I have a complicated sister-in-law.
She has been complicated for a long time, but the level of complicated increased exponentially last summer, when she found herself pregnant, single, and unemployed. The baby's due in a little over 3 weeks.
Her parents persuaded her to leave the West Coast, where she was pretty much alone, and stay with them instead. There's been a lot of drama this week surrounding her attempts to get on a train to the Midwest, and it has made me keenly aware of my shortcomings as a Christian.
I was trying to tamp down my unwelcoming feelings when it looked like she would be here for Christmas. "Excuse me?" I said to myself. "What kind of Christian would even contemplate turning away a pregnant woman on Christmas??" I will spare you the blow-by-blow on her changing travel plans and my roiling inner landscape; suffice it to say that it's been frustrating.
She was due in today. Her parents called to check on her and she said she was very sick. Headache. So congested she couldn't breathe. Very swollen hands and feet. Felt so bad she couldn't walk. They should find her a wheelchair for when she got off the train. I was not filled with compassion when I heard this litany of complaints. I thought, "Oh, honestly."
Not long afterward, I took three of my boys ice-skating with their cousin, my other SIL and her husband, that SIL's best friend, and the friend's daughter. On the drive to the ice rink the litany of woe rearranged itself in my brain: Headache. Very swollen. Felt so bad she couldn't walk. Older mom. First pregnancy. What's it spell? Pre-eclampsia. Louder? Pre-eclampsia.
Just typing that brings back the frisson of horror I felt in the van. Here I had been rolling my eyes inwardly at what I thought was more drama. What if she was seriously sick? I know a woman who had fulminant pre-eclampsia, who went from feeling fine to death's door in no time flat. I know many other women who have had a slower-developing form of pre-eclampsia, and another tendril of fear snaked around my heart when I remembered my MIL saying that she had missed her last few prenatal appointments.
We got to the skating rink and I talked it over with my other SIL and her friend. We tried to call Anne. No answer. We texted her, saying, "Please respond -- we are very concerned about you." Nothing. The friend tried to contact her OB's office for advice. Nobody picked up. We were all terribly worried.
I called my MIL, who had been planning to take Anne straight home for a nap. I said, "I'm worried about pre-eclampsia. If she still has a headache when she gets off the train, she should go immediately and get checked out. This can be really serious. It can even be fatal. In fact, we should ask if she's been having vision changes, because if that's the case maybe she should get off the train wherever she is and go to the hospital instead of staying where there's no medical care." I told her that she should call someone who knew more than I did to find out what questions to ask, and we talked about some possibilities.
She hung up the phone and said, "Anne's going to die."
My husband was with her and did his best to get her calmed down. After talking to the local L&D unit, they agreed to pick her up at the train station in town as planned. They took her straight to L&D, where the staff immediately checked her blood pressure and her urine and determined that it wasn't pre-eclampsia. They wanted her to wait until a doctor could check her out, which took some time once it was established that she wasn't an obstetric emergency. There was further drama; there was tearing off of fetal monitor belts.
She came home a few hours later, highly displeased with my meddling. "They didn't do anything," she said scornfully. And I stepped out of the kitchen and into a quiet corner, where I started to cry. My MIL and my other SIL spotted me, though, and were very kind -- so kind. My husband, who hates unnecessary fuss, also tells me that he thinks my reaction was reasonable. But I am still feeling sad and weighed down.
I have expended a lot of emotional energy on Anne over the past week: fretting and trying not to fret, chewing on her past visits and trying to let go of those old frustrations, praying for grace and trying to muster more compassion, mentally revising plans and re-revising them when she missed another train. And then there was today, when we didn't know for a while if she wasn't answering the phone because she was busy having an eclamptic seizure in her sleeper compartment. I've been hoping that I could show the love of Christ to her (or hey -- at least not provide further evidence to support her contention that Catholics are hypocrites), and instead I just made her mad.
So I am thinking about Christmas trees. My husband and I are real Christmas tree people, even though they shed needles and need watering and poke small children who get too close. Every year when I see the needles on the floor I tell myself, "Life is messy." You can have a tree that doesn't shed or need watering or poke small children, but it won't be real. And there's much to be said for real.
