According to this week's work schedule, it looks I will now finally have more time to focus on this project. It feels like I have been on vacation from this research for the past two weeks. I had a dream this past weekend where Sarah and I were eating dinner with other people somewhere, kind of like a feast, and while eating voraciously she turned to me and said that she knew she was pregnant. I told her about this on Sunday afternoon at her mum's house in Medford, MA where we were for the weekend. Yesterday she brought out a pregnancy test and we talked about her using it in the evening, but decided that she should wait for the morning so that her hCG levels would be at their highest. So, this morning after about six hours of sleep, she asked me if I wanted to know the result of the test. Part of the reason I had only gotten six hours of sleep was because I had been up until 12:30 AM taking practice exams for the analogy tests that I will need to complete in order to get into graduate school next year. Why I chose midnight last night to do this, I cannot say. Anyhow, so she asked me if I wanted to know the answer to the test this morning and my hazy mind could not quite grasp why she was asking me this question since she had been asleep when I was noodling around with these Internet exams and had completely forgotten about her first pee of the morning. It was negative.
Sarah went to a acupuncturist last week after hearing for a while now how much it has helped others who have had difficulty having children. There was a lot that she told me about the appointment and more details that I still don't know about yet. What I feel confident relaying here is that the acupuncturist treated Sarah as though she were pregnant because at the time we were not sure if she was or not. The doctor found some unresolved issues that need to be worked with and recommended that, if Sarah found out that she was not pregnant, to wait three months before trying again and continue to have acupuncture during that time. So, when Sarah told me this information, I was worried that she was, indeed, pregnant and that the unresolved issues that the acupuncturist had found were the mysterious reasons for the previous miscarriages and that any new pregnancies would result in more miscarriages. All of that is to really say that, though I was sad to find out in my semi-dream state this morning that Sarah was not pregnant as we had hoped, I was also a little relieved because now she can help her body heal via acupuncture.
One last thing to mention here: after our second miscarriage, which was near last year's summer solstice, Sarah and I began seeing our midwife for her naturopathic practice. The most pressing concern that I brought to my visits was that I had this unceasing and obtrusive fear of death. I was constantly afraid that Sarah would die in a car crash on the way to work or fall down the stairs, breaking her neck on our basement floor or that I would find out that some other friend or family member would have just unexpectedly died. At the time, I was working on my father's construction crew and still recall very vividly that for weeks when I would kiss Sarah goodbye in the morning, I was extremely aware that I might be killed on the job site that very day and never see her again. In some respects, it was amazing to have the quality of presence that can come from facing the reality of one's death; this is probably why these memories of kissing Sarah goodbye in the morning remain so lucid. However, this fear was certainly obsessive and disruptive to my life as well. The intensity of my fear of death and never seeing my loved ones again did diminish shortly after my naturopathic visits, which I found quite remarkable actually. Likewise, I also found it remarkable that within a day after Sarah (who practices the fertility awareness method) told me when her body was going to be most accommodating for my few hundred million suitors and suggested we oblige, these insistent fears of death returned. But, unlike last time, now there is a part of me that is fascinated to witness this traumatized part of myself reacting so strongly and producing these morbid thoughts and images. That is not to say that I am not terrified when I think about or imagine my loved one's dying, I am. Now that I have experienced these responses once before, I know that this intense fear of losing hope for a new life will not last forever; that is, the repeating triple-feature horror shows that run in my mind are more endurable this time around because I know they will eventually end.
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I believe acupuncture certainly has a role in healing the body. I've had great success for the past 8 years. As for your fear of death, I believe some of that comes from a sense of not having any "control" over life events. There HAVE been people in your life who have gotten sick - near death - and the miscarriages, too. Being the sensitive being that you are and not being able to do anything to change those situations is frustrating and more. Perhaps this is an opportunity to "allow" for life to unfold without holding on to a particular outcome. This, of course, is a process to be practiced - not perfected.
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