When I called Dr. Schink’s office, the receptionist said it was unusual to request to see the doctor about the possibility of a hysterectomy when there was no evidence I would need one. After all, he focused on patients with cancer of the reproductive organs. She kept asking me, “What kind of cancer do you have?” and “Are you sure you want to see Dr. Schink?”
“Yes,” I said. “I am seven months pregnant, but do not have cancer. I just feel I may need to have a hysterectomy.”
She thought I was nuts. I was getting increasingly anxious the more we talked. After going back and forth several times while she tried to figure out how to categorize the visit, I hit my breaking point. Loudly I said, “Can I just make the appointment?” She finally did.
On April 15, Jonathan flew in and we met Dr. Schink. As we waited in the lobby to be called in I scanned the room and saw the faces of women stricken with cancer. They looked gray and sick, with no eyebrows or hair on their heads. Some were carting around IV poles. I didn’t want to make eye contact because I was staring at mortality and I was an otherwise healthy, cancer-free pregnant woman. I felt uncomfortable being there. Jonathan said he was embarrassed to be there taking up this doctor’s time when everyone else was in a life-or-death situation. But aren’t I? I thought.
Of course I felt a little hesitant to see this doctor, knowing that he would look at me like I was a hysterical, hormonal mess of a woman, but by that point I was accustomed to that reaction. And I felt bad that my husband was feeling a bit uncomfortable, but I didn’t feel bad enough to leave. No one was going to convince me not to see this doctor because I was hoping he would be the one to give me the answers. Maybe, as the head of gynecologic oncology at one of the top teaching hospitals in the country, he would have seen everything, and maybe, just maybe, he had seen something like this before. Everyone up until this point had given me nothing useful to make me feel that in the end I would be okay.
We were finally escorted to a consultation room where we met Dr. Schink and a resident. Dr. Schink asked me how he could help me, and I told him flat out, “You’re going to be my doctor in case I need a hysterectomy. So you see me and I see you, and now I am your patient.”
My blunt introduction didn’t faze him. He asked me why I thought I might need a hysterectomy, and I told him about all of my fears. I told him I had been diagnosed with a complete placenta previa and was fearful of it becoming a placenta accreta, and then “I would need to have a hysterectomy and I am afraid I will hemorrhage to death.”
“Okay,” he replied matter-of-factly. “Have you been on the Internet?”
“Yes,” I replied, “but this is what I believe is going to happen to me, and I can’t get it out of my head.”
“The likelihood of that happening is very rare,” Dr. Schink said, “but I suggest you get an MRI at 35 weeks, and if we see the uterus and placenta permeating each other, I will schedule myself on the day of your C-section and we will take care of it then.”
I left his office feeling much better that someone was finally looking into my concerns, however rare they seemed to be. Dr. Schink was so calm about everything that it felt to me like he was in control and not at all concerned about what he had heard. I left his office feeling like I would be fine. But that feeling would be short-lived.
I called to talk about an MRI with Julie, who said that her protocol with her patients was to do one at 32 weeks, not 35 weeks, as Schink had suggested. I decided to follow her protocol because then I would know sooner than later. I did the MRI on May 2, and it came back negative for a placenta accreta. Jonathan said to me, “Don’t you feel better?” “No,” I said. The sense of doom was not going away. Instead of alleviating my fears, the MRI strangely heightened them. If it had shown a placenta accreta, at least my premonitions would have been tangible and we could have put a plan of action in place.
I couldn’t kick this “crazy” sense of foreboding, and the list of people who would listen to me talk about it was diminishing. I asked Julie whether a placenta accreta could show up later, and she said she’d never seen it happen.
That night I tried to sleep, but the vision of organs melding together was still clouding my brain. Jonathan was frustrated: he had just seen the MRI results, and he insisted that tests don’t lie. “Honey, you don’t have an accreta. Please try to get some sleep. You need to rest. You can now cross that off your list of fears. It’s not going to happen.”
I desperately wanted to believe him. Intellectually, I knew that he was right, but deep down inside of me it didn’t feel like it was true. I had no idea why. I was still scared.
