The May issue of babytalk magazine has an article titled "Could you be forced to get a c-section?" As I read the article, I found myself becoming more and more distressed, restraining myself from alarming my husband and waking my sleeping daughter by yelling at the magazine.
I mean, really, wasn't this shit already settled?
In 1987, my cousin Angie died. I'd say she died of the cancer that had caused chest pains one day, then spread like wildfire before she died a week later, but that wouldn't be the whole truth. Part of the reason for her death is that she was forced to have a c-section.
This wasn't Angie's first brush with cancer, although it wasn't the same type that resulted in the loss of her left leg and part of her hip several years prior. She was a newlywed, pregnant with their first child, a high-risk pregnancy. When she entered the hospital, it was still too early to deliver. The fetus was not yet viable.
I can't write this. I looked online... here's a link: http://advocatesforpregnantwomen.org/articles/angela.htm.
The story as told there is pretty thorough. One inaccuracy I saw was when it said that "Angela was lucid and able to communicate when... one of her obstetricians told her about the court's decision." Angie was kept in a drug-induced coma due to the pain she was in. To make her "lucid and able to communicate," the drugs were stopped, causing Angie intense pain. I'm sure my uncle and aunt would also think that saying the baby died within a couple hours of birth is a stretch. They held her. They didn't believe she ever lived, that her first breath collapsed her unyet formed lungs. I don't remember seeing that her own doctors refused to perform the surgery, that another team had to be brought in.
So many "if only's." If only the hospital administration had allowed the doctors to make the medical decisions. If only the patient's wishes were followed... and her husband's, and her parents' and her doctors'. If only Angie could have been kept alive a little longer, long enough for the baby to develop, to be able to survive on her own. We knew that Angie wasn't going to make it. She knew she wasn't going to live. The cancer spread so quickly, from her lungs to several other organs.
The babytalk article did mention Angie, briefly near the end. It didn't do her justice. It didn't bring her story to life and drive it into the hearts of the readers. It didn't help people to understand the hell that the hospital put my family through that week.
One important wish that Angie had was granted the night she died. She didn't want to die at nighttime, in the dark. I was across town with my brother and a friend and remember looking at the clock in her car, wondering out loud how Angie was. I found out later it was that exact moment that she died. The sun had set a minute later.
I remember my parents coming home from the hospital one night, early in this horrendous week. There had been talk about the baby, the baby without Angie. My parents told us that they had offered to take her. Her parents couldn't. Her husband... let's not go there.
The baby's name was Lindsey. She was buried in Angie's arms.
