12
I sit, motionless, still reeling from the words I had just heard. The words ache in my ears. The tears don’t come just yet, but they are beginning to burn fiercely as they well up. Then, like a flood gate they flow, almost unending for days on end…
The words, you ask? Confirmation. Science in its boldest form. Trisomy 21. Three copies of the 21st chromosome. DOWN SYNDROME. There they were again…this time in print, so I could torture myself by reading them over and over and over.
I had been holding on to hope for nearly two weeks. This hope, resembling a strong woven rope, was holding me up, helping me through each day. Hope that our new little baby didn’t have to live under the label that doctors and nurses casually slapped on him when he was born.
The karyotype blood test had been performed on Reece in the hospital when he was only two days old, but the results typically took two weeks to come in. Two weeks to stare at him and convince myself that everyone was wrong. Believing that his almond eyes were just a unique feature, and the palmar creases in his hands were passed along from a family member, after all, my grandmother has the same creases and she doesn’t have Down syndrome.
Our appointment with the pediatrician was on a Monday, a sweltering, August Monday. It was my actual due date for Reece, but the little man decided to surprise us two weeks early.
This was the day we were going to get the karyotype blood test results.
I dragged that hope into the exam room, feeling the rough fibers of that rope between my fingers, it was holding me up just as it had over the last fourteen days. Waiting for the doctor to join us in the room was beyond nerve wracking and all I could do was pace the floor, five steps this way and five steps back. We waited, knowing on the other side of that door were results that would determine the course of this little boy’s life, our life. Jeff held Reece as I paced for what seemed like forever, and we waited.
The door swung open and in walked the doctor holding a crisp white piece of paper. I took a seat in the lone chair in the room and braced myself for the news. Without as much as a hello, the doctor said, “Well, we got the results…and he does have it.” My hope began to unravel faster than I could hold the rope together until it swiftly dwindled into the smallest of threads, eventually snapping from the pressure of the blow.
By: Alissa Rivera