Nightmare at 5280 Feet

I’m going to tell you a secret. A secret about the city I live in. The city I love.

This is a secret about Denver, Colorado.

Denver’s best kept secret is its weather. I know what you’re thinking, “The weather? Really?”

Yes, really.

When I was initially offered a job in this state, my first thought was, “Ugh, drifts of snow lying about from September until April with nothing but cold, gray skies.” But this is not the case. Denver gets 300 days of sunshine a year and the average temperature of around 70°.

And Saturday looked like it was going to be no exception.

With an anticipated high of 80° and Colorado’s standard low humidity, it was a perfect day to clean out the garage in anticipation of destroying cleaning out my office and getting ready to convert it into the nursery.

So, after a good night’s sleep, lounging around in the morning, and a cup of coffee, we headed to the garage.

Our garage is detached from the house with an alley entrance. And it's something of a disaster. As a self-professed pack rat, I save everything. It is a disease that I am trying to cure myself of and today was going to be a good start. ‘Throw that away!’ was the motto of the day.

So we opened the garage door, turned on NPR and started tossing things in the trash.

The progress was great; we unpacked a number of old boxes, rearranged a great many things, and hung some shelving; all before noon-thirty. P.Pie needed a bathroom break – something she needs a lot of these days.

She was gone for a bit, but that’s not out of the ordinary.

I didn’t really notice and if I had, I would have racked it up to her getting a drink, taking a break, watching tv… anything.

Instead, she came back into the garage; she was crying. ”I’m spotting.”

For the readers who don’t know what this means, here’s a CNN link that covers it.

Needless to say (and understandably), P.Pie was a wreck. (I love her dearly for a myriad of reason and here is one of them) She had the forethought to call the hospital immediately. But of course, the on-call doctor wasn’t available right that second.

We spent the next 45 minutes waiting for the doc to call back. P.Pie sat on the couch dabbing her eyes while I played the stoic rock of Gibraltar (but completely scared shitless on the inside) and reassured her that everything was going to be okay.

A doctor (Doc Quatro) finally called, asked a lot of questions (was the bleeding heavy? no. were there contractions? no. was there fluid? no.) and came to the conclusion that everything was okay.

15 minutes after that, Doc Quatro called back and said, after conversing with Doc Tres – our new, regular doctor – and with the twins and all, it might be best if we came to the hospital after all.

So we washed our hands, packed up books to read (in anticipation of a lot of waiting), and headed to the hospital.

We did wait. And wait. And wait. But finally, we were able to see a pair of RNs (I’ll see your RNs, and raise you a full uterus), one with an attitude and the other with a heavy French accent (the joke here is too easy, so I’ll leave it alone).

After series of question from Mademoiselle Infirmière (oui. non. oui. oui. non.) and yet another waiting period, an additional doctor (Doc Cinco) came to see us.

Doc Cinco did a standard gynecological exam and ran the ultrasound over her belly. The exam gave a sound report – 4cm cervix (very good), nothing pulling away from the uterine wall, and everyone was in their sacs.

And even better news, during the ultrasound we got to see the twins kicking each other through their sacs.

So when it was all over, we had spent the better part of the day at the hospital and I’m pretty sure we both added a few gray hairs. But, at 17 weeks, the twins are okay and I was able to say something that I’ve been waiting to say in front of a bunch of people I don’t know –

“Hey you two! Don’t make me come in there!”