Emergency Rooms and Memory Triggers

Yesterday afternoon Christopher was downstairs playing by himself when he started crying.  It didn't sound like he had gotten hurt, but just an overtired, whiny kind of cry, so I ignored it as long as I could.  Finally I couldn't take it anymore, so I went to check on him and he was at the bottom of the stairs holding a mast from a Playmobile pirate ship in his hand.  He told me that he hurt his eye.  I looked at it, didn't see much damage, so I carried him upstairs and told him that I would put some drops in it just in case, and that he should come up and lie in bed to rest while the drops healed his eye.  He ended up falling asleep (a blessing for sure!) and two hours later was back up and running around like before!

At supper, I glanced over at him and about threw up!  His eye had started to bleed and the white cornea was now bright red!  Oh - my - goodness!!!  It was not a pleasant sight, let me tell you!  Trying not to panic, Fred and I made plans for me to take him to emergency while he stayed here and got the other boys bathed and in bed.  I'm so thankful that Christopher had that two hour nap in the afternoon, because you never know how many hours you're going to be sitting in an emergency waiting room, right?!

We decided to go to Cambridge hospital instead of Kitchener, hoping for a shorter wait time.  After I parked and we walked toward the emergency entrance, I was hit with a flood of unexpected memories.  The last time I had been in that emergency room was ten and a half years ago.  I was two days shy of being twelve weeks pregnant with my first baby, and I was hemorrhaging profusely.  While I was hoping that being in the emergency room would help me, I also knew that I was most likely miscarrying and would lose the baby. 

These were bad memories that were flooding back.  I don't think one thing has been updated in that ER since that time as even the glass on the triage nurses' window made my stomach lurch. That had been where I stood, blood pouring from my body, tears pouring from my eyes, begging for help.  Last night when they called Christopher's name and we walked through the frosted, electric doors back into the emergency department, once again I almost burst into tears.  We passed the bathroom where I had sobbed as more bleeding occured, so many years ago.  Then we entered the very room where I had spent six hours lying on a table waiting until an operating room was available so that surgery could be performed to scrape the remains in my uterus.   There was no longer a baby, but just remnants of a placenta that needed to be removed.

That was the last I remember of that emergency room as I was wheeled off to who knows where after that and only remember waking up in the recovery room.  When Christopher and I left the hospital after he was done, I walked outside into the darkness and a sadness fell on me that once again caught me off-guard.  When I had gone to that hospital ten and a half years ago, my mother-in-law was with me and stayed with me as long as she could.  For some reason, when I walked out and saw the side of the building, I just felt so lonesome for her again.  I missed her terribly.

I tried hard to be upbeat and happy with Christopher because he was done (in just a little over an hour, too!), and there was no serious damage to his eye, but at the same time, I was overwhelmed with haunting memories of the past.  You'd think that over time, things like this would just go back into the deep recesses of your mind and you won't be affected by them ever again, but that was not the case.  Even now, my throat is tight and my eyes are blurred as I remember that sad, sad day that I lost my baby.  I try to explain it on here now, but even my words are not portraying the emptiness that my heart feels, an emptiness that I thought had been filled and healed.  Maybe, even though God does heal our hurts and binds our wounds, maybe those memories never truly die.  I'm sure there is a reason for that, and I won't bemoan the fact that my unborn baby died, but maybe God wants to remind me that even in those saddest of days, He was there.  He took me through those, and He will take me through future events as well. 

We left the hospital last night and came home to tell Fred the good news that all was well with Christopher's eye.  My sadness turned to happiness and thankfulness, but there is still this little pocket of my heart that is filled with surprise at the response of those memories.  I will give them over to the Lord again and ask Him again to comfort my heart and bring back the peace.  He will.  I know that, because He did it for me back then, too.  He is a faithful God and He can still my soul and fill it with praise...and with MANY more beautiful memories!