Chapter 1
Game Changer

 

       2:47 am. A time that will always be in my mind until the day that I pass. My sister had just woken me up because my 8 month old twins were awake and were doing their normal 2 am cries as if to say, "I'm hungry!" Their cries had pierced my sister Shyaen's ears. Shyaen was a single woman with no kids yet of her own. She was living in a new apartment that was pristine. It was very easy to tell that children had not yet touched the carpet, much less the walls. She was not used to the crying of a baby and at the slightest rustling of the babies in their crib, would catch her attention. The boys were sleeping in the pack-n-play that was at the head of the bed that Shyaen and Sharla was supposed to be sleeping in. As the boys continued their desperate cries for a bottle Shyaen made her way to her feet and stumbled out of the room to the livingroom where I was asleep on the couch. 
   
     "The boys are crying and sharla is not getting up," Shyaen belted from across the room. I had been a light sleeper, so it didn’t take much to wake me.
 
     I knew that Sharla had become a pretty hard sleeper over the years and the boy’s cries sometimes didn't stand a chance of waking her. I had been sleeping in the living room on my sister's couch and the 3 girls were on a blow up mattress that was pushed up against that couch as if to make one really large bed. As I started to roll out of bed to go and make the bottles as I did on most nights, my sister in her zombie like state shuffled back into her room. As she entered and the boys recognized her presence, silence filled the room. I figured that my sister just crawled back into bed and fell back asleep. Then with no warning my sister came running out of her room with her hand cupped over her mouth. She looked like she had just seen the most terrifying thing ever. For some reason I was now wide awake and she had my full attention. I felt a chill go through my body and thought maybe someone was breaking into the apartment.  I could only wish that would have been the case because what happened next were those words that come out of her mouth. These words have been burned into my mind for the rest of my life and still give me nightmares to this day.
 
    "Oh my God, she is foaming at the mouth!"
   
        I cannot begin to even tell the thoughts that ran through my mind in that moment, a sort of fear in which I could not have never of comprehended and hoped never would ever have to face again for as long as I lived. Without any thought at all I ran into that room as fast as my feet would allow. I had no idea what i was about to face. A prayer very quickly rand through my mind just praying that she was still breathing. There she was, my wife lying face down on the ground with her laptop in front of her. Her hands were extended in front of her as she had been praising God. She was literally face down and from the side view I could not even see her nose.

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      The night before when I went to bed she had told me that she was still wide awake and was just going to go lie on her stomach on the floor and play on her computer. It was one of her most favorite night time activities to do and was very common of her to do this since she had always been a night owl not being able to rest enough to fall asleep when I normally did. She had very bad sleep insomnia and had had it ever since her days in the Army. Now as I ran in the room I can see her exactly where she had said she would be. Only this time something just looked different, she looked lifeless. As if no one inhabited her shell of a body. In a quick panic I started to roll her shoulder up just praying fervently that she would at least still be breathing. At the same time i was so terrified at what i might witness. The constant thought clouded my brain that she was gone. That my wife had just passed away. It was not a thought that any person should ever have to bear at such a young age with their spouse. To see her face the way it looked was not any way any movie had ever portrayed. It was much worst. I was not prepared to see what I saw. Her face was already blue and her face was puffed up. Her nose was squished in as if she had been on it for hours. She looked nothing like my wife. It felt as if someone was playing a sick joke and had replaced her body with a mannequin. But only if that was the case. It was not.

