I wonder how often the best day of anyone's life occurs immediately following their worst.
FRIDAY
When your spouse is in the hospital life is anything but typical. When you are expecting triplets, every moment is extraordinary. Dr. Boz was under observation for signs of pre-eclampsia, and I had gone to visit her on Friday.
10:00PM - Dr. Boz is checked by her attending nurse, and her vitals are good. Her blood pressure is good if bit above her average, steady for the past several weeks around 130/80. The nurse checks the heart rate of our three babies, and all three rates are steady and strong as well. With everything looking pretty good, the nurse departs. My wife is being a bit emotional, so I decide to stay the night to support her and just be there for her if she needs some water or anything. Dr. Boz is acting a bit strange, not abl to figure out where to write down the volume of her urine flow on the chart and putting her toilet paper in the sink instead of the toilet, but we chalk it up to over-exhaustion and head to bed.
11:10PM - I wake up to an unnatural sound that could only be described as a huffing, burbling noise. When I put on my glasses and look at the source of the noise, I am shocked to see that it is my wife, convulsing and shaking her head slightly, drooling on her pillow. She responds to my voice, but it's readily apparent she has no idea who I am and is unable to focus on me. In less than five seconds from assessing the situation I have a nurse from next door. What happens next is a blur, as she somehow summons a legion of nurses and aids to the room. Dr. Boz is having a seizure of which, like multiple pregnancies and thyroid cancer, her family has no history. But the fact that it had never happened before was little comfort, because there she was now, unable to tell me from the nurse, and convulsing rapidly. The staff is nothing short of exceptional, telling me that things are under control, asking short, informative questions to determine what is happening. A quick blood pressure check, and it seems she is having a sudden onset of eclampsia, potentially deadly. If I had not decided to spend the night on a whim, it was entirely possible things would have gone comprehensively wrong.
SATURDAY
12:00AM - Things do not go wrong. Dr. Boz has stabilized from the quick administration of magnesium, among other drugs to control high blood pressure. She is lucid, but remembers nothing from the seizure. Watching her go from out-of-control to her normal (though panicked) self was at once calming and cripplingly frightening, particularly when she did not know who I was, that she was pregnant, or in the hospital as she transitioned back to rational thought. But transition she did, and now she and I are talking calmly to one another. The staff has informed us that they will shortly be changing the status of our unborn from fetuses to infants. We are quickly moved from the prenatal arena to the labor/delivery floor. Dr. Boz is panicked, I am nervous, though oddly almost completely relieved. As I console my wife and try my best to assuage her fears, she is asked to sign paperwork for anesthesia and the surgery itself. Not entirely lucid, panicked, and pressured, I wonder if any of the paperwork even matters having been signed under distress. A moment later I wonder why I was worrying about legalities and not my wife and possible future children.
Bozanimal pretends to be Dr. Boz
1:30AM - Dr. Boz has resigned herself to the inevitable, and places her faith in one of the best hospitals in the country, if not the world. I am asked to wait outside the operating room as she is prepped for surgery and the staff is brought in; three babies require a huge team to operate, deliver, check and monitor the infants, assuming they are delivered safely. Dr. Boz is wheeled through double-doors that creepily resemble those on television and film, and I cross my fingers that nothing worthy of television or film occurs unless it qualified as a comedy.
The world's longest 30 foot hallway
2:00AM - A few doctors, residents, and assorted staff members I vaguely recognize enter the hallway and put on scrubs similar to the ones I put on in the labor and delivery room (separate from the operating room for Cesareans). I am told it will be a while before I am allowed to enter, but will be able to be there for the births. Nervously, I hop in an abandoned wheelchair nearby and roll around. One of the surgeons asks me with a hint of fear and anger if I am handicapped, to which I reply, "No." and promptly discontinue my nervous wheelies. I am welcomed into the operating room shortly thereafter to a cramped room of about sixteen to eighteen assorted members, the operating table, my wife, three incubators, and a whole lot of tubes and instruments. I am instructed to sit by my wife who is awake and lucid, looks at me for reassurance, and I smile, squeeze her hand, and tell her how excited I am. I leave out the parts about how nervous and ill I feel inside, and keep up her spirits. She smiles, I smile, the anesthesiologists smile, and they begin to cut.
2:30AM - In the course of five minutes all three babies are removed from my wife. I grab pictures of each with my camera phone, the only cameras I am in possession of, having gone directly to the hospital from work. Each baby lets out little cries that can only be described as the most heart-wrenching, beautiful thing you could ever hear. Thirty-one weeks after conception, all three fetuses have become infants, are out in the real world, and appear to be in good shape. My wife is splayed on the table, unable to move or see her children, but I am allowed to go to the incubators where they are being inspected and take some quick snapshots. While I am able to see and touch each of them briefly, Dr. Boz gets only a passing glance at the last child before the surgeons begin the hour-long process of closing. I watch every stitch with an iron stomach, reassured by the obvious skill and dexterity of the doctor and support staff despite the early hour.
6:00AM - I have no idea what happened between the time they closed my wife and now. I am somehow teleported into the Au Bon Pan, a cafe in the entryway of the hospital. My wife and all three infants are stable and doing well. I begin to call the parents of both Dr. Boz and myself, and remember how lucky I am to have married into a family I loved as much as my own. A few hours later I am in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) looking at the children - my children - who will spend at least the next four weeks being monitored closely. I am allowed to touch them as long as I have washed my hands and/or used Purell, and place my pinky finger inside the pam of my littlest boy. He grips my finger from the front knuckle forward. I never cry, but in the center of my chest I secretly flush with adoration and appreciation for just how lucky I am, and lament that my wife was unable to be by my side as she recovers.
Saturday Afternoon, Time Unknown - Dr. Boz is brought into the NICU in her hospital bed, the only means of transporting her as she is still recovering from surgery. She is allowed to stay only briefly, and sobs quietly at how surreal the whole experience has become. I continue to comfort her, hold her hand, and inspect each of my children, who are all doing well despite the many monitors and controls attached to them. They are all beautiful, and I realize that all the warnings given to me from so many parents, all the, "Just you waits" and, "Good luck with thats!" were so much bull. This was the most amazing place to be on earth, and I was at its center.
Girl, Boy, and Boy