Let the Chaos Really Begin...Part I

I am going to embark upon a mini-series here, so please bear with me as I attempt this for the very first time. This will be a short story and I will divide it up into about eight parts spread out over the next two weeks. A lot of unbelievable drama happened in my life almost four years ago and by sharing it with you, it also helps me to remember and document it.

I want to eventually impart some recent discoveries about my experiences with one-sided deafness and the many ways I’ve had to learn to adapt to this deficit. However, before arriving at that point, I first must recount how this condition came to pass which all began with the pregnancy of my fourth child. Early on in my second trimester, I received a terrifying diagnosis that eventually saved my life and that of my unborn child.

There will be parts of my story that are ironically hilarious and other times, painstakingly nerve-wracking. I will do my best to capture it all as concise as possible without omitting any vital information. So, let’s begin…

While pregnant with my four child and second son in 2006, I found myself praying to the ¨porcelain god¨ at least six times a day and a few more times throughout each night. Now, having already had three children, I was well aware that nausea and vomiting were part of my first trimester experiences, but this was utterly debilitating. I would no more than think about vomiting and two seconds later I’d be in the bathroom throwing my guts up. It got to a point where I would eat my meals and then just politely excuse myself to confront the inevitable. I would calmly and gracefully enter into the bathroom, greet the toilet, and almost as though through a magnetic attraction, I would dart toward it desperately only to make it ¨just in time.¨

Now, this is again interesting how one gets used to anything after repeated exposure as I demonstrated in my entry about the barbaric UFC matches. Children, I believe, are even more flexible. They have an innate ability to adapt to change especially when such change is presented in a very blasé, non-hysterical positive way. Well, this up-chucking ritual of mine was such a common scenario at my home that I would literally be laying on the tiled bathroom floor moaning with gut-wrenching convulsions and my kids would just walk by, see me, ask if I was almost finished, and then proceed with their requests (demands.)

I am not kidding! I would be face down on the floor, panting like an overheated canine, all broken out in a cold sweat and they would casually say, ¨Mommy, she took away my favorite Barbie and I want ice cream now, you promised! ¨ Or something like, ¨Mommy, I was running outside and scraped my knee, can you take a look at it? ¨ Incidentally, since I noticed that they weren’t so disturbed, I became nonchalant as well and would reply between stomach contractions, ¨Just gimme a sec, I am also done here, wait outside, it smells yucky.¨ In retrospect, that was insane that we were able to conduct ¨business as usual¨under such circumstances, but we did. So, what would you say was the primary developing trait here; insensitivity or adaptability?

Nonetheless, at about four and a half months of gestation, I knew that this unsettling pattern had to mitigate substantially by now and it had not. Everybody and their neighbor suggested that my hormones were super high and the baby was very healthy; so healthy that it was making me sick. In Spanish, all would say reassuringly, ¨´ta bien pegado, oye mi hijita!¨ (Translation: That baby is really clinging on to you, girl and thriving!) Desperate as I was, I bought into that theory for a while until something strange began to happen to me at night.

To Be Continued.....
Posted by Darah Zeledon: Warrior mom