     I screamed out her name as loud as I could, “Sharla!!!" My breath moved faster than the sound that came out of my mouth and almost made a screeching sound.  Without giving it much thought I grabbed her shoulder and rolled her as fast as I could to her back, what I saw was a lifeless body flop over. Her hand flew over and hit the other side of the floor. There was absolutely no life in those arms. That was something that was impossible for anyone to ever pretend. It was then at that moment I knew that I was going to have to really work at saving her. Up to this point I kept trying to tell myself that I was going to save her. When I saw that, that was the first time that the thought of her possibly not coming back could be a reality. My heart beat faster than it ever had before. Loneliness and panic set in. The fear was so intense that I saw absolutely nothing around me but my wife. I could not hear the cries of my boys nor the voice of my sister and she desperately searched for her phone.  It was not as if she was just in a coma and I could wait for someone with better training than me to save her. It was in my hands and was time to act now and hastly or pay the ultimate price of losing her forever on this planet. I knew I had a  responsibility to bring her back. If I couldn't then I would have to face 5 little ones and find a way to tell them that Mommy was never coming back. Courage entered my body and for a brief moment confidence entered my tattered soul. I felt as if I was going to be able to do this. There was still a little bit of hope. As quick as I could, I started to perform CPR on her and screamed out to my sister to call 911. Now was about the first time I could hear my sister talking to someone over the phone. She was shouting steps to follow. But I was in my own world and knew that i was CPR trained to do this.

      The panic had fully set in and as I continued on I constantly prayed to the same God who took her, to give her back. I cried desperately for her to not be taken from me. As I did chest compressions I cried out loud as loud as I could, "Please Lord, don't take my wife!" As the air filled her lungs I could hear the gurgles inside of her. She had so much fluid in her lungs. A sudden impending doom engulfed my whole body. I pushed on and on, praying to just hear that cough. I had to be able to do this, I just did. There had to be a possibility. five minutes passed and still nothing. 30 compressions, two rescue breaths. Then 30 more, and thirty after that. I knew that by now my hands must be numb, but with what I was facing, and fear that filled every part of me, I couldn't feel it. I felt as if I had not achieved anything, that nothing was being achieved and she was in the exact same state she was in when I found her. Ultimately I knew she was gone. I knew I didn't stand a chance to save her. But I had to push on; I had to keep going until there was absolutely no hope. I kept giving chest compressions as my tears flowed down my cheek.

     Two years ago I sat through a CPR class and practiced as much as I could to really know what i was doing. I knew one day I might need to do this at the place I worked. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think it would be to my own wife, and have it not work. In all of my best efforts, I could not revive her. In one moment I was so mad I screamed at her and slapped her. I yelled, “Wake up Sharla! Wake up! Don’t you do this! Don’t you leave us!"  When I realized that this wasn't working I slammed my fists on the ground. I could hardly get any air in as I cried and screamed. Helplessness had hit me. I just didn’t know what to do anymore. I felt like I needed to cry as loud as I could and plead to the lord, but I also felt like I needed to be strong and continue on.

      I have always been a faithful man and have served God. But here I was being punished the worst way I possibly could. I needed someone stronger than me to take over. My sister had stood there is shock on the phone with the police dispatch. She continued screaming instructions at me, but all I could hear was my voice in my head. It kept telling me I could do it, but then would hear that she was gone. My world had literally shrunk to the size of that room and knew if she didn’t start breathing soon, we would be separated in this life indefinitely. Back when I was in a biology class I had remembered that if the human brain went a certain amount of time without oxygen then even if she had been revived, she would have either been a vegetable, or just never the same again, but that didn’t matter to me at the time. I just wanted to see her lungs rise on their own. Even if she would have never talked again, just to see life in her or to see her eyes move. That would have been sufficient to me. I just didn’t want her to be gone forever. That wasn’t part of our plan. That wasn't something I was ready to accept. I had had no idea how long ago she had stopped breathing. Maybe too much time had passed and she was completely gone.

