Lifechanging Fall 1985 ~ Broken, Restored, Loved ~

Chapter 1

In the fall of 1985, my mother was suffering with terminal breast cancer. Since her diagnosis in October, 1983, in spite of the removal of the tiny lump in her breast, it had spread to her lungs, liver and bones. However, chemotherapy had successfully arrested it and she had been doing great! In May, 1984 my parents and aunt and uncle took a wonderful vacation to Hawaii. At Christmas that year her hair had grown back and they had a special Christmas party.

Unfortunately, by the end of January, 1985 it had spread to her brain, but radiation arrested this. Sadly, her symptoms persisted and it was discovered it had spread to the meninges of her brain and this was the one area that didn’t respond to treatment. During the last 4 months of her life she had been increasingly confused and agitated and her eyes looked so tortured which was especially hard as when I looked in the mirror I would ‘see’ her eyes. I had begun praying and speaking Philippians 4:7 to her that “the peace of God, which transcends allunderstanding,” would guard her heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

I was blessed that the last time I was with her, I could see she ‘was’ at peace because her eyes, ‘the windows of your soul’, were crystal clear and peaceful. She was sitting looking out the window of her hospital room and Viney, the special nurse’s aide who cared for her for the last 6 months of her life, was feeding her ice cream. I took over doing that and told her that her eyes looked so beautiful. Viney said she thought my eyes looked like hers and my mom agreed. That was an incredible comfort. The next day she went to sleep and for the next 3 days she remained in that state.

On Saturday morning my dad called to tell me he had decided to take a break and ride down to Stockdale to see my Grandparents. My husband left to do some programming for a friend’s office and I got a burst of energy to clean my house. Viney, Mom’s nurse’s aide, called and told me she was trying to reach my Dad. Although she didn’t work on Saturdays, she felt compelled to check on my Mom and from experience she knew her breathing indicated she did not have long to live and she knew my Dad would want to be there. I called my Grandparents and found out that my Dad had a sense he needed to get back to the hospital and had headed back to town. A few minutes later he called to tell me that my Mom had passed away. My Dad told us he had stopped to help a family putting their elderly mother in the car to take her home. By the time he got upstairs and walked into her room, she was looking up as if she was seeing a bright light and then she passed away.

Our precious son, John, was 3 years old and I was 27 weeks pregnant at the time. Friends and family gathered at my parent’s house and everyone kept saying how big I was and speculating that maybe I was going to have twins. Even a family friend who had given birth to twins told me people were always telling her they wondered if they were having twins, but she said they really didn’t know how big you are with twins, but, she said I ‘was’ big for only 6 ½ months! We decided to have the funeral on Monday, Veteran’s Day.

I was scheduled for a regular ob visit that morning and I decided to keep the appointment since the funeral was not until later that afternoon so I could touch base with the doctor. When the doctor examined me he told me that I had grown 10 centimeters! He told me that he didn’t think I was having twins but that the baby had probably just had a growth spurt but we needed to do a sonogram to see what was going on. At that time sonograms were not routine and I had never had one before. He told me that we didn’t need to do it this week as he knew I had a lot going on but we were anxious to know so an appointment was set up for 3 days later.

We had a lovely service for my Mom at St. Matthew’s United Methodist Church that afternoon with Reverend John Platte.It was a blessing to have someone speaking who knew Mom. He had christened my son, John and performed my brother’s wedding ceremony. He had visited our homes and had warmly welcomed her & Daddy in church when she asked him to bring her when was able to come. He had also visited her so faithfully after she was hospitalized. We went through the rest of the week thinking that perhaps the Lord was going to ease our sorrow by blessing us with twins.

Chapter 2

Three Days later, we had the sonogram in Dr. Paine’s office on Thursday morning and the first thing we learned was that we were not having twins. However, the doctor told us that the baby had a growth on its tailbone and he wanted me to have a high-resolution sonogram with a specialist at the hospital to get more information. He said he was concerned about the baby’s ability to move its legs but emphasized this was not cancer.

An hour later we went to the hospital next door for this sonogram. It was uncomfortable because it was a lengthy process and the specialist pressed down firmly all over my abdomen in order to get the best views of the whole baby. The Specialist told us the baby was a girl and told us her brain and heart looked perfect and the organs in her abdomen appeared to be functioning well in utero. She didn’t give us much more information and told us Dr. Paine would be calling me after he received the report on the sonogram. As we were leaving the lab I made the comment, “She didn’t say anything about the baby’s lungs.”

