Thanksgiving

Yesterday, I was asked to give a speech at work to kickoff the annual employee fund-raising event. It was a grand time with a lot of red and a lot of cookies. But if you cared about that, you'd be reading my other blog (redcrosspdx.blogspot.com). For the most part, however, the speech was entirely appropriate for this blog, because it had to do for what I am most grateful for. Given the season, I would be ungrateful for not posting this.

Eliminating the job-related stuff, this is more or less the speech I gave. (I know it's long. Sorry. Brevity is something I struggle with when talking about Alisha.)
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On February 13 of this year, my second daughter, Meredith, was born. She is now 9 months old, and is perfectly healthy—always has been. My wife, Alisha, is now 26 and is as healthy as a woman who chases around two little girls (and a 27-year-old little boy) all day can be. Shortly after Meri's birth, however, that wasn't the case.

About 6 hours after the picture-perfect delivery of my daughter, my wife began to feel intense pressure in her abdomen. The nurses didn't know what was wrong but weren't too worried, as random aches, pains and pressures are fairly common after childbirth. When she fainted on her way to the bathroom, though, she piqued their interest. We would later know that she fainted because she had been losing blood—lots of it, for a long time—it just hadn't exited her body yet.

Then it did.

The next few hours were the most frightening of my life. I watched as 7–10 nurses rushed in and out of our tiny little "recovery" room, none of which knew what was going on. It wasn't particularly reassuring to me that the nurses knew nothing beyond what I, in my limited medical knowledge, knew for myself: that my wife was losing an inordinate amount of blood, and that she was in a great deal of pain—and both were getting worse. There was no color left in Alisha's normally bright face, and the only energy she still had left was being focused on breathing slowly so as not to faint from the pain and, sweetly enough, reassuring her husband (who was a complete mess).

Finally a doctor was able to come take a look. After examining my wife and gathering other information, she didn't know what was going on either. But she had a theory and she was confident enough to act on it even though her theory couldn't be confirmed or disproved without emergency surgery. Hopefully without going into too much detail, her theory was the following: upon exiting my wife, Meredith somehow burst a blood vessel inside my wife's lower abdominal wall. Because of normal childbirth swelling, the blood vessel contracted and didn't drain for a few hours—just long enough for the doctor to be completely sure that everything went perfectly. When the swelling went down, however, the vessel began to drain, and did so inside the abdominal wall creating what is called a hematoma. That hematoma kept filling, explaining both the pressure my wife had been feeling and how she had fainted from blood loss without anyone knowing she was bleeding. They needed to get in and tie off the vessel.

There was nothing left for me to do but steer the bed as they rushed her down the hall and through a few doors to surgery. Before she went in she reassured me one last time, and gave my hand the weakest of squeezes. [Not included in speech: Alisha had received a priesthood blessing before going to the hospital that reassured everyone, and the end result of the surgery was never completely in doubt. Regardless, in the next couple of hours I went through the widest spectrum of feelings related to spirituality and faith that I ever had or have since.] I will spare you the details of my next two hours or hers. Needless to say, they weren't pretty on either side. They had a happy ending though, as the doctor's theory was proven correct and the problem was fixed. Alisha would live.

As the details of the ordeal became clearer over the next 24 hours, we found out how much blood she really had lost. There was no way to tell exactly how much for a variety of reasons, but the bottom line was she had lost well over half her blood—more than enough for her to go into shock, which she did not. The doctors had no idea why she didn't go into shock, but were glad she didn't. Had she done so, she probably would not have made it.

Alisha had lost so much blood that her body wasn't manufacturing any on its own to make up for what was lost. She was going to need a transfusion. Now, understand that I had never given blood. Some of my reasons were valid, and some weren't. But never have I been more grateful that there are people more caring than myself.

It was amazing to see the transformation that Alisha underwent over the next day as they slowly replenished her body with 3 units of the Red Cross's finest blood. Before the transfusion, her energy was focused on trying to keep her eyelids open when someone was talking to her. After one unit, she was smiling and there was a little bit of color back in her lips. After two, she was twirling her hair in her fingers. And after the third, she was able to sit up for short periods of time, and even hold her new baby for the first time in well over a day. She would still on bed rest for the next month or so, and not 100% for another 4 or 5. But she did recover.

After I had been back at work for a couple months, I got wind of the employee blood drive. There was no question in my mind that I was about to make my first blood donation to the Red Cross. About 3 units. It was only fair.
*****
This Thanksgiving I will be grateful that I have a job, grateful for vacation in a beautiful place, grateful for my parents and in-laws, siblings and siblings-in-law and, even more importantly, two beautiful daughters who seem to right all the wrongs in the world. However, what I have to be thankful for the most is the fact that after more than 3 years of marriage and well over 5 times that long of knowing me, Alisha is still here to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Enjoy the ride.