         When the paramedics finally arrived I felt a sort of relief, I honestly had felt they would save her. My thoughts now were, "They have all the proper tools to bring her back. They can do it. They are going to perform a miracle right now." As I left the room, all I could say to them was, “please save me wife; please bring her back to me.” The look on one of the officers face haunted me because it was a look of "it's too late, she's gone." I still felt a little hope, I had too. I had to step outside and pace the walkway. I jumped on my phone. I needed to talk to someone. So I called her Brother Danny. I wanted so badly to tell him that she was gone but we saved her, that we successfully brought her back and that it was only a small scare. The only words that I could say were, “Danny she’s gone. You sister died tonight.” I could imagine hearing that at 3 in the morning would not ever be a reality, that it was literally just a bad dream, but when all I could do was cry after that without the delivery of further explanation, that is when reality must have kicked in. I kept hearing him say over and over, “Michael, what?? What happened Michael? Please talk to me. What happened?” I could hear the tears eminent through his words. I couldn’t offer any explanation; I just needed a familiar face there with me.

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        “Michael, I’m on my way!” I think he had realized that I was not going to be able to talk anymore.

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      My soul felt as if it was trapped and there was no solace. I felt like i was in a room that was slowly imposing and there were no exits. i had to watch my world slowly collapse on me. The panic in this moment was so intense that there was nothing I could do to even relieve it. That was the first moment that i looked off the ledge of that 3rd story walkway and thought the only way to kill the pain was to jump. But I didn't. Something strong filled me and gave me courage to make another call. I thought if I made another phone call, I would start to feel a little comfort, but each one brought on different challenges. There was no difference in trying to talk to my parents to her best friend. They all offered up challenges of their own. I was on a sinking ship and knew the only way out of it was to go down with it and hope I could swim fast enough before being sucked down by the vortex of rushing water.
        Not more than 45 minutes later I turned around and saw one of the officers exit the apartment. He saw me and started to approach me as he looked at his feet as he walked. It appeared as if he was the one who drew the short straw in having the deliver the news to me. I already knew it wasn’t good news. He didn’t even have the ability to offer up words to me out of fear of himself losing it and tearing up, so he just shook his head and embraced me. His boby language confirmed my worst nightmare. My wife was gone, never to return to me. The wife who I had kissed and cuddled just hours before was no more. The wife whom I had promised to spend the rest of my mortal life with would have to take a rain check. The mother of all five of our babies could no longer raise them. I would no longer hear, “I love you’s” leave her mouth. Then with tears rolling down my cheek, I had to come to the reality, this was really happening. My whole world had just been destroyed by what felt like the big Armageddon. From this day forward I would be living a different life. Through the midst of all of these thoughts,  one thought came pierced my being, "what now?"

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2

We're Expecting





     “I think I want to have one more baby.”

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       Sharla just said that out of nowhere. It caught me by total surprise due to the fact that we already had three children all under the age of 4. I was in Psych Tech School which already demanded up to 70 hours a week of my time. Having to take a new test almost every week that if failed would result in failing the course and kicked out of the program. It was a scare tactic that my teacher had used on all of us and to tell you the truth. It was working. Every week was filled with the stress of a new subject that I really had no clue about. I had been spending the last couple months in class bored out of my mind and would spend most of the day taking gum wrappers and peeling the metallic part of it off and applying it to some surface. If you rubbed it the right way, it would apply itself to the surface. I liked to apply it to my binder, fashioning some kind of artist design. I always had problems focusing and it was starting to show as my grades were slowly starting to slip. It was all to familiar to my high school days when all I wanted to do was chase girls and didn't care at all about my grades. This time had to be different though because this involved my future career. If I didn't pass, there would be no way to support a family. But that wasn't as much my problem at the moment. I was focused on what Sharla had just said.

     How could we possibly bring another little one into our already pretty big family considering while I was in school, I was only making just enough money to barely pay the bills? Also a couple months ago she had lost a baby to miscarriage and that in itself had destroyed a part of her that and I had literally barely just got her back emotionally. Now she wanted to have another one? It was very easy for me to play the senario in my head over and over that day when we went in to get a standard ultrasound. I had seen so many of them over the years and every time without a doubt Sharla always had concerns that something might be wrong with the baby if she didn't see it moving right away. At first i was very loving in comforting her, but as the years had worn on and we had already had a couple little ones, my sympathy had lessened and I would spend the initial moments before the ultrasound giving her a pep talk that everything was going to be okay. Now here we had found ourselves on that day looking at a motionless ultrasound. I sat there silently praying that there would be some sort of movement. The Doctor performing the Ultrasound wasn't saying anything. I just kept wanting him to say something, anything. But the baby was gone and even though Sharla was really strong that day and did not shed a tear as she went into surgery to have the baby surgically removed, the aftermath was unbearable and spent the following couple of months of depression. She found a way to somehow make it her fault when clearly it wasn't. But she did recover and was doing so much better. Now she wanted to put another baby in that possible hostile enviorment again.

