What a Day

By now I'm sure you all know that my daughter, Karli, is pregnant with baby diva, Anna-Grace. Well when Karli's pregnant, we're all pregnant. Her pregnancies are difficult resulting in lots of ER trips, doctor's visits and other assorted happenings.

Since baby Josiah was born so early, at 28 weeks, her doctor referred her to a high-risk clinic just in case there are problems this time around. The appointments are long and frequent, but she is getting the best care possible.

The doctor decided that Karli needed injections weekly to try to ward off pre-term labor with our little Diva. Today her father and I had to go and learn to give her the injections. No problem, you do what you have to do.

We get to the office and I don't know what Jeff had for lunch this afternoon but he was just like one of the kids. He wanted whatever Karli was having done. He asked the nurse to weigh him, he wanted his blood pressure checked, I'm surprised that he didn't also ask to have HIS urine tested when they did Karli's. The medical assistant kept her composure while dealing with this 56 yr old kindergartener. She finally escaped the room and left us alone while we waited for the nurse to train us how to give injections.

Jeff thought it would be appropriate to tell Karli about his experience giving injections in the 70's and 80's when he was in competitive weightlifting and doing steroids. I guess he thought it would be comforting to his daughter to hear her father talk about stabbing the needle in his friends back sides, how thick the steroids were, and the knots that were left memorializing the shots. With each of his words Karli's eyes grew wider and she began to grow more pale. The reality was sinking in quickley, this mad man was going to stick a sharp needle in her body every week for 20 more weeks.

When the nurse finally came in, Karli asked if she could just be put on bed rest and skip the shots. No such luck. The nurse went over all the instructions and had us go through a few dry runs practicing on a glove stuffed with paper. All of this just increased Karli's anxiety to the point that I thought she would pass out and fall off of the table.

Then the time came. No more practice. Jeff was chosen to give the first shot of the series. The nurse calmly kept reminding him what to and not to do.

Jeff was ready. He was going to do it. He drew his arm back like he was going to be throwing a dart in a pub and just as quickly plunged the needle deep into my daughter's hip. She didn't move. Her eyes were huge, but she was breathing. Jeff slowly pushed the hormone into her muscle. Since the medication is oil based, it seemed to take forever for him to empty the syringe. Finally it was over and he jerked the needle out of her bottom. She took in a long breath and slowly sat up, staring at her dad.



The nurse said he did very well. I thought it looked more like he was gigging a frog than helping our daughter. But he did it. Next week, it's my turn.