My dear Dad was already back at work and anxiously waiting to hear from us so we drove over to his office to tell him what we had learned. We were dreading to tell him something was wrong, just days after we had buried my mother. In the office with all the other salesmen, we just told them it wasn’t twins but a baby girl which he was thrilled to hear since we already had a little son. Then we took him to lunch and told him what the doctor had told us. We tried to stay positive especially after all the family had been through and stressed it was not cancer. We told him we would hear more from the doctor later that evening. I was feeling sick from all the pressure on my uterus during the sonogram and came home to rest and wait to hear from the doctor. My emotions and body were exhausted.

The doctor called me that evening and told me they were familiar with this type of large benign tumor that was almost as large as the baby. He said this was similar to a ‘siamese twin' as the tumor (a teratoma) had every type of tissue as a baby. He said it was attached at the tailbone and he had every reason to be optimistic that it could be safely removed after the baby was born. He said I also had excessive amniotic fluid and this combined with the tumor made me full term 'size' at 27 weeks and as a result I would have to be watched very closely for premature labor and I would have to have a c-section delivery. All our other family and friends were anxiously waiting to hear if we were having twins. We didn’t want to talk about everything at this point as I still had 13 weeks to go, so we decided to just tell everyone that it was a baby girl. I knew I could not hold it together calling all these people and my husband kindly made all the calls so I could rest. It was a hard day for both of us.

Two days later I got in the shower to get ready to go pick up the sympathy notes so I could begin thanking people for all the flowers, food and remembrances. However when I was showering, the mucous plug came out! I panicked because when John was born my water broke 45 minutes after this happened! I rushed to tell Carl and call the doctor. It was a Saturday and Dr. Paine was not on call but the ‘high-risk’ doctor in the practice was and he told me to come to the hospital immediately. The phone rang and it was my Dad and I didn’t want to worry him at this point so I told him we were ‘taking it easy’! We called my brother, John, and his wife, Tami, and asked them if they could meet us at the hospital so they could take care of 3 year old, John.

When I arrived at the hospital, I was placed in labor & delivery and the doctor put me on terbutaline to stop my labor. I had not started dilating but I continued to have contractions. Late that night I started having severe chest pains. Sunday this continued and it was determined I had gone into pneumonia. We decided to call my Dad and tell him what was happening. He came to the hospital and said the most memorable thing.

He said, “It’s as if your Mom is our guardian angel and when she got up to heaven she could see what was happening and she went straight to ‘the Head Man’ and said, “We’ve got to do something and we’ve got to do something now!!!”

On Monday morning when Dr. Paine was back on duty he told me my system couldn't handle the drug and they would have to take me off of it and check me at the end of the day. He said he was not ‘writing this baby off’, but sometimes ‘nature knows best’. A neo-natal nurse came in and told me that a 27-week baby had a 90% chance for survival so not to give up hope. At the end of the day I was dilated to 3 cm so they had to schedule an emergency c-section.

I told them I wanted to be awake and they said an epidural was better anyway because of the pneumonis. Dr. Paine did the c-section. A Neonatalogist was present. I could hear the neo-natal doctor saying he couldn't get the tube down. They told me they were taking the baby for an x-ray. The x-ray showed that the baby had no lungs. Her esophagus came down and ended which is why the doctor couldn’t get the tube down to ventilate her. There was nothing they could do for her.

They asked us if we wanted to baptize her and in faith and a desire to validate her presence on the earth we said yes. We had always planned to name a girl, Ann Marie, so Carl asked me if I wanted to name her ‘Ann Marie.’ I said, “No, there was no way I could lose Mary Ann (my mother) and Ann Marie in the same time! My mother told me once that she had wanted to name me Catherine, so let’s name her Catherine.”

She ‘lived’ or at least her tiny heart kept beating for 2 hours due to the oxygenation of her blood from my placenta. They tried to take me to see her but the gurney wouldn’t fit through the door to the neo-natal nursery. I looked across the room at her but the sweet nurses dressed her in a little gown and took a Polaroid picture of her for me to cherish along with her birth certificate.

