Chapter 13
After three days of recovery after my cesarian section, I receive the first round of chemotherapy. When they said we needed to start soon, I never realized how soon we had to begin.
Or that I wouldn’t leave the hospital.
I basically move from the maternity suite to the Heme/Onc service to begin aggressive chemotherapy. Which means I don’t get to see Tabitha.
Noodles keeps me updated, shows me pictures of our tiny daughter, and tells me how Tabitha’s fighting. The steroid shots worked because she never needed a breathing tube or a ventilator. She’s strong. A fighter. And looks so tiny in her incubator.
There’s always someone by my side. Whether it’s Noodles, Skye, Piper, Holly, or Angel, I’m never left alone with my thoughts, or my fear.
My fight is a different kind of struggle. Chemo slams into me with all the subtlety of a freight train, draining the energy out of me, leaving me with a persistent nausea and intractable vomiting, which hurts like a bitch after the c-section. My vibrant psychedelic hair, my signature flair, falls out in clumps.
Finally, when I’m well enough, they let me see Tabitha. The sight of my baby in the NICU, surrounded by machines and monitors, overwhelms me, but the nurses and doctors tell me she’s doing well. She’s so tiny, so fragile, her skin a mottled pink against the white hospital sheets. Tubes and wires snake around her little body, a stark reminder of the battle she’s fighting.
But she is fighting. She’s fighting like a girl and winning at life.
As I reach into the incubator to touch her, my hand trembles. In a macabre sense, a weight lifts from my shoulders. No matter what happens to me, Tabitha is safely delivered into this world, and she’s thriving.
This is all I ever wanted.