In Memory of Treasure

It is a month of crimson leaves and crisp mornings and it is also the month put aside to remember babies who were lost too soon. Tonight is candle lighting night and tonight I am thinking of what I went through back in 2004. I don't often think about my first pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage anymore. It is still traumatic I think. Although once a year on a certain day I let myself remember for a little while. It is a hard day. 
 One of the hardest parts about my loss, among the many, was that the doctor told me there was 'most probably never any baby to begin with' and so I always feel confused about how I am to feel. I don't understand the logistics of it all. Sometimes I feel like I am supposed to just say ~ there had to be something there because an egg and sperm joined did they not in order for all that happened in side me to happen ~ so I can tell myself that there was a baby to grieve. Then other times I feel like maybe I don't have that right. Its confusing. My miscarriage started at nine weeks gestation and it was the miscarriage 'experience' that lasted for five months. I had a molar pregnancy but when the miscarriage started no one realized it was molar at first. I remember the words of the technician as I lay on the bed with a agonizingly full bladder, 'there is no baby in there that I can see....just a lot of blood,' and I remember my heart shattered. My mom was waiting for me in the waiting room and I had to go out and tell her and her face went grey. I had no idea what a 'normal' miscarriage was and so after a couple weeks time when I had not stopped bleeding I went to the doctor who sent me in for another ultrasound. I was weak by this time and so drained from loss of blood. The technician knew something was very wrong and that evening I had an emergency D and C. Unfortunately I lost a lot of blood and no one payed attention to how much and so I was not able to go home afterwards as I could not properly regain consciousness. I had to stay in the hospital alone in the dark passing in and out of consciousness all night while they pumped me full of fluids. I would keep waking up and would need use the facilities and would try to get out of bed and fall on the floor senseless. My stomach was in so much pain and I was so cold and I felt myself drifting away. I don't know why I was alone but my husband and I were so young and we had no idea what was happening. I guess I thought he should get a good night sleep? I just remember how dark it was. It was so awful. In the morning they decided I needed a blood transfusion or two.
  Unfortunately during the D and C they missed some 'cells' and weeks later (after the bleeding had never stopped) after I was passing massive blood clots and hemorrhaging they realized that I had a large tumor growing in my uterus. I had no warning or even a clear explanation of what was happening but all of a sudden I got a call from a hospital while I was at work telling me I had to go there immediately. When I asked why they told me I had to start chemotherapy that day. I remember calling my husband not even sure what to tell him as I had no clue what that even really meant. My friend drove me there and I was given a salmon pink booklet called, 'Chemotherapy and You' and they told me to read it over. I sat in a bed in the radiation room because they had no other room available and tried to read the book. I felt so overwhelmed. What was going to happen to me? I am glad I had no clue.When the nurses would give me the chemo they had to suit up in a special suit and they had to pump me full of fluid first so my body could handle the poison.  Seven rounds I had. I would go out to a hospital that was over an hour away. A hospital that was dirty and disgusting (so much so that I brought my own cleaning supplies). I stayed at the hospital for two days and two nights every two weeks. I was the youngest person in BC to ever have gone through this at the time and so they had no clue what to do with me as usually they would have just taken my uterus out, but at twenty two they didn't think that would be fair to me. The chemo was too strong at first and so my body was covered in sores and although they had told me my hair would not fall out it started to fall out in massive clumps. Anyway through all this I just remember the intense emptiness my heart felt. I cried so many tears. I would lay on the couch at night because I would cry so much and I didn't want to disturb my husband. We had only just been married a year and we had no tools to handle something this massive and deep. We pulled away from each other in our grief as we handled it so differently and it felt so dark. There are so many traumatizing memories on so many different levels of it all. Losing the baby and losing that innocence. Doctors and how they treated me. Having to break the hearts of my parents and grandparents that I had just told were going to be grandparents and great grandparents for the first time. It just went on and on. 
I made it through and finished chemo.
 I tried to get back to living again but everything had changed. The miscarriage marked me and I feel like I have never been able to fully recover from it all. The trauma and effects on our marriage also have left scars I can't seem to shake. I feel such a deep grief for all the mama's out there who have lost their babies. When you lose a baby you lose a piece of yourself that never returns while you are on this earth. Always there is a piece of you gone. It is sad and it is dark and it is hard. I have found that joy does come after the grief and beauty does come from ashes but the journey is not an easy one and shadows linger. As mothers ~ because we are that ~ we must soldier on, but it is not easy. Our arms ache to be full with the one(s) we never got to hold.