I called my sister the next day. Michelle is 12 years my senior and had a hysterectomy in her thirties. I had not gone into too much detail about my premonitions with her because she would have divulged all the details to my parents. I didn’t want the daily calls checking on me—it would have only added more stress for all of us. I told my sister the only information I knew she could handle. I wanted to convey a message that I was nervous, but not scared to death. I told her I was afraid I would need a hysterectomy.
“Why? Who told you that? Stephanie,” she said in her motherly tone, “you will not need a hysterectomy.” Then she ran through a litany of other possibilities. “Did you get your thyroid checked? Did you see a specialist about it? How is the baby? Is there something you are being told is happening? You need to take it easy, relax . . .” etc., etc., etc. It was a little bit of a relief to just hear her concern, but she didn’t have all of the facts and I didn’t want to go into them, so I just let her keep talking. “If you are to have a hysterectomy, even though you will not need one, make sure you keep your ovaries.”
I laughed to myself. I understood what she was saying because she’d had a complete hysterectomy in which they removed her ovaries, and she had been on hormone replacement therapy for decades. It was terrible and painful to watch. I laughed because my ovaries were the last thing I was worried about. Michelle told me to stop being negative and to call her with any other questions.
The fear continued to build day after day. At one point I worked myself up into a full-on asthma attack and was convinced I was bleeding internally. Jonathan was in New York, and I called him in the middle of the night to say I needed to go to the hospital. Scared, he called his friend Alan to drive me as he searched for the earliest flight to Chicago.
Alan had just had a baby and was sound asleep, but he raced over and became my surrogate husband for the night. He has a very twisted sense of humor, and he and I always have great banter. Immediately after showing up, he helped me to the car and said, “You look like shit.”
“Thank you, asshole,” I said. “I am dying here. Get me to the hospital.”
I said that very sarcastically, but then, as we drove to the hospital, he said, “What’s wrong?” I told him in my shallow-breathed voice that I couldn’t talk much, but I was sure my feet were swelling and my blood was pooling inside of me. He looked at my feet and saw nothing strange, but I was breaking out in cold sweats, so he kept handing me napkins to dry myself off. When he noticed that my face looked like it had been drained of blood, he knew something was wrong. He got me to the ER in seven minutes flat and convinced me that nothing bad was going to happen that night, even if he didn’t believe it. He made me smile when he said, “Nothing’s going to happen on my watch. Your husband would kill me.”
That assurance made me a little calmer, and I felt, for a brief moment, that I was being protected. In the ER, I was monitored for a few hours and then told, to our surprise, that there was nothing wrong. I was released. Alan called Jonathan before Jonathan boarded the flight to tell him it had been a false alarm. In my mind, though, it wasn’t a false alarm. It was another warning.
I called my rabbi and told him I was feeling things physically that weren’t real and I was fearful that those feelings were foreshadowing what would come later. In a fatherly tone, he said, “You just need to think positively. Hashem [G-d] helps those who help themselv
es, but you need to be positive. Negativity will just eat away at you. So try to turn things around.” The pep talk didn’t help, but in his defense, he didn’t have the history of what I was doing to help myself and I didn’t have the energy to go into it again. Positive thinking couldn’t change the way my “gut” was feeling.
At each OB/GYN appointment during April and May, I continued to tell my doctor of my detailed visions of dying while giving birth. Julie couldn’t console me, but she suggested that I talk to an anesthesiologist. After all, an anesthesiologist would be the doctor keeping me alive during the operation. So I scheduled a phone consult.
On May 17, I called the obstetric anesthesiology department at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and Dr. Grace Lim answered. We talked about the delivery plan, and she walked me step by step through what would happen from delivery to recovery. I already knew what she was telling me. What I really wanted her to spell out for me was the emergency plan in a worst-case scenario. I started to divulge all of my premonitions. I told her that I had a feeling my placenta previa would turn into an accreta, even though the tests were negative for it, that I would hemorrhage and need blood transfusions for my rare O-negative blood type, and that there wouldn’t be enough blood to save me. I went on to tell her that I envisioned needing a hysterectomy and that I was afraid I was going to need general anesthesia. I added that I was sure Jacob would be fine, but that I would not make it through the delivery. I would die. It wasn’t just a fear. I had seen it.
