I am not a fan of the hip-hop.
Currently this genre is what is blasting in my husband's studio at this moment.
"What, or rather who, are we listening to right now?"
"Mars Ill."
Oh. I know enough to know that they are nice dudes who didn't make it in the "Christian" music industry. Most likely because they were a bit too edgy.
I would be at home right now, due to the illness that struck me down with such fury on Tuesday, but I simply had to get out of the house. I'm hanging out at the studio while Zack works.
I'm getting ahead of myself.
Where to start?
My sweet husband has been in a FUNK.
Since...November? I dunno exactly when it started although we suspect that his slow downward spiral is directly due to the smoking cessation drug he was on, Chantix. It worked like a charm, he was actually hating smoking which was GREAT, but he was also starting to hate everything else, which was NOT great.
Christmas came and went and he was having a harder and harder time getting out of bed. My sweet, funny, laughing, darling husband was very, very, very sad.
Then his dad went into hospital at the beginning of the year. On New Years Eve Eve, to be precise. That made things worse.
And on top of that he was starting to "forget" to take the Chantix. This was making me angry at him. Well, not at HIM per se, but at the addiction he couldn't shake.
"How can you do that?", I would cry, "When your dad is lying in the hospital DYING from the very thing you're willingly doing?"
(Now, I was a smoker there, too, for a while. But I was able to quit cold turkey, the addiction wasn't so much an addiction for me as much as it was a social thing.)
Zack's face would fall, he would turn away mumbling about how he was failing at everything. Which wasn't true, but he felt it keenly, and nothing I said could convince him otherwise.
At night I would pull him close and say,
"I miss you."
"I miss me, too."
After awhile he stopped taking the Chantix altogether and slowly bits of him started to come back. So did the smoking. I shrugged my shoulders. I was frustrated but, I rationalized, better to have him here and present with me than distant and far away.
Last week, at the studio, Erik (our studio manager) and I were sitting by the computers when Zack walked around the corner and announced,
"For the next week and a half neither one of you are allowed to ask me for ANYTHING. You can't request anything of me, I'm not going to do ANYTHING but what I want to do. I have got to start shooting again and next week I'm going to bury myself in the work I feel I need to do. I'm about to crawl out of my skin."
Erik tentatively started to ask,
"But what about the invoices..."
"NOPE. Don't ask."
Erik and I exchanged glances, my face surely showing signs of curiosity mixed with frustration and a bit of relief.
Zack was back.
Monday came around and he was "busy" working on a secret project. And lining up photoshoots. And laughing. This was a relief! It was so good to know that he was feeling motivated to go to work, to get out of bed, to do LIFE. I had contacted Elite Modeling Agency on his behalf the week before hoping that a positive response from them would help to give him the boost of confidence he needed to get started shooting again. They had contacted him back, liked what they saw, and were sending him three models to work with. He was stoked.
Later on that night he disappeared for a bit and came back to the house with a brand new acoustic guitar, a ProTools Audio rig and all the necessary assortment of accessories to go along with it. (Necessary assortment of accessories. I like that. It's fun to say.)
He grinned at me, "If I'm going to be creative this week, so are you. The boys aren't here, you have the house to yourself, so dive in."
I was blown away. I cried. It was perfect. I haven't had my OWN acoustic guitar since I was 15. I was overwhelmed. I couldn't WAIT to get started.
Then Tuesday hit.
Me.
Hard.
I couldn't keep anything down. The first time I vomited it was so awful I broke what looked like all of the blood vessels in my face. Looking in the mirror at myself I managed to joke,
"This is what alien freckles would look like."
As one friend commented on Facebook,
"Ah, but the aubergine brings out your eyes."
Wednesday, same thing. By that evening, around 6pm, I had gone through a bottle of Gatorade, about a gallon and a half of water, countless glasses of juice, a sleeve of saltines and nothing was....staying with me. I had lost all energy. It was all I could do to pull myself off of the couch to make it to the bathroom in time. I didn't want to call Zack, knowing he was working away, happily, at the studio on a photoshoot. ( I was supposed to have been there to do the hair and make-up...oh well ) By 6:30pm I was on the couch, wrapped in blankets, and feeling worse than I ever have in my life.
How to describe it?
My head felt so heavy that every time I tried to move it the room would start to spin violently. Ever been so dizzy your head felt made out of lead? Then the shaking started. I could not get warm. The heat in the house was 72 degrees, I was covered in blankets on a couch that holds more heat than is normally comfortable and still I was shaking so hard I was biting my tongue to keep my teeth from chattering, and drawing blood in the process. I couldn't feel my hands anymore. Not in the, "Oh they fell asleep" kind of way, no. This was different. I pulled them out from under the covers and they had a mottled blue and purple appearance. I was freaked out.