   The one thing about Sharla is she was a woman of persuadence. If she wanted something bad enough, she usually got it. I once watched her tell a man who looked like he was straight out of a violent gang movie to put out his cigarette as she passed him with her baby in arm. Not only did this man put out his cancer stick, but he apologized to her and said it would never happen again. She had balls and knew how to use them. I knew that no matter how hard I would try to convince her that it was not a good idea to bring another little one into this world, it did not matter. She was a woman of faith and once she read the scripture in the Bible, “To multiply and replenish the Earth,” she knew that was her calling. It did not matter if I had no job, or we couldn’t afford it, or even if I would not be around to help her care for all four children. If it was her calling, then obey she would.

   Reluctantly she won that debate and I just kept telling myself that it would take months to get pregnant after a miscarriage and that maybe she might come to her senses and not want to get pregnant right now. Alas it wasn’t to long after that she was pregnant. With every pregnancy she would say the same to me, “Let’s just start trying now. It could be months before I actually get pregnant.” Of course we would nail it pretty much first shot every time. Some might see that as a talent, not so much how I felt about it. When I would tell her that historically she got pregnant the first time every time, she would be witty and quick with her response by saying, “Well I have heard that the next time of trying to get pregnant that it can be harder.” That was definitely not ever the case. She was now about to find out soon enough that not only was she pregnant, but pregnant with twins!

   My world took a different turn the day we found out. Twins didn’t run on either side of our family, so you can imagine my surprise. We had just arrived to our hotel in Anaheim the night before planning for our big trip to Disneyland. It was 10 am and the girls awaited eagerly in their princess dresses. Natalie was dressed as Cinderella, Delaney as Belle, and Kherrington as Snow White. As soon as the gates opened, I pushed our huge double stroller with two kids in it and the park rented stroller Sharla pushed with another. The girls had just had their phone number tattooed on their arms with a big black permanent marker. You would be amazed at how many people would stop us to tell us what a good idea it was. Along with the phone number was their last name. Having worked in a prison type setting before, I had learned that you never write the first name of the child on their arm or backpack. It makes them easy prey to bad people by snatching them and no one would know better because they knew the child’s first name. So no one would know nonetheless.

   As we entered the park we made a b line for “Small World,” we had been to the theme park so much already that year and that was the kids most favorite ride and the one they always wanted to ride first, so we did. The day was going well until about noon time. Sharla started having a lot of abdominal pain and was fearful that she might be having another miscarriage. My heart just sunk. We did not want to chance it, so to the kids dismay, we decided to make the 180 mile trip back home to the hospital where all the other girls had been born to have an ultrasound done to make sure our fear was not going to be another reality.

   We seemed to make it back in what seemed record time and decided to take Sharla straight there. Since the kids were right in the middle of what should have been nap time, I decided to drop Sharla off at the hospital, get her admitted and then take the kid’s home for some much needed relaxation. Sharla had been at the hospital not much more than an hour when I got the call. “It’s Twins,” she said immediately. I just laughed. But she wasn’t laughing back. I stated in shock, “Are you serious? We’re having twins??” Now she was laughing and confirmed that what had been said had complete truth.

    I know that she could just imagine how my face looked when it finally hit me. I had already been told by so many people that all of my children were so young and so close in age as if I had no idea. At times I just wanted to say to them, “Wow I never realized just how close in age they really are, that’s so interesting.” But I am a good man and would never want to be rude. Just a simple smile and nod would do.

