A young woman finds she has a rare condition that threatens he life and the life of her unborn children. After several miscarriages a doctor offers hope but at a significant price to the man who loves her. Will he have the courage to do what is necessary?
The problem was noted on her medical records and put behind her. She was able to make up the missed school work and finished high school with honors.
Lynn was quickly admitted to the dialysis unit and hooked to a machine. The toxin levels in her blood had reached a level that would soon be dangerous to the baby if she were not treated. Soon after being hooked up to the machine she felt the first results of the treatment, the itching subsided. Just before seven in the evening she felt her stomach cramp, just as it had in the earlier dialysis. At first the cramps were minor but soon they were painful. The nurse had never seen this type of reaction and called the doctor in charge of the unit. He also had never seen this type of reaction and attributed it to a problem with the pregnancy. He called Lynn’s OB.
She ran up from the maternity wing. By the time she arrived Lynn had started bleeding. She was unhooked from the dialysis and taken to maternity. In thirty minutes she had miscarried.
Dave sat next to the bed and watched as Lynn’s body strained each time a cramp came. She was just past two months in her second pregnancy when things went wrong this time. Lynn cried as she looked at the tube in her arm. The dialysis was necessary again. It started about three hours ago and she was starting to have cramps. Within an hour she had miscarried.
The dream of a family became more and more remote as time passed. She remembered the day she and her mother discussed having children and family size. She remembered telling her mother, “I wish I had brothers and sisters.” Her mother had started to cry.
“I’m sorry, mom. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said.
Her mother dried her eyes and led Lynn to the living room. There she told Lynn some things about the earlier years of her life. Lynn had been her mother’s second of four pregnancies. They had wanted other children but after she had gotten sick in the early months of the fourth pregnancy, the doctor had recommended she not try again. Her mother did not tell her what had gone wrong and Lynn never asked. The events seemed too painful for her mother to recount.
When Lynn finished high school she enrolled in Roanoke College where she planned to study accounting. The college was just a few miles from home and she could commute. Unlike most of her peers she had no desire to be separated from her family. In the first semester of her sophomore year she met the computer. From then on there was never a single chance or thought she would become an accountant. She transferred to an Information Systems major at the end of the semester and settled down to get her degree.
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