Beware the Zebra!! The Art of Letting Go and Letting Life Take You…
Don't look for zebras, they can run away with you...
My wife woke up yesterday in a panic. Something could be wrong with the baby.
Last week she went through several tests. Saturday they drew blood to look for HCG hormones. These hormones are found in a woman’s body when she is pregnant, and should double every 48 hours during the first trimester. So Saturday they drew the first sample, and the HCG count was 14000. Monday, the count was 24000, not quite double but we were told it was nothing to worry about. Wednesday they drew more blood, but we didn’t hear from them.
On Friday, my wife had an ultrasound. During the course of the exam, the technician asked a couple of times if my wife had any bleeding, leading to the obvious question, “Why? What do you see?”
“Nothing. Just curious.” the tech replied.
After a few moments, we got to see the heartbeat! The fetus measured exactly seven weeks of development. It was in the right place. Everything looked just fine. We decided to tell our friends and family, and I posted this blog entry.
Fast forward to yesterday, a week after that last blood was drawn. Apparently troubled by the technician’s comments, my wife calls to finally get that last HCG count. 26353. Nowhere near doubling Monday’s count of 24000. Not even close.
I tried to calm her down. “We saw a picture two days after that. There was a heartbeat. The baby’s fine!”
Nothing I could say or do could calm her. She’s a bit of a worrier. So we made an appointment for the afternoon.
Dr. Werner entered the room, looked my wife in the eye, and said this:
“I want you to imagine yourself at home. You’re lying in your bed. Everything’s quiet, and you suddenly hear hooves outside your window.
What is it?”
“A horse?” my wife answers.
“Could it be a zebra?” Dr. Werner asks.
“I guess it could be. Or a man with coconuts, I guess.” my witty wife replies.
“It’s not very likely to be a zebra.” Dr. Werner says, obviously missing the Monty Python reference. “It’s a horse. We had a saying in medical school, ‘Don’t look for zebras.’”
Dr. Werner is convinced that there was something wrong with that last blood test. The ultrasound proves much more reliable and conclusive. The baby’s fine. Don’t look for zebras.
So Dr. Werner taught my wife and I a valuable lesson. It’s been said countless ways: don’t make mountains from molehills, don’t sweat the small stuff, etc. We’ve all heard this so many different ways that it becomes rote and we have a hard time following through with the advice.
Don’t look for zebras.
On another visit to Dr. Werner’s office, he had reminded us that the most dangerous thing we do every day is to get in to a car. Yet we don’t bat an eye. It’s a necessary part of living in this modern world. We don’t know what will happen when we get behind that wheel. Who is on the road that might hit you head on? Where’s that patch of ice that will send you careening off the mountain? We don’t know and we generally don’t think about it. Life goes on.
But! If you do constantly think of these things, you will wind up a nervous wreck. You’re imagination is so much stronger than any catastrophe that may befall you.
Life never hands you more that it thinks you can handle.
Take it easy.
Don’t look for zebras.
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Tags: family, lifestyle design