I cried over not being able to hold her and my sweet neighbor & friend, Paula, a neo-natal nurse who actually worked in that nursery with the nurses who cared for Catherine, told me the most precious thing. She told me that ‘I held Catherine in my womb closer than anyone could and she was perfectly healthy and safe while she was there.’ My Mother always wanted a granddaughter, and Catherine is in heaven with her.

That took place 25 years ago today on November 18, 1985.

The next day I slept all day and I have no memory of that day but, Carl said when he visited my room he ‘heard’ ‘my half’ of a conversation with my mother! I believe the Lord allowed her to come and comfort me somewhere between time and eternity. I was very sick and I often wonder if I experienced a small taste of heaven during that time as I healed.

Since I was recovering from surgery, pneumonia and the complications of the pregnancy we decided to have a memorial service for Baby Catherine in the Methodist Hospital chapel and Carl, his parents and my Dad had a small graveside service with a tiny white coffin at Mission South Cemetery where my mother and both of my uncles were buried. We placed an engraved Bronze heart as the grave marker in Babyland right next to the San Antonio River on the southside.

Ironically, this was just downstream from where I had lived as a child. Our property near San Jose Mission on Symphony Lane backed up to the river (really more of a creek than a river at that point) and we fished in it and rode horses on it when I was in 1^st – 3^rd grades. It was a happy time for me then and it has always given me great peace that she’s buried there next to that peaceful stream of my childhood not far from my mother’s grave.

'Footprints Experience'

I remember how unexplainedly joyful I felt inthe first few weeks after I got home from the hospital. I knew it was the Lord, but, I remember reading the poem 'Footprints' with new eyes and realizing immediately that was why I felt joyful! Jesus was carrying me 'through' this. It's not that you don't grieve your loss intensely at times, but the Father is so faithful and in the hardest times I learned more about His Grace than any other time.

After I got home I read endlessly about prenatal development and I discovered that a baby’s lungs develop at 11 weeks. I read that if something interrupts the development at a certain point that it doesn’t go back and make up for it. I remembered having the flu and a fever at that point in the pregnancy and was convinced that is what must have happened. When I went to the doctor for a follow-up I told him about this and he explained something to me. He told me that the lungs need ‘space’ and ‘nutrition’ to develop and the tumor interfered in both ways. I remembered my comment that they had not said anything about the baby's lungs after the sonogram. Was that something in my intuition that sensed there was something wrong with her lungs? I asked the doctor why they didn't know from the sonogram. He told me that in utero the lungs are fluid filled so they are not visible.

I asked the doctor if my severe chest pains were caused by the pneumonia and he told me I was suffering from severe cardiac insufficiency caused by the stress of the pregnancy and with the medication my body was working overtime trying to stop the labor that really needed to proceed. Clearly my life was threatened by what was taking place. Then he shared something with me that showed me just how much the Lord was protecting me and guiding the circumstances.

He told me that every obstetrician fears delivering ‘half’ a baby. He said, if we had not learned of the tumor and the necessity of the c-section, I would have gone into labor as I did and unable to stop the labor the baby would have gotten stuck in the birth canal. Unable to see what was wrong, they would have watched the baby die in the birth canal. The doctor would have been forced to cut the cervix in order to save my life ‘if’ he had even been able to save me! It made me realize that it was the Lord that prompted me to keep my appointment the morning of the funeral. It would have been all too easy to decide to re-schedule my appointment in the middle of the overwhelming grief of losing my Mom! Whatsmore, it was God’s perfect plan that I proceed with the sonogram only 2 days before I went into labor. The doctor had even suggested we could wait to do the sonogram till the next week.. In God’s economy, it was necessary for it to happen exactly as it did. He made sure the doctors knew exactly what they needed to know exactly when they needed to know!

As time has passed I see God’s protection and plan even more clearly. If it hadn’t happened just that way, as sad as it was, I never would have been able to have more children if I had even survived at all! But 13 months later I gave birth to Christopher Damon and 4 years later I gave birth to Ann Marie.

Dr. Paine changed his practice too. He began routinely scheduling a sonogram for all his patients at 12 weeks of pregnancy. Not only did he save my life, but, he safely delivered both Chris and Ann Marie!

I learned I can trust God even in the middle of tragedy and heartache because He can see further down the road and He truly does have our well-being and blessing in mind!