7 months along,
except the pain in my right lower abdomen
was so intense I could hardly stand.

Mark had told me I had a legendary pain threshold,
but this was vicious and unrelenting.
I paced most of the night, never falling asleep.

In the morning I reluctantly went to the doctor,
and by 2 pm that same day
I was strapped to an operating table,
staring at the white lights in the ceiling,
counting backwards from a hundred,
watching the entire scenario blend into a surreal haze.

7 hours later I woke,
following an unusual appendectomy,
without my appendix,
but with our unborn daughter still in my womb.

A cough, a moan, a labor pain
and a violent spasm of shaking I couldn't control
jolted me back into reality.

They had sewn the long incision shut,
but it would only be a week
before I would return
with a serious infection to have it cut,
and left open until Paige was born.

The doctor smiled with sympathetic eyes,
staring at the swollen infected incision,
and sliced open the wound with no anesthesia.

It was that moment my pain threshold would be permanently redefined.

"There wasn't time, I'm sorry, I had to open it "

He said afterwards
as a nurse held up Mark who was queasy and slightly green.

The wound was wide and deep,
emphasized to a distorted proportion
by the maturity of the pregnancy.

Mark swooned as the doctor called out
for a home nurse to assist me.

I was dazed,
finding it astonishing
that it was possible
to leave a baby in the womb
after removing a burst appendix.

Vivid memories of standing in front of the mirror,
feeling like the Bride of Frankenstein
were burned into my mind.

How could I be alive
with an open wound so overwhelmingly grotesque?

A month later, our OB/GYN attending physician
held a stern conversation with Mark and I.

She was leaving that evening
to take the only family vacation
she had allowed herself in close to a year,
skiing in Italy, she would be gone only seven days.

I should not be worried, she told us.
After all, I was not due for a month and a half.

Paige was born the next day,
her humor and timing apparent
before she even took her first breath.

I went into heavy labor,
and in the small room teared up
as I waited for the epidural
that would not only ease the pain
but would obliterate the
fresh memory of the loss of my appendix.

I cried out, and screamed
taking deep breaths as Mark took my hand,
looked lovingly into my eyes and said

"It's ok honey, I understand, I've been there."

A hush fell over the room as the nurse slowly raised her brow with a skeptical eye.

"You've been there?!"

She queried.

"Oh THIS I've GOT to hear!"

The nurse turned to Mark and faced him directly in the eyes
waiting for what appeared to be a fantastic joke to be told.

Mark straightened up,
his eyes sincere,
his tone unfaltering.

"Yes."

He replied with a narrative tone.

"I have been there.
I was bitten by a fireant once."

There was a long and still silence,
and then the breathless laughter
by the nurse and a previously undetected
attendant that could only be defined as "guffaws".

The nurse leaned over my swollen belly,
her nose nearly brushing against Mark's.

Their profiles a parody that bordered on cartoon.

"Let me see if I understand this correctly "

She started with a condescending tone

"Because when I re-tell this story"

she paused for emphasis

"And I WILL."

She made a slow deliberate smile before continuing

"I want to be sure I heard
exactly what you said
when you compared your wife in labor,
with a fresh open appendectomy wound,
with absolutely no medication or anesthesia,
to a fireant bite."

"HEY! It left a manacle under my nail!"

It was a story destined to become a legend.

You can turn painful situations
around through laughter.

If you can find humor in anything
-- even poverty --
you can survive it.

Bill Cosby (1937-____)
US comedian, actor, author

Copyright © 2004 Maryanne & Mark F. Chisholm. All rights reserved.