Healing

Her delicate visage was plunked before my sweaty head.
Wrapped gracefully in white paper, the nurse allowed me to touch her with my face and take in her newborn smell. The profile I saw was one of pure perfection.
She was so poised. So calm. So lovely. I was stunned at her petite perfection. Never had I ever seen anything so beautiful.

I was smitten. In mili-seconds.

Cesarean-needs took over and she was whisked away to be bathed as I was poked and prodded a bit more, then stitched up. The big scar that had just been opened for the third – and last – time, was stapled back into place, and left to heal with the help of some antiseptics. A nurse would come by twice a day for the next month to inject stuff into the scar to stop .. um … can’t remember what it was supposed to stop, but it was apparently part of the medical healing process.

Abigail was perfect. She didn’t cry. She never called for food. She would wait until I went to pick her up. So unassuming. So quiet. So peaceful. She was my Princess.

The sky came tumbling down, thudding onto my shoulders at her first pediatrics visit. She lay there quietly, barely moving, as I undressed her. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have such a good little girl. Her two older brothers were such bulldozers!

I was sent to the children’s hospital because she had not put on a gramme in her first four weeks. No-body could tell me what was wrong. But there was a strong medical intuition that something was up. It had not dawned on me for one second that there was anything wrong with my perfect, gracious, gentle Princess.

There was a whole lot wrong.

Rushed to hospital, we were taken to Abigail’s room in Hematology. Her brothers couldn’t join us because Abigail was in the child chemotherapy ward and William and Nathan could have infected the other young patients fragile health.

I was frightened this meant Abigail had blood cancer.

Nurses took a blood sample.

Her platelets were so low they didn’t understand how she could still be alive.

She was plugged into some tubes and a blood transfusion brought her platelet levels up. I watched as life began to seep into my little girls face.
It wasn't until that moment that I realized that my daughter wasn't ok.
She had been snow white for the first month I had spent with her.
I had never seen color in her face before. Philippe cried too.

The doctors made it clear that Abigail was very sick. They didn’t know what was wrong.
We were told not to be too optimistic.

I started to have panic attacks. I had never had panic attacks before. Nothing ever phases me. Ever. Except when the Haagen Dacz Macedamia Nut Brittle runs out. A natural optimist, ‘everything is going to be just fine’ is my motto.

Yet I was in a permanent state of panic. All day, day after day. Every time I saw a doctor … my heart would race and my body would burn. Fear took over.
I didn’t understand what was happening to me.
I didn’t understand what was happening to my perfect little girl.

They took a good look at her chromosomes.
We waited ten days for the results.

Abigail’s hematologist was washing her hands as she announced ‘they had found something’.

My heart started panic-pounding throughout my chest. I could barely stand up. Philippe didn’t know what to do. He could tell I needed help. But he also knows I’m too proud to let anyone do that.

My whole body steamed with fear, it was raging through me, as we followed the doctor down that somber corridor to her office.
Slow motion … words were uttered... they floated nonchalently around the room … cascading boldly onto the desk before bouncing off my face into the unknown. Philippe's face echoed my thoughts.
I was scared.
So, so scared.

I didn’t want to hear something was wrong.
But I knew I was going to.

Jacobsens Syndrome.
Chromosome 11.
Deletion of the long arm.
Very rare genetic disease.
1 in 100,000 births.
Not lives. Births.

As the furnace of terror raced through my veins, my heart screamed ‘NO”.
My daughter was going to be different.
I negociated with God. She could have all the health issues, the heart defects, the blood disorder, the funny toes and jaw … but not the mental stuff.

She was mentally normal.

SHE WAS MENTALLY NORMAL.

Dammit.

Rejection walked hand-in-hand with fear, panic, refusal and pain. I sat in that hallway outside the hematology ward, overlooking the expanse of city, and I cried. I cried I cried I cried. And I hoped.
I hoped it was all wrong.
I prayed it was all wrong.

Just over two years down the track, I now know I couldn’t get better until I had faced up to all this. And accepted it. With my heart. With my soul.

The healing process was long. It took medication. It took hospitalization. It took psychiatry. It took psychology. It took time. Six very long weeks.

But most of all, it took the magic of Abigail.
Abigail is my healing.
Abigail’s unconditional love nurtured me back to life.
Abigail’s federation of the family as one, bringing us all closer together than we had ever, ever been before, bonded us in love and hope.
Abigail’s resonant smile reminds us every day that life is precious.
Her gleaming life reminds us that she is our miracle.

Abigail’s condition means that, had she been born in a less wealthy country, she could have been left in a corner, a social reject. And she would have become such a different little girl. A lifeless, forgotten entity abandoned to some dark room with 'others of her kind'.

I know without a moment of hesitation that Abigail’s incredible achievements today, were won through the love she is immersed in.
Abigail knows she is loved.
She knows she is important.
She knows she generates happiness around her.
The love she lives in helped the huge hole in her heart to grow over.
The love she bathes in every day encouraged epilepsy to give up and leave.
The love she is immersed in every day gave her the confidence to walk, talk, learn and contradict every negative diagnosis that has come her way.

Love healed Abigail.
And Abigail's amazing love nurtures and heals us every day.

Thank you Abigail.
Thank you Love.
And Thank you Philippe. Without you, I doubt I would be here today. Life meant nothing to me until you gently nuzzled me back into the world of Mothering. You helped me believe that I was capable of looking after our little girl, and that my abilities were far greater than her disabilities. Philippe, you are forever my hero of a husband.

What a bunch of healers the Bernard Bunch is!!!!

Oh - and isn’t it funny that the only part of me which never healed is the Cesarian scar! All the medicines in the world, and that scar is still there, a reminder of how far we have all come!