horse piddels and Schapelle Corby

Back to our regular programming, which involves me constantly trying to get up to speed with the story. This inciting incident happened on the 8th of August, a Monday. It also reached over to the Tuesday as well. (as a side note, once I figure things out more I'll start having links for things.)

I got home from work and Sicily complained of having quite strong stomach cramps that had gradually gotten worse over the afternoon. Now it seems to me that woman are forever having stomach cramps, so I rubbed her back and made her a nice soothing tea then got out my home made radiology equipment (amazing what you can do with home computers these days) to take a closer look. Sicily was none too keen on that and still wouldn't let me even when I appealed to her anthropological side by reminding her of the P.N.G. tribe where the husband does midwife duties.

At this stage we had only made an appointment with Bridget and as such did not have a midwife, so I made Sicily ring Sunita. By the time we got hold of her it was nearing ten at night. Sicily talked to her then handed the phone to me.
"Take her to the Hospital now." Was what she said.
"Now?" I said.
"Now." she said. I kinda like it that Sunita, who is the youngest, is suddenly able to order us around.
"Why now?"
"Because she might be having an ectopic pregnancy" (which is where the little monster gets stuck in the tunnel leading to the lair) Sunita said, demonstrating perfectly why she can order us around now. So we got into the car and went to the hospital only to discover we didn't know where it was and the map wasn't in the car. It took us a half hour to find the hospital. We checked in with the check in and then got a primary assessment with a nurse who said it sounded like a urinary infection and that someone would be with us shortly. Meanwhile Sicily had to pee in a cup and then drink it. Actually that doesn't sound right, Sicily had to pee in a cup so they could test it. At two in the morning I went up to reception and said we were leaving as we both had work that day. The receptionist quickly looked through our notes and asked us not to leave until we had talked to a nurse and she promptly called over a nurse who said,
"No." and "You need to be checked it could be ectopic and life threatening."
Within ten minutes a doctor lead us into a room and started to check Sicily out. The urine sample had come back clean so he did a blood test and said he'ld be back in half to an hour. Sicily and I settled in for the long wait but at least we were in our own room and Sicily could lie down. The previous weekend we had watched part two of "Through my Eyes" the story of Lindy Chamberlain and the dingo &c...

Now that whole dingo got my baby things is very interesting, esp. regarding my own family and that at a similiar time my younger bro had died. I also find it interesting in light of an essay I once wrote about Australian cinema. I may post the whole essay on the blog as a seperate entry. The discussion of the Lindy Chamberlain case and it's cultural impact lead me to compare it to the recent case of Schapelle Corby. This lead to the great Corby debte of '05. Sicily argued that compared to some political prisoners in some countries Corby has it "cushy". While I agreed that yes the sentiment was true, the use of the word cushy was unfair to what it must be like to be in a South East Asian jail on drug charges. Seeing as we both have our Mars in Gemini (which is both a true and imaginary classification - like Borges' 'certain Chinese encylopedia' in which animals are classed according to (a) belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies' ) the debate over the use of this word got quite heated. I'm not going into any analysis here of the debate, or it's subtlties or unconscious meanings. People are welcome to put their own analysis of it in the comments section if they wish to.

The Doctor came back said the blood test was all clear and that we needed to come back in for a scan in radiology just to make sure and that we should ring in the morning to make an appointment.. We got home and went to bed at about four thirty five and then I was up at eight to ring work for both of us and make the appointment. The appointment was for the following day, the Wednesday at eleven and Sicily was to drink a litre of water over two hours before hand and not go to the toilet.

Poor Sicily, she did so well but was mighty uncomfortable, pregnant woman go to the toilet a lot, it seems to be one of those things. We arrived at radiology and the woman lubed Sicily up then started to run a scan.
"There's the fetus and it's in the womb but I'm having some trouble seeing it. Could you please go to the toilet for exactly 20 seconds."
Back for another look, no 20 more seconds released please. Finally she could see it and so could I. Sicily couldn't see it but all those years of staring at the wall making out shapes pays off. Just like Leonardo said it would. It was about 17 mm and there was a head and this slug kinda body and a flashing pulsing heart.

Later on I talked to Sunita about the scans and she said that studies show they don't do any harm but they also don't show if they do. Basically, they should be avoided as much as possible. Now here's the rub, we are discussing where to have this baby. So far our experience of Hospitals is that they don't inform you they just do what they think. If Sicily was having an ectopic pregnancy on the Monday then we would have really known about it by Wednesday morning when we had the scan. As she was comfortable enough in her body to be able to go to the toilet for 20 seconds would certainly suggest there was nothing wrong with her and that we didn't need the scan. Instead we subjected our 7 week old and peanut sized little tyke to a medical procedure that research is ignorant of regarding long term effects.