A Rough Beginning
Picture it, Erie, Pennsylvania, 1974. It’s April 30, and a young mother-to-be awakens in the middle of the night to find her nightgown wet. Her heart races…what could be going on? She calls her doctor…
“Doctor, I think my water broke!”
“Are you experiencing any pain?”
“No, no pain at all, isn’t that unusual?”
“Yes it is. Calm down, and get to the hospital immediately.”
Pat and her husband, Carl, get into their car and drive to the hospital ER. Pat gets into a wheelchair while Carl checks her in. When he comes back to the examining room, she’s been hooked up to the ultrasound machine. Her doctor can see that there’s clearly something wrong.
“We’re going to have to induce your labor and we may have to pull her out with forceps.”
Pat is given Oxytocin to induce her contractions, and a few hours later, the doctor pulls a 7 pound baby girl out with forceps. Pat and Carl are relieved to have the ordeal over, but they’re concerned that their baby girl was born about three weeks premature.
“Couldn’t that cause problems?” Pat asks the doctor.
“Yes it could potentially,” he says. “We’ll have to keep her here for at least a few days to see if there are any health problems.”
That is the (slightly exaggerated) story about how my life began. I’ll be telling more stories similar to that one, about the different battles I fought throughout my life, and also the victories that I had from different goals I worked towards. I hope through those stories that you’ll see a little bit of yourself, or maybe learn a few things along the way that will help you fight your own battles and experience a few victories along the way.
This is an alternate beginning to a book I’ll be publishing hopefully sometime next year. If you enjoyed it, or have any feedback on it, please feel free to post a response. And if you enjoyed it, please feel free to clap for it.