I crawled my way to the boys bathroom and, still shaking, managed to get the hot water turned on in the bath tub. As soon as it was a little way full I threw the blankets off and got my pajama bottoms off and then my shirt but then said, "Eff it" and got in with my underwear on. I was crying, and shaking and SO COLD.
I was scared.
Things start to get hazy for me around this point. I know that I was able to get Zack on the phone from the tub.
He told me that I scared the pee out of him. He ran through 2 red lights and a stop sign trying to get home to me. Fortunately we only live about a mile and half from the studio. My poor husband came home to find me crying and shaking in the tub, a mess everywhere, and so dizzy I couldn't even stand up. I don't even know if I was answering him coherently. He called 911 and I proceeded to start vomiting again.
Zack managed to get me out of the tub, my shirt and pajama bottoms back on, and onto the couch just in time for the paramedics to arrive. They loaded me up onto a stretcher after taking my vitals.
"Her blood pressure is 97 over 43. We need to get her on the drip right away."
In the ambulance, they inserted an IV into my arm. It took a few tries as I was so dehydrated my veins wouldn't cooperate.
"Hand me a 4 x 4.", I heard one of them say.
I managed to croak out my idea of a joke,
"Please. Don't beat me with a board."
Once in the hospital, and in a room, the hospital staff waited until enough of the saline drip had gone through me so that I could give them a urine sample. They knew that my blood sugar and blood pressure were low and they knew that I was dehydrated but they needed to check for other stuff. I dunno what really. The point is that I wasn't peeing when they thought I would be. 3/4 of the way through the first bag the nurse was looking at me incredulously.
"You still don't have to go yet?"
Through my haze I said,
"Nope. Sorry."
I often joke that I have a bladder the size of a thimble. I pee a lot even when I'm not pregnant. Even I was surprised.
At some point in all of this my dear friend, Jenny Runkel, took it upon herself to come to the hospital. I'm so glad she did. She is SO DEAR to me! I think, upon entering, she said,
"Meghan...what did you DO?", in a way that only she can. Made me laugh.
She visited with me a little bit, making sure I was warm, checking the fetal monitor that they had wrapped around me. Which was good to have on by the way. By that first bag of fluids, my baby boy was back to kicking up a storm, as per usual and by the time Jenny was praying for me, had started a rhythmic round of hiccups. It was comforting to hear his heartbeat steadily thumping away. Zack was bobbing his head in time to it,
"My little techno boy."
By the second bag of saline, the nurse had given up asking me about my potential for filling a cup. Finally, towards the end of that second bag, I felt the familiar twinge.
I also felt like a new human being. I could see the relief on Zack's face when I started to crack jokes from the toilet,
"Hi, are you Zack Arias, the UsedFilm guy?", I started to re-inact the day we met, then I pretended to be him,
"Yeah, are you Meghan Coffee?"
"Yep! Nice to meet you!"
"Nice to meet you, too!"
"So...I know this is crazy but in about 6 years you and I will be married, I'll be carrying your child and we'll be in the ER of DeKalb Medical while you hold my fluid bag for me while I struggle to get to the toilet to pee in a small cup."
A couple of hours later I was allowed to go home. The nurses informed me that, based on the amount of fluids I had taken in, I must have been close to losing 10% of the fluids in my body. 2%, they told me, is when a person FEELS thirst. That's not good. At 5% a person needs to go to the hospital immediately an by 10% it's life threatening.
Wow.
That was sobering.
At least it wasn't because I wasn't TRYING to keep fluids in me.
Thursday Zack didn't leave my side except for a doctor's appointment he had made 3 weeks prior to talk about the Chantix and what it had done to him. It was a good visit, the doctor listened to him, told him to stay away from the Chantix, and gave him some advice on what to do next. All good things. I was so pleased for him.
Today I was stuck at the house again, because I still haven't beaten this thing. Zack was in the studio all day working with the three male models that Elite had sent to him for testing.
I was going STIR CRAZY. I was still too weak to do anything constructive, like clean my house, do laundry. There sat my brand new recording gear, untouched, although I was playing the heck out my guitar. But still. I hate feeling helpless. Hate it.
When Zack came home he informed me that he still had to go BACK to the studio to get some more work done and so I asked to come with him. Just to get out of the house.
And so, here I am, in his pajama bottoms, a ratty ol' shirt and a hoody, glasses, my hair wild, no make-up. Seriously I could pass for a bag lady.
But I'm so happy because, well, I'm sitting next to my man. Side by side. Working away. And HE'S happy. And the stuff he's shot over the past few days is SICK. In a good way.
And, I'm okay. And the baby is okay.
Everything is good and lovely.
Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father.
Thank you, Jesus.
I'm hoping by tomorrow I'll feel even MORE normal.
And dangit all...I want a DAMN SANDWICH OR SOMETHING.