I' ve always hated hospitals. The smell of disinfectant lingering in the air, the overly sterile, soulless corridors and the sensation of imminent death lurking in every room. I'd successfully managed to avoid spending much time in a hospital that is until I was 33. Then life changed and I was making a regular weekly visit to the local blood lab.

After six months the waiting room at the lab had become a second home. Annie, the part-time weekend help, was a familiar face. She was old, perfectly powdered with red cherub lips and stiffly sprayed short white curls and I couldn't remember a time she hadn't been in my life.

There seemed to be a certain type who came to the lab on the weekend. They were either young mothers with tiny babies or middle-aged men with smoker's coughs and comb overs. I'm not kidding; I could bet my life on it, that one or the other would be sitting by me, week in and week out. So why was I there?

I'm sick. I don't look sick, I don't act sick, but I have an incurable disease doctors describe as a blood vessel disorder of the lung where the pressure in the pulmonary artery (the blood vessel that leads from the heart to the lungs) rises to above- normal levels and may become life threatening. Scary huh? It's called Pulmonary Hypertension and occurs in about two persons per million per year. Don't do the math, it basically that means it's rare. If that wasn't enough to contend with, the idea that my life can range from two to twenty years is one of the hardest things to face. Living for every minute was no longer just a saying but an actual reality in my life. And in order to stay alive I had to make that weekly trip to the blood lab.

As I sat waiting for the nurse to come stick me in the arm and draw my blood I started to think about my close friend Victoria. Vicky is English, like me, ten years older than me. I love and admire her because she's strong willed and calm and entertaining. She's tall, with high cheekbones, olive skin and eyes that look deep into your soul. She is an earth mother; she was born to have babies. No one would guess that this 43 year old mother of two once toured Europe as an exotic dancer. Vicky's inner calm settles over everyone in her company.

But, my thoughts were not about how great my good friend Vicky was. I was thinking about her because four weeks earlier she'd given birth and had had an amazing experience. She held her newborn to her and as she suckled him she looked and felt content, and I realized, when I looked at her, that I would never know that feeling, the peace women describe themselves as feeling when they first hold their baby.

As Vicky described how long her contractions were, how much pain she was in and her very first thoughts once the baby came out. I nodded my head, at key junctures in the conversation so that I gave the impression that I knew exactly what she was talking about. In fact, I couldn't share my thoughts on childbirth, I couldn't share my own thoughts on the pain or the pleasure that comes with giving birth and somewhere in the back of my mind I felt a twinge of envy as I listened to her.

I am a mother. I have a nine month old baby girl, Kali. I carried her for seven and a half months. I gave birth to her. I don't remember much about her birth. I don't remember what it felt like pushing her out or what she looked or felt like when she came out. My first thoughts, I'm ashamed to say were not about my daughter. They were, "For F*@k's sake, I need air"

My daughter's name Kali is also the name of an Indian goddess. The goddess is a known as the warrior or destroyer of evil and also the goddess of rebirth. She is often labeled "Black Kali" as she is often portrayed as black.

The superstitious amongst my friends and family tried to persuade me to choose a more peaceful, feminine name. One or two of my girlfriends suggested that maybe I was putting too much pressure on the child by calling her Kali. "It's like naming your child Bodicea" one of my friend's had said and then added that she knew very few Indian women with the name Kali. That made it even more attractive in my eyes. My mother tactