Eulalia Lus Zoo

You were supposed to stay. You were supposed to survive with me, to heal and to love and to laugh with me in my eyes. I wanted to breastfeed you like I did your brother. I wanted to watch you grow and tell you stories. I wanted to play and sing with you. I wanted to show how much you would mean to me. Everything was swept away when the doctor who did the ultrasound said that you were not in my uterus. She said that there was no sign of any life growing inside my uterus where you were supposed to be. The screen was set to where I could not see it. I could not see if you were in there or not. Maybe they were trying to protect me from seeing what was going on inside. The doctor showed me pictures of the surgery after she removed my right tube where you had been. The photos were in color and I could see the inside of me where I had hurt so bad. She said that my tube had ruptured before she got to it. There was blood in my abdomen which filled up around inside where the rupture occurred. It was no wonder I felt such painful cramps. Knives were twisting inside of me looking for some kind of evil.

I have read enough about ectopic pregnancies. I knew that there was no way to save you and that at that stage where I was, in all that pain, the focus was to save me, not you. I somehow wanted to be the one gone and not the one surviving. I felt like I had died already. But I knew. I knew that fate was yours and not mine. When the assistant put the device in me in order for the images to appear on their screen, I felt pain and pressure. It did not feel right at all. That was when I knew something was really wrong even though I had not believed that first doctor, the one who had left when before his shift was over, said that he and the next doctor would be trying to rule out ectopic pregnancy. I did not believe it because bad things don’t happen to good people. I did not believe it because it would mean that I would have no fallopian tube left. I did not believe it because I had helped to conceive you and you were not supposed to implant in my tube.

The waiting in the emergency room was long. I cursed due to the pain when cursing is not within my nature. I hated due to the pain and hate is such a strong negative emotion which also is not within my nature. Was this what the universe knew and wanted, was it the only way that you could stay in with me longer, because as soon as the ultrasound was done, the emergency laparoscopic surgery was scheduled and took place right away. They knew that it wouldn’t be my first laparoscopic surgery. They knew that I could handle it. I remember being rolled into the surgery room, full of light instruments and other fancy gadgets. I remember how I was so pathetic being hurt in my abdomen that I couldn’t even move on to the surgery bed by myself. They had to slide me over. I remember the anesthesiologist introducing herself, saying a name so foreign that it did not stick in my memory. She asked if I had ever had any complications with anesthesia. I said no. Then I suddenly felt a spin inside my head like my brain was melting. At my last attempt to be conscious, the anesthesiologist said that she had just put something in my IV. The next thing I knew, it was three and a half hours later. I could tell I was in the recovery room because I was cold. I could hear but I couldn’t really open my eyes. I didn’t want to open my eyes. Reality was there in the light of that room. This was my fourth laparoscopic surgery in dealing with my reproductive organs. I think the FBI would be able to identify me by the details of these organs if I were to ever go missing for some reason. Bad things do happen to good people. It doesn’t matter how patient you are, how much you serve your community, how good a wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, Hmong person you are. No matter how hard you strive to better yourself and your life, adversity hits you like you mean nothing at all. But you know, I am somebody. I do stand proud. I did not die. I do have a child to call my own, that miracle child. I do have a life. Everyone else’s life is moving forward and mine will also. As for you Eulalia Lus Zoo, mus zoo koj nawb.