In the same way, I think, love is messy. You could live a life, maybe, where you never had to deal with prickly people and the stuff they strew across your life, but God calls us to love the prickly. On the long drive home I was trying to pray through my frustrations. In response I felt a wordless surge of loving tenderness from the Lord -- a momentary assurance that I didn't need to berate myself for being wrong about Anne's health. I hope she can find that same tenderness, somehow. I'd appreciate your prayers for her and her baby.
I'd have worried about pre-eclampsia too. That was my first thought when you mentioned the headache, swelling, can't walk. I was a month premature due to hypertension. Definitely better to err on the side of caution even if it does mean getting her mad. I'll be praying for Anne and the baby.
I love the Christmas tree metaphor.
Posted by: Melanie B | December 28, 2011 at 01:42 PM
{{{{hugs}}}}
Posted by: Tracy | December 28, 2011 at 02:03 PM
Actually when you described those symptoms I thought first of pre-eclampsia. Good for you looking out for her.
Funny about the Christmas tree - I feel the same way about real trees and living the good messy life. My 4 year old, however, even messed up this lovely analogy by being disturbed and puzzled as to why we would sanction the cutting down of a perfectly healthy and rooted tree! He considers our lovely fresh tree a corpse! Life is messy, huh? I don't know if we are on our way to an artificial tree or whether he'll just "get over it," which makes me sad too! He's just like that - he finds it very unnerving that we eat meat. . . Merry Christmas to you and yours. I love to read what you have to say.
Posted by: Rosemary | December 28, 2011 at 04:55 PM
This is the good outcome, though. Your SIL being angry at you for interfering when it wasn't necessary is the good outcome. Truly: you didn't actually want to be right.
I will keep all of you in my prayers, especially your SIL and her baby. I'm relieved that they are both OK and safely with their family.
Posted by: Jody | December 29, 2011 at 10:04 AM
Yes, my first thought was pre-eclampsia too. I lost a baby brother and very nearly thisclose my mother too to pre-eclampsia. It is **always** worth erring on the side of getting checked out asap -- even with messy people who will be annoyed with us for "interfering". You did the right thing. I'm sorry you've had this stress. Messy family ... Oiy vey, what to do? Pray and hold it all up to God.
Posted by: Ellie | December 29, 2011 at 10:22 AM
Oh so hard. It was just responsible of you to be concerned about pre eclampsia, though. Absolutely.
Difficult people are so...difficult, the way they poke us in our tender places.
Posted by: Kira | December 29, 2011 at 11:10 AM
God bless you, Jamie.
Posted by: MrsDarwin | December 29, 2011 at 01:02 PM
Prayers for her are coming. I'm with Jody: this (difficult as it is) was the good outcome. I've been in situations that ran in a similar track: the good outcome involved the person who "interfered" taking a lot of flack for it...but being able to sleep that night.
If it makes you feel any better, my IMMEDIATE thought on seeing the words "headache" and "swollen" in the same sentence was pre-eclampsia. I'm glad to hear it wasn't. (Been there, done that, watched friends do it, etc.) You ABSOLUTELY did the right thing. As I once said to a doctor when I went in knowing it probably WASN'T the Big Bad Thing, but still needing to get it checked...I was always taught there were some things you didn't ignore, no matter how unlikely they seemed, no matter how awkward or silly you felt. The doctor nodded and said, "That's exactly right."
Posted by: Kristin | December 29, 2011 at 03:17 PM
Like a lot of others, I thought "pre-eclampsia" too when you started mentioning symptoms. I'm quite sure you did the right thing, and I admire you for doing it, even with the flak you're taking. I hope your Christmas and the days that have followed have been happy and peaceful.
Posted by: Tall Kate | December 30, 2011 at 11:14 AM
Rosemary, Katherine of Evlogia had a really pretty blog post this past week about Christmas trees and how the Christmas tree is a symbol for the Tree of Life, which is to say the cross. Also she pointed out that it is fitting that the tree is cut down before it's prime and how it's untimely death speaks of the cross and is fitting in a commemoration of a baby who was born to die. Don't know if that argument would persuade your son; but your comment made me think of it anyway.
Posted by: Melanie B | December 30, 2011 at 11:38 PM