Christmasophobia

Well, Christmas is coming and it's hard to ignore it any longer. My husband and I have an odd relationship with this holiday.

It started with the year my husband (then boyfriend) and I nearly broke up just beforehand but decided to visit my husband's family together anyway. It really couldn't have been more awkward at first, but somehow during that trip all turned out well.

A few years later we went to visit my husband's grandmother, who, it turned out, had a nasty stomach flu. We ended up having to take her to the hospital for fluids. The rural Georgia ER had been decorated a bit for the holiday, which only made the scene more sad. The tree was a fake, the kind that looks like a giant green toilet brush stood up in the corner and decorated in gaudy lights like a janitorial Eliza Doolittle. A girl fight broke out in the waiting area around 10PM. Jonah and I ate dinner at the Waffle House. If you aren't familiar with this establishment, it's a chain of very greasy and very smoky diners that make great waffles and terrible coffee. We laughed until tears ran down our faces.

A year later we spent Christmas with my family. My mother brought a surprise gift - another flu. She ended up in the emergency room too on Christmas. This ER is an hour's drive away. I caught the same flu and woke up a few days later with a fever of 103. Jonah only had a fever of 100, so he drove us back to Boston (10 hours) where we spent the next week on our futon watching movies and vomiting.

A few years after that my brother and sister-in-law were visiting us for the holiday and I was watching my boss' dog (how do you say no?). By this time the emergency room on Christmas was a joke we tossed around. Jonah made wonderful cornish game hens for dinner. They cook in a very hot oven (500 degrees) for this particular recipe. The heat gives them a very crispy, brown finish. He left the handle of the pot pointing out into the room and I compulsively grabbed it to turn it in. 3rd degree burns on my palm. First I went into shock. Then I passed out. I woke up to a circle of concerned faces peering down at me and my brother-in-law shouting over and over "Face is pale, raise the tail! Face is pale, raise the tail!..." Apparently this is a Boy Scout thing to remind one what to do in case of a loss of consciousness (if the face is pale, you raise the feet - I know tail rhymes but I wonder how often someone has woken up to find their bottom hoisted in the air and ever-after wondered what happened in those lost moments - luckily for me, my feet were elevated when I awoke). Another Christmas in the ER. This time I got oxycodone, which brought back a lot of my holiday cheer. I'm not sure what the rest of them did, but I had a lovely slow-motion dinner and wandered off to bed. Later, my boss's dog would have anal sac problems and rub his bum all over our floors, spreading whatever is in anal sacs around the house. My sister-in-law (a former vet tech), had to express the sacs (don't ask) while she fought a migraine.

Also, that year we had first started trying to get pregnant. In fact, I was pregnant when I burned my hand. I'd find out soon thereafter and have a miscarriage on New Year's Eve. My husband and I are RH incompatible so guess where I spent much of New Year's Eve? They had run out of Rhogam at my doctors office, but weren't telling me. Directly. I could hear them in the stock room next door saying "She needs Rhogam! I thought there was some in here! Where could we get Rhogam at this time on New Years Eve?" They did eventually find some and I got a giant shot in the rear and was sent on my way.

The next year I had just delivered my daughter in early November but was continuing to have bleeding right through Christmas. Finally the midwife ordered an ultrasound, which found retained placenta (8 weeks post partum) and I was admitted to surgery at about 10PM the night before we had an early morning coast-to-coast flight to introduce my daughter to the family. I woke up from anesthesia with all the nurses and doctors laughing. Apparently I was tellling jokes in my semi-conscious state - and I was killing.

Since then we've had a good run of medically unremarkable Christmas holidays and I hope to count this next one among them, but you can see how this particular year would give me pause. We are staying home this year obviously, and my parents will be here to celebrate with us. The hospital is just 2 miles from my house.

The stats for today:
days until I am 24 weeks pregnant: 15
days until I am 28 weeks pregnant: 43