The Sponge
A sponge ruined my life. Sponge is the medical term for gauze. A doctor wielding a sponge I should clarify. There was two of them, obgyn’s there at the time of the “incident” I don’t know which one wielded the sponge. Never the less one of them. They were both women, both had blond hair, one was nicer than the other. I was sixteen. In my imagination it was the shitty one, but I don’t know.
I have a blood disorder, at the time and not until several years ago did I know I have this blood disorder it’s called factor 5 Leiden.
It causes an increased chance of blood clotting. Many people have it and never know and never have any symptom. But in people that do carry it, there are things that can trigger blood clots. Things like trauma, infections and in women pregnancy. It’s called hyper coagulability. In my case it never did until the sponge came in to my life. I had a normal pregnancy. A perfectly normal delivery, they performed a procedure called an episiotomy, it’s a small surgical cut to aid in the delivery of a child. When they were soaking up the blood they used the “spounge” sewed it in to my body and left it there until weeks later that I was riddled with infection blown off, prescribed pain killers, blown off again. Was in debilitating pain that I thought I was going to die, it stunk like something died, more pain killers, a fever that was astronomically high and wouldn’t go down did they agree to allow me an office visit. They found it. You know something is up when one doctor examines you, they leave the office in a hurry bring in a second doctor who then both leave in a hurry, who then decide you have to be transferred to the hospital and no one tells you anything.
The shit storm of things that happens In the subsequent years and for the rest of my life to date, could be a novel in itself, I literally don’t know and can’t get proper documentation to attest to how many surgeries I have had to date, it’s somewhere between 8–14 to my best guess.
There have been times I have been feed threw a tube in my vein, one directly in my stomach. It has been a lifetime of struggle, pain the more struggle and worse pain.
I got pregnant in high school, I always thought this was part of it, I was a teenage mom, Mexican, poor and I didn’t matter.. I was very ill equipped to care for a child obviously, I had state provided health insurance/ The father was a second year senior drop out who played guitar and worked at a refrigerator factory.
Side note: He played damn good guitar tho. He was what I qualify as “guitarted” he mimicked Joe Satriani and Steve Via if you know who they are most likely you too have “guitarted” talk to your doctor.
I was not going to have an abortion. It was not due to being religious or overly conservative obviously. I just was not. It was my mess of a situation.
The delivery was quick 45 minutes if only the aftermath would have been.
Even though my life has been a rough road, if I was back there at 16 I would do it all again. My daughter is beautiful and brilliant, she suffered too through me being sick, not always present and my subsequent side effect of opiate addiction, but we are still here, doing the best we can, make that best of it and counting our blessing.
