Teresa Dee Meyerhoeffer Christensen's Life History : Chelsea Jill 1984

CHELSEA JILL - BOISE, IDAHO 1984

In early 1984 my body had been acting odd, then I found out I was expecting another child and chalked everything up to that. We were so excited and went on living life in our many venues. Roger, Chris, Steve and their BSU football player friend Lance were on our church basketball team that won the area tournament out of over 200 other teams. An older gentleman at church gave me one of the nicest compliments I have ever received when he said, “I looked just like he pictured Jesus’s mother Mary would look”. We had an opportunity to move to Twin Falls for Roger to work with First Federal Savings and Loan, but Roger decided to stay in Boise. And Boise got a temple, I went to the first session at 6:00 A.M. on my 25th birthday. Life was good.

At my first OB doctor appointment the nurse said there was a nodule on my thyroid, but that could be normal in pregnancy and they would watch it. The next month when I met with the doctor he said my thyroid was asymmetrically enlarged and that was not normal so I had to go to the hospital for tests, the ones I could have while expecting anyway. An ultrasound showed a tumor the size of a golf ball growing on the right side of my thyroid. It was too big to needle biopsy so they would have to remove it. I was so scared! I wanted to live to raise my daughters. I knew no one else would love them as much as I did.

On March 16th I was at my huge waterbed praying to God that I could at least live until my children were raised, when a song or hymn came to my mind. I did not know what hymn or verse I was reciting so I went and got a hymn book and thumbed through until I found the hymn on page #66 (in the new hymn book #85), the 3rd verse of How Firm a Foundation: “Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed, for I am thy God and will still give thee aid; I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.” It was such a powerful, moving experience. I knew God was mindful of me and whatever happened it would be okay. This verse has come to my mind many many times through the years when I needed comfort and the 7th verse at times too.

On Wednesday March 28th I entered the hospital and the next morning went into surgery at 6:30 A.M. for a thyroidectomy with biopsy. My mom and Roger accompanied me. It lasted over two and a half hours and they had to hang my neck off the operating table to cut the mass out since the tumor was so big. When I awoke in recovery the worst nurse in our RN class, who had almost failed, was my nurse… Yikes… and the doctor said they found multifolicular papillary carcinoma and removed the whole right side and 2/3s of the left side of my thyroid. Not the best news to open my eyes to. The incision was about four inches across the bottom of my neck closed with metal clamps and a drain for blood hung from it. I was on the OB ward of the hospital to monitor the baby and looked like a lady Frankenstein who had just delivered a baby c-section out her neck. Emily jumped up on my bed, but Steph was terrified of me and the whole hospital experience. That whole day I felt drugged out of my mind and asked the OB doctor about my baby. He said it was drugged out of it’s mind too and that’s why it was weaving back and forth (and doing flips it felt like). Roger gave me a blessing that this baby would bring a lot of love into our home. That was wonderful, but I wanted to hear it would be okay! I finally got to go home on Saturday after making many promises and on Monday went to recuperate in Twin Falls for a week. We still had a few months to wait for the main event of the baby’s birth who we planned to name “Cassidee Jill or Casey Roger.”

Since my brother Chris was getting married Dr. Krueger agreed to induce our baby just two days after the due date on August 16th, 1984. I was so nervous this time and worried if all would be okay since it had been such a rocky pregnancy. Roger was just excited to get the baby here. We arrived at St. Lukes Hospital at 7:00 A.M. and my water was broken before 8:00. By noon nothing had happened, I had just walked by legs off. The intensity picked up in the afternoon and after 15 hours of labor at 10:05 PM a beautiful baby girl Chelsea Jill Christensen was born weighing 7 lbs 2 oz and 20 and 1/2 inches long. From my journal: “Kind of a cross between her sisters. She is fair, but looks more like Steph. Once you hold your baby a magic is put over you to defend and love that child for life. The miracle of bonding still amazes me. If anyone had told me I would love this baby so much I would never have believed them.” She was perfect, but her respirations were 100 a minute instead of the normal rate of around 60. They discovered through an x-ray one lung was filled with fluid, but she rallied and was shortly okay.

Chelsea got to go to the wedding at a week old. Steph suggested we give her to Chris and Joan for their wedding gift, but really she liked her a lot and was always carrying her around to my horror (got her out of the crib, took her on top the table, etc.). Chelsea and cousin Mollie Hessing were blessed on the same day in different wards, September 30, 1984, quite the family gathering with a double-blessing celebration in Boise that day.

Chelsea’s first plane ride as at 6 months old. Roger’s company was moving him to Roswell, New Mexico to manage a branch there so we flew down to meet him. I had just had a cryo (freeze) procedure on my pre-cancerous cervix a few hours before Chelsea and I boarded to a plane to New Mexico. She was a great traveler, but I did not have good feelings about the town (besides the airport and the military school). We could not find a place to live and some boys had set the bushes in front of Roger’s office on fire. On the way home Roger got a call from Benjamin Franklin Savings and Loan offering him a job so we could stay in Boise. However our house had sold, so we rented an older cute little brick home with a sky light for a few months. We looked at one house with a realtor and it had everything we wanted…4 bedrooms, 2 baths, garage, family room, 1800 square feet, nice neighborhood in SW Boise and we could afford it for $60,750 with payments under $450 per month. We moved to Silver Spur Drive during the spring of 1985, purchased Wild Waters passes and enjoyed the next chapter of our lives as a family of five.