love – Patience – Tolerance

5. A hard smack in the face

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The view over stokes croft from the ward ,I would visit my Nan here a lot as a child. Was bizarre being back decades later with a wife pregnant with triplets

 

Our first big scan was at st Michael’s in Bristol. It was on a specialist unit that dealt with high risk multiple pregnancies. From what we had read the chance of having mono twins survive was Around 75 percent. There is a big risk of twin to twin transfusion as they share a placenta , basically the stronger one will take the nutrients from the weaker one and kill it off.  We felt prepared for our consultation with the information we had.

Our specialist consultant Dr D was well spoken, up front and had no interest in sugar-coating our situation. He hit us hard with the facts. He also explained that our triplet pregnancy was twice the high risk because of the mono twins. He told us it was rare to see our situation and proceeded to give us every possible ,real outcome. From brain damage which is high in mono twins, there was a high risk one or all of them would be handicapped, that there was a risk of blood infection that could kill them all and permanently damage Stacey. It was hard to hear. I piped up to say that at least at that point all was okay. He shot me straight down with,  “that means nothing”! . The risks seemed endless.

It was his job to give us the truth. He told us the safest possible outcome was to reduce the twins and give the singleton a chance. He gave us the weekend to decide. If we wanted to go ahead with the reduction he would get us into a London hospital the following week to have the procedure done.

We told him we were going to give them all a chance. He left us his personal number. “If I don’t hear from you Monday il see you at the next scan”.

He knocked the wind out of both of us with the truth of our situation. All the waves of fear hit again. I battened down the hatches for a tough weekend.

It seems more often than not the truth is always tough to hear.We would eventually have a mutual respect with him. I liked him for his honesty. We always knew where we stood.

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