   After the shock finally wore off, the thought clouded my mind, “Wow! We’re going to have five children all under the age of four when the twins are born. I was still in Psychiatric Technician School and had a job that was barely supporting us as it was. Later on I would ask Sharla if she had thought about that too. She nodded and simply said, “Have faith.”  So I did.

    As the months passed, and her little belly started to expand, I started to realize that it was expanding a lot further than it ever had before with past pregnancies. This was going to be quite a pregnancy. She had done the past few will such ease. This time though I could already start to see the pain and distress on her face. Instantly challenges started to arise and my fear that once was a reality was coming back to my mind. A year earlier when she had that miscarriage, The doctor had told Sharla a few weeks afterwards that because of the complications associated with the miscarriage, she should not get pregnant for a year. If she should have a baby before that year is up or even get pregnant in that time and don’t give yourself time to heal, there is a possibility it could be fatal. In fact she made it seem more like it would be fatal, .at least in my mind. Those words for months afterwards echoed throughout my brain, “could be fatal.” To me that meant if she got pregnant, then she would die. I didn’t hear the word “possibly.” Of course all Sharla heard in all of that was “blah blah blah it will be fine, blah blah blah have faith.” So you can imagine when she told me that she wanted to get pregnant, I ran to the calendar and quickly started counting how many days it had been. I noticed that if she were to get pregnant that day, by the time she had the baby, it would have been only 10 months 13 days.

“Not enough time Love, the doctor said one year,” was my reply. Again she heard, “have faith.” I tried so desperately to hold her off for as long as possible and sometimes it would even turn into arguments. Don’t get me wrong, I had enormous amounts of faith. I just didn’t like the thought of my wife playing Russian roulette with a gun that had five bullets in it. I started making up excuses like, “I am still in Psych Tech School honey, if for some reason something happened and you needed help, I would not be available to help.” Or “I have so much homework to do and want to focus fully on you when you are pregnant. Why not let me graduate first, and then we can start trying.” I lost that battle. 

As I had mentioned a bit ago, I knew that many challenges were about to present themselves with this pregnancy. At first they were small. We made a few visits to the hospital for little things. But it wasn’t till around 20 weeks of being pregnant that I received a phone call that was a game changer in the difficulty.

I had been having a great day at clinical and was getting ready to come home. I knew that Sharla had had a doctor’s appointment about an hour ago, but hadn’t heard from her of what the doctor had said. They were just doing her bi-weekly ultrasound. The doctor had thought it was for the best to do them bi-weekly due to the fact of her past. I turned my phone on as I left for home expecting to get at least one text message from her telling me everything went fine and she was now at home. My phone suddenly lit up like the Rockefeller Christmas tree in New York being turned on for the first time. Three voicemails and six text messages…all from her.

   My heart started to pound uncontrollably as I thought the worst. “Was she having another miscarriage? Was something wrong with the baby?” I battled in my mind of what to do first. Read the text messages? Or listen to the voicemails? I figured the voicemails took too long, so I read the messages. My heart about fell into my stomach when I read the first message. “I am in the hospital, call me ASAP.” That was all I needed to read. I needed to call her right then and there. I felt like an Amazonian seeing a phone for the first time. My hands were moving faster than my brain and almost couldn’t figure out how to use the phone to call her back. My nerves were getting the best of me. With all the apps on my phone, I couldn’t figure out where the stupid one was to dial the phone. I had to breathe for a second, and then give it another shot.

It only took one ring on the phone for her to pick up. I knew she was eagerly awaiting for my call.

“Hey Honey, the doctor is in the room. Can I call you right back?”

   Can I call her back?!? Was she kidding me right now?? When the two phrases, “I am in the hospital,” and, “call me ASAP,” are in the same sentence, there will be no “calling her back.”

“Baby, please first at least tell me what is going on.” Then she said those words that I didn’t know how to quite digest.

“I got put on hospital bed rest.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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