Once again, I was scared that a doctor wouldn’t take me seriously. Later, Grace told me that my call caught her off guard. She had never had a conversation with a patient who was so clear and knowledgeable about what was going on and who was taking extra precautions by meeting with specialists just because she had a “feeling.” At that point, unbeknownst to me, Grace flagged my file and wrote up a “plan B” that included extra blood, extra monitors, and a crash cart. Although I didn’t know it at the time, “Grace from G-d”—as I’ve referred to her since—believed my premonitions. She was the only person who really heard me based on nothing but her own intuition. And it was her plan B that saved my life.
Chapter 4
AS THE DAYS WORE ON, I learned to live with the desperation. Actually, I wasn’t really living because I was constantly thinking about dying. I just tried to go through each day as normally as I could, but I also found myself trying to absorb every moment with my family.
I would sit and watch Adina sleep, remembering how precious she had looked when the nurse handed her to me the first time. I had been amazed at her tiny fingers and how the love Jonathan and I shared had created this amazing being. Then my heart would literally ache as tears ran down my face and I thought about leaving her. It was very painful. I felt so alone. It seemed no one could calm me and no one seemed to believe me. At least that’s what it felt like. I was in the middle of the tracks, the train was headed straight toward me, and there was no one to pull me out of the way.
The doctors had scheduled my C-section for June 6, and it was almost like I could see my death certificate next to Jacob’s birth certificate. A few weeks before I was to give birth, I turned to Facebook in a cry for help.
STEPHANIE ARNOLD (MAY 20, 2013, 9:40 P.M.): Any of my friends/family Blood Type O-? I need to have blood stored in two weeks—things are a bit hairy—I think I would rather have a transfusion with the blood I know than the blood I don’t know . . .
MICHELLE (MAY 20, 2013, 9:48 P.M.): shoot. A+ Sending you love and light Mama.
SHARE (MAY 20, 2013, 10:06 P.M.): Oh goodness! I hope you and the baby are ok. Thinking of you :)
JENNIFER (MAY 20, 2013, 10:16 P.M.): A- what’s going on???
MINDY (MAY 20, 2013, 10:22 P.M.): Crap. I’m A+. What’s going on?
ISABEL (MAY 21, 2013, 7:34 A.M.): I may be O. Can it be sent to you? Let me know.
STEPHANIE ARNOLD (MAY 21, 2013, 9:34 A.M.): Need O negative only . . . I’m a universal donor but can only receive O- . . . Yeah I think it can be sent . . . I will check w hospital when I am there today
ISABEL (MAY 21, 2013, 9:39 A.M.): I think I am O+
CAROLINA (MAY 21, 2013, 10:33 A.M.): I think my mom might be or my dad actually
DEIDRA (MAY 21, 2013, 7:06 P.M.): Joe is O. I will check whether he is - or +. Will be praying Steph.
Again, there was no medical evidence that I would need extra blood. The tests all said things were normal. But it felt like what the visions foretold was already happening in my body. I was feeling pain where doctors said there was no evidence of it. I had sweats although tests proved I wasn’t running a fever. I felt blood pouring out over my organs, but ultrasounds showed nothing. People were seriously worried I was falling off the deep end, but I never relented. I can’t explain why, but I knew these visions were not a figment of my imagination. They were foreshadowing what would happen in a couple of weeks, and I knew it was coming. I just didn’t know how to stop it.
I was getting nowhere with the testing, and being constantly dismissed by doctors was changing my emotions from sad to incredibly angry. I was angry with my doctors that they couldn’t find out what was wrong. I needed them to fix it, so I could stop spinning my wheels. I was frustrated that I could find nothing in my research to prove that what I was feeling was real. I needed proof, but was I really going to have to die in order to prove it? I was angry that I was wasting so much energy around this when I should have been enjoying my time with my family. And now it was too late. I wanted more time. I was looking forward to our future, but the future was here, now, and it was about to be over.
