What Few People Know About Me

Hey Susie-- here is one for you to participate in.. http://thequeenofseaford.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-can-i-tell-you.html

This is from my very long time, dear friend Janet, who hit me up to blog about seven items people may not know about me. Hmmm.

1: I broke my leg skiiing on February 13th, which was also a Friday. I was in high school and decided the new powder from a storm the night before was too tempting and skipped school. Bad break, five places, my binding didn't release, my ski planted and I rotated around it, so a spiral break. I was in a cast from my toes to my upper thigh for six months.

2: I'm a very good swimmer, and used to be a lifeguard, but I don't go in the ocean. Too scary (cue the theme music from Jaws). I love everything about the beach though.

3: (Anyone squeamish about childbirth can skip this, but I'll totally think you're a wuss) I love babies but was not meant for having them. My first baby wasn't so bad, failure to progress (how insulting, incidentally) and a c-section. Baby number two, yikes. Because I remember how uncomfortable the c-section recovery was, I did not want to repeat that if I didn't have to. My ob-gyn didn't think there was any reason for me not to try to have baby #2 vbac (vaginal birth after c-section), plus my sister in law had just successfully done what I had hoped to accomplish (her first one c-section, following one vbac) and I talked to her about it. I went to classes on it, did my homework, had the thumbs up from my doctor. Because I felt a bit cheated out of the whole childbirth experience the first time around, I went totally hard core for #2. I wanted nothing, no pain meds, no epidural, I wouldn't take an aspirin if they had offered it. I labored for 22 hours with her, and didn't take a thing (nor did I make a peep), I was totally rocking that labor. I got to ten centimeters, pushing, they're monitoring her, she's fine. I remember them asking me if I wanted to see what color hair she had, and I was like are you kidding me? I start to fade. Emergency c-section...like right NOW. They get me on the table and she's so far down from pushing they try to push her back UP. They open me up and struggle like hell to get her out, and I know something is wrong because no one is talking, and they're calling for more doctors in medical jargon like STAT. No one told me what was going on, and the anesthesiologist puts the mask on me and I'm out. I woke up with my husband sitting in a chair next to me telling me he thought he lost me. At the same time they gave me general anesthesia, they hurried him out of the room so he was in the dark, too, as to what was going on. My uterus ripped, and an artery tore, either from pulling the baby out or nicked via a scalpel, and I almost bled out. I had seven units of blood transfused (God bless every one who donates blood). I was 29, and they almost gave me a hysterectomy, but made the decision to repair it because I was so young, and told me my baby days were done. The next day, they discover my uretor is torn from my bladder, so they open me back up and reimplant my uretor, and surgically implant a catheter in my bikini line that leads to a bag for my urine while my bladder heals. So I got home after a week in the hospital, much of it on morphine, to a three year old and a new born baby, carrying a bag of my own pee. Lovely. And I spent Christmas in the hospital (she was born December 20th).


4: Actually probably everyone who knows me knows this because I'm so excited about it: I play the ukulele. I started about six weeks ago.

5: I'm a terrible liar.

6: Five people in my life call me Susie. I'm Susan or Sue to everyone else.

7: When I'm out and about and my kids (who are now 23 and 19) are not with me, and I well know this, I will still turn every single time I hear a child yell "Mom!"