29th August 2011 – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
On Monday, I managed to keep my 4.5 mile run at well under 8 minute miles (Good). I’m not quite sure how or why, and by contrast Tuesday’s run was a very pedestrian 4 miles over the fields. I’m noticing that inclines are particularly challenging (Bad). I coached at the track on Wednesday so just joined in the warm up and cool down, and Thursday’s run was a 4 mile run at 8 minute mile pace (Neither Good nor Bad).
We had our Nuchal Translucency Scan on Thursday too, and everything looked extremely positive (Very Good)!! We also went on holiday to Wales, so the end of the week was very good indeed.
I managed some challenging runs along the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path over the weekend and didn’t worry about the pace. So far, there was more ‘Good’ than ‘Bad’ in the week (although my all day sickness is still pretty Bad). So, what about the Ugly?
The phonecall came on Tuesday morning. I was expecting a call – I knew the fact that I was ancient would make me ‘high risk’ for chromasomal abnormalities, despite the positive scan. My blood results had come back with a lower risk than expected for Down Syndrome (Good) but a 1 in 10 risk for Edwards Syndrome (very Ugly!!) The NHS class anything higher than 1 in 250 as ‘high risk’, so this seemed extremely high to me. I wasn’t prepared for that at all, in fact I hadn’t heard of Edwards Syndrome before. My heart sank as the nurse on the other end of the phone explained the condition. If the baby survived pregnancy he/she probably wouldn’t live for long after birth. I felt sick to the core, and spent a few minutes composing myself (not very well) before heading inside to break the news.
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