HCG level remains at 1 and the grief hit me.

So it took 3 days to get an answer back from my doctor, but it looks like my HCG level is at 1 for the third week in a row. 

Maybe some people just don't get down to zero? 

So he said I could now do monthly checks!  Hooray! 


It's hard to imagine that I would have been really big and pregnant about now.  I had a hard time a week ago when I went to get my levels drawn and there was a new nurse who had never met me.  When I checked in and told her I was a weekly standing appointment, she immediately asked "glucose levels?" and I told her, "No, HCG."

"Oh, you're pregnant?  Well that's great!"

I started stammering and trying to make my mouth make some sort of words; my face must have looked frowny, because she looked at me and tried to correct herself (not any more accurately, unfortunately)... "Oh, errr....you just had a baby?"

"We lost a baby and they are checking my HCG levels to make sure they go down."

Finally...I got it out.

"Oh I've had a miscarriage too,"  she said offhandedly and went back to her paperwork.

I took my seat to wait for them to call my name.  My mind was reeling. 

What just happened?  Where was my usual lady?  She was going to ask about how Isabel was doing and what were our plans for the summer?  And how were the goats?  And she wasn't here.  Just this new lady asking me if I was pregnant and if I had just had a baby and then casually commenting about miscarriage as if we had both just stubbed our toe and man, doesn't that hurt?

I was trying to work it all out in my head, the odd interaction, when I got called back by the only pregnant nurse in the office.

"Do you always use the same arm?" she asked me as I thrust my left one out.

"Well, yeah, why?"  Thinking it must look bruised or messed up....how did she know?

"Well you come here every week and I just wondered."  She paused and then continued..."because I have to get blood drawn and it about drives me crazy and I always have to switch arms."

Her now obviously pregnant belly was right at eye level as she tightened the tourniquet and asked me to make a fist.  So now I had to comment on her pregnancy, because what else could she be referring to?

"When are you due?"

"October."

"Well congratulations!  That's wonderful!"   I was happy for her.  I have not had those awful feelings of anger and jealousy after losing Francis Marie that I have had after previous losses. 

Then she said, "Yeah, that's what everyone's been saying.  But I don't know.  I was so sick the first 3 months I dropped 10 pounds and now I'm so tired I can barely stand it."

Ugh...there it was.  The ungratefulness.  The fact that this girl was quite healthily pregnant and wasn't even sure if she was happy about it.  I felt my stomach turn and my heartbeat quickened.  I had the opportunity, had I been thinking to say something beautiful...something profound...something that maybe could have changed her viewpoint.

Instead all that came out was, "Well, the tired part will only get worse!  Hahah....good luck."

And I jetted for the door taking a deep breath as I passed under the neon exit sign.

I got in the car and that's when it hit me....the grief.  For perhaps the very first time since February I was just overcome with this terrible depressed feeling.  It clouded everything in an instant, like a sweeping fog over my whole being.  I immediately thanked God for keeping this feeling from me for so long, but instantly dreaded the loss of His consolation as the grief washed over me.

I didn't want to go home to my kids and my husband.

I just wanted to sit in the car.

Maybe drive away somewhere far.

I really wanted a cigarette. 

Yep, I thought back to the time when cigarettes made me feel better.  When I would get mad or depressed and all it took was one cigarette to relieve some of those awful feelings.

Okay, nope.  Can't go buy cigarettes now at 34.   You're past that.  You've got little kids at home.  That's a bad plan.

Luckily I agreed with my subconscious and finally succumbed to the realization that I just had to go home and face the rest of the day...real life.  Still dishes from breakfast and lunch to prepare and laundry and goats and diapers...

So I went home and my dear husband realized that something was not right.  And I was able to tell him.  And he said, "Yeah, it's strange how grief can hit you at the oddest times out of nowhere."

So true.  Thankfully the grief was just for a day or two and it has passed for the time. 

Then on Sunday, the Feast of Corpus Christi, the first reading was Dt. 8: 2-3

Moses said to the people:
"Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God,
has directed all your journeying in the desert,
so as to test you by affliction
and find out whether or not it was your intention
to keep his commandments.
He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger,
and then fed you with manna,
a food unknown to you and your fathers,
in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live,
but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.

"Do not forget the LORD, your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
that place of slavery;
who guided you through the vast and terrible desert
with its saraph serpents and scorpions,
its parched and waterless ground;
who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock
and fed you in the desert with manna,
a food unknown to your fathers."

Wow....that just totally spoke to me.  God directed their journeying in the desert....He directs MY journeying in this desert so as to test me by affliction to find out if I would keep His commandments.