Tuesdays are for therapy

    Tuesday I had a slew of appointments for talking to people: the first was Jan, the lady who gave me the bracelet in the hospital; the second was with Kate; and the third was for a grief support group through Hope Fellowship that I had been invited to go to.

     Jan and I decided to meet over in Grapevine since it was near the area she lives in and I was going to be over there anyway for an appointment with Kate. First off, Jan said how proud she was of how I was doing and how good I looked (I'm pretty sure this just means I was able to keep it together enough to not break down in front of her and that my waterproof mascara was doing its job). I got to show Jan my bracelet, and she gasped as she said how beautiful it was. We talked for a little bit about her experience with Chris (her son that passed away), and then Jan said one of those things that will be burned into my memory for the rest of my life. She told me that after you say goodbye to your child, that you move to a different level with God. Jan's dad had passed away about a year after Chris died, and all of her siblings were concerned that Jan wasn't going to be able to handle her dad's death. But Jan told me that she just looked at him and she said, "Yes. This is right. This is how it is suppose to be." And was at total peace with her dad's passing. I loved sitting and talking with her, mostly because she has the best way of telling stories and she is able to make me laugh at some of the silly things that people do.
     Jan also warned me that through all of this, I was definitely going to change. "You'll lose friends over this," she said, "And you have to be okay with that, because people will not know how to treat you. You'll have people that will not know what to say and will say something awful, and you'll have people that will completely avoid eye contact with you and walk the other way. They don't mean it to be hurtful, but its how people respond most of the time because people are at a loss for words."

     After about an hour and a half of chatting over lunch, it was time for me to say goodbye to Jan and move down the street for my appointment with Kate.

      I went up to Kate's office and sat down on her couch. I started by telling her that I was much happier with where I was today than where I was last week, because I had felt like last week was a really bad week with it being the first time I was away from Alex and my anxiety over the doctors appointment. I wasn't going to need to sit there and cry in her office for the entire hour long appointment, and I was glad of that. We talked and told our stories more in depth, and Kate did (and does) a really good job of holding back parts of her story so she is able to listen to me talk as well. She usually says, "There is just so much that I want to tell you, but I want to hear your story right now."
      The previous Friday, Alex and I had gotten the preliminary results from Kaitlyn's autopsy. Dr. L had asked us at the post op visit if we had heard anything, and when we said we hadn't she told us she would follow up with the hospital. On Friday morning, I got the call from Dr. L's office that there were preliminary results in and that Dr. L would call and talk to us about them later that afternoon. Well my husband couldn't wait for that. He still had the number for the hospital in his phone, so he just called the pathology department directly. He listened as the lab tech read off the pathologists report, and then told me everything when he got off the phone. Everything with Kaitlyn's body was fine: there were no gross abnormalities, no chromosomal abnormalities, and they were still waiting on the slides to come back for a few more tests. They hadn't reviewed everything on her umbilical cord or placenta yet, but we expect those results back in a few weeks.
       I listened as Alex told me everything he'd learned, and then I just started crying. I hated this. Every fiber in my body was screaming for mercy. I hated, hated listening to the autopsy of my daughter. I hated the fact that I have enough medical knowledge to know how they get the slides for autopsies, and I hated that I couldn't protect my daughter from that. I know, logically, that we both wanted and needed to have the autopsy done to try to make sure this won't happen again, but I get a pit in my stomach every time I think about somebody getting samples from my daughter. I hated every aspect of it. I wanted to shelter her from that. I wanted to keep her whole and peaceful.
      I told Kate the story of the autopsy and how much it bothered me. Then we went on to talk about some things that people had said to me over the past few weeks: one of which being that people kept calling Kaitlyn my little angel and that she was watching over us. I hated that so much, because there is no way that Kaitlyn is watching me and Alex be sad and miss her. God promises us that there is no sadness or tears in heaven, and there's no way my daughter could watch me be sad and not be sad herself. To this, Kate replied, "See, even now, when she is gone, you're still trying to protect her. You. are. her. mom."