Because I believed with such certainty that I was going to die, I began to write good-bye letters to friends and family.
Dear Jonathan, You have made me the happiest woman in the world . . .
Dear Adina, Please know that Mommy will always be around you . . .
Dear Valentina, When your dad brought you into my life . . .
I stopped some of these letters midway because I felt that, if I left them unfinished, I would survive. Logical or not, that was how I dealt with the fear.
Interestingly, there was one letter I managed to complete. On April 28, I sent a letter to the embryologist who had helped create both of our children. I wanted her to know what an important role she had played in my life and how I missed our close friendship. We had lost touch over the past year, and I wanted her to know how great an impact she’d had on our lives.
. . . I wanted to write to you about how I felt in case I don’t make it through delivery if I do have to have a hysterectomy with all of the risks to an accreta. I am writing my letters to Jonathan, to Adina, to Valentina, and to our unborn son & to a few friends and family members as well. You are included in this because you are important to me and if I don’t make it, you know you were in my thoughts these last few weeks and the last year for that matter.
I started many times to try to write my father, but over and over again I couldn’t get past “Dear Papi.” I was stuck. I had so many things I wanted him to know. How he was the first love of my life. How he taught me to be a giving and caring person. How he instilled in me kindness and self-respect. I didn’t want to believe what was about to happen to me, and I most certainly didn’t want to leave him. When I thought about how he and my mom would feel when I died, my only relief was in thinking that my children would be their connection to me.
My father, Ralph, was always my go-to guy and my rock. He was there for me financially, emotionally, and spiritually. My dad is Cuban, and spirituality is a big part of that culture. His mother was very spiritual. My Grandma Ida was considered a bruja (witch), but in a good way. She would see things that would later come true. One family story that circulated throughout the years was that my grandma once was very ill and lay down for a nap. When she awoke, she told her husband, Abe, that her late mother had visited her in a dream and given her some medicine that she felt going down her throat. She was miraculously better immediately.
My dad, a ju
dge and a lawyer, was very analytical and pragmatic. He would tell me that what happened in his mother’s crazy stories might just be coincidence, or imagined. He said he didn’t believe in that stuff. Yet, when he thought he was all alone, I would catch him asking for his late mother’s help. He even talked to his brother-in-law, my Uncle Marvin, who was also deceased. My dad would ask them to watch over his family, give him guidance, and keep everyone safe from harm. I remember asking him why he prayed to them and not to G-d, and I will never forget what he said: “I don’t know if I can count on G-d, but I can always count on Grandma Ida and Uncle Marvin.”
Interesting words. I had a special connection to these family members as well. When I was 12 years old, my family was on a trip to Las Vegas to celebrate the New Year. Grandma Ida was back in Florida. Just after 10:00 P.M., a sharp pain hit my heart. All I could think about was my grandmother. An hour later the phone rang. Grandma had just died of a heart attack.
When I was 20 years old, my Uncle Marvin had gone with us to temple for Rosh Hashanah. Marvin and I were extremely close, probably because we were both nonconformists. I loved him so much, but interestingly, I had never told him. Marvin was Jewish, and he had married a woman who was not. His children were raised outside of the Jewish faith, and that always bothered him. That day I remember him telling me that he was sad that his children weren’t Jewish because he wouldn’t have anyone to say Kaddish (the prayer that mourners say for the dead) for him when he died, a weird thing to say when you are a healthy man who runs five miles a day.
I got a strange, overwhelming feeling when we hugged good-bye in the parking lot that day. And for the first time I looked him in the eye and said, “Uncle Marvin, I love you, and I promise I will say Kaddish for you whenever you need it.” He smiled and thanked me, and we parted ways, saying we would see each other for Yom Kippur services in 10 days. But I knew that was the last time I would see him. He died two days later, and I kept my promise.
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