The night it was all up in the air
I think we have all received news, a phone call or a text message that has rattled us to our core. One example for me was Friday evening just after 6.
My wife Emily, pregnant with our first child, went to visit her specialist in Terre Haute earlier in the day because of head pressure. Worst case, I thought she would be there overnight for observation. I was ready to head out to WRV for its basketball game with Vincennes Lincoln.
Before I could leave though Emily texted “You might need to change of plans for this evening.” Minutes later she texted, “You need to get here.”
Friday night basketball immediately shifted to a visit to Union Hospital in Terre Haute. As I began driving out of Linton, I had a brief phone call with Emily. Doctors were throwing words around like “Preeclampsia” and “enzymes” to Emily in the same manner I say “point spread” and “moneyline” to her during football season.
To put it simply, doctors felt she might need to be induced three months prior to full term.
The drive from Linton to Terre Haute was an hour filled with dark thoughts rolling around my brain.
By the time I got to the hospital I could tell Emily was in good hands. She had one sign of preeclampsia and if nurses found one or two more it would be a confirmed diagnosis.
If preeclampsia was the diagnosis, our child would arrive three months early and would have an extended stay at the neonatal intensive care unit and that would have been the best case scenario.
Needless to say if this scenario had played out, I would have been out of commission as your local sports editor for the boys basketball tournament. Possibly, more than that.
With COVID restrictions still in place, Emily was allowed just two visitors. Me and her mother. Family members who had planned a baby shower for her in April, scrambled to plan a virtual baby shower.
By Sunday morning, the signs that pointed to preeclampsia had shifted to another diagnosis that was more treatable while Emily could still carry the baby closer to full term. Things had settled down enough that I wrote my sectional preview story from the hospital with Emily. She came home Monday around noon.
I write this column before WRV plays in sectional opener with Clay City. The gym I thought I was going to Friday.
Years from now, I will be taking my son to a game at the Switz City Gym, hopefully, whenever they play Vincennes Lincoln again. I hope I can explain to him just how worried I was about him when these two teams played on Feb. 25, 2022.
Nathan Pace is the Sports Editor of the Greene County Daily World and can be reached at npacegcdw@gmail.com. His “Low Budget Sports Show” airs weekly on Facebook Live.
- -- Posted by lisamarie668899 on Mon, Mar 7, 2022, at 6:10 AM
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