain, trying to sit up. Doctor Cooper pulled up a chair and sat on Karen’s left. She checked her patient’s vitals, and everything was normal.

“How are you feeling? Stupid question, of course, and you feel lousy. Karen, I regret to inform you that the damage to your uterus was very severe. The uterine wall was so thin that the baby’s placenta was totally detached from it. We couldn’t save your baby girl. I’m so, so very sorry. We had to give you a subtotal hysterectomy. We removed your uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries, leaving the cervix intact.”

“My baby was a girl? She sobbed. “You had to give me a hysterectomy?”

“Yes, a girl, and unfortunately I had to give you a hysterectomy. Believe me, it wasn’t what I wanted to do, but you were in real danger of severe internal bleeding and very soon could have died from so much blood loss.”

“I told my husband to say that I wanted you to save my baby over me!”

“Yes, he told me so. Ordinarily, if you were well over thirty weeks along, the baby had a chance of survival, and your life wasn’t in danger, I could have possibly given you a different outcome. However, at only seventeen weeks, your baby had absolutely no possibility of surviving,” she sadly explained. Karen wept quietly, with Doctor Cooper rubbing her arm in sympathy.

“You’ll be laid up for about four to six weeks. Try to take it easy and get lots of rest. Don’t do any cooking or driving for several weeks, then slowly get back to a normal routine.”

“But my normal routine was being pregnant with my baby,” she sobbed, wiping away more tears.

“Drink plenty of water daily and try to have a laugh or two. Laughter is great for your immune system, and it helps your stomach muscles heal. Eat healthily and take a good quality multiple vitamins. Then start doing exercises.”