Things which are difficult to see

On thursday afternoon, we were sitting on the front porch behind the rose bushes when the postie came. Rima went and got the mail straight away - about the only time in our lives together when we've actually both been home on a weekday to see the postman. In amongst the mail was a postpack with 6 cds of images from the radiology department at Royal Melbourne. At first I thought that there were two different cds of images, and three copies of each, but then I realised that every cd contained different images.

We loaded the first one up - an exciting sounding title like "CT - Trauma series 1/3" - and it told us it had 2166 images on it. But it was the first one which stopped me. It was my whole body, neck down to about my shins, with my arms held up above my head.

I remembered this being taken. It hurt so much to lie like that, and you could see my pain in the awkward, lopsided way I was lying in order to try and not put pressure on the sorest, most broken bits of my body. I would post a copy of the picture here but if it was distressing to me, I'm sure it would be distressing to you too.

The time on the image said 20:26 or something like that - it was after I'd found out that my baby had died, but before they had operated to take her out and to repair my knee. And you could see her there, curled within me. To my un-medically trained eye, she looked for all the world like a beautiful, healthy living baby.

I put the rest of the cds aside after that. We looked again at some of them last night - so difficult. I'm going to have to corner a doctor when I go in for my next Trauma appointment and get them to explain what they all mean. I can't tell which bits are which (except for the obvious).

On Thursday night I had so many dreams it was hard to believe they could all fit within the one night. But best and hardest of all, Zainab visited me in my dream. I feel protective about the details - lest people think I am weird or macabre. But I was so happy to see her eyes and to hear her voice - it was the best thing which has happened since the accident (and since realising that Rima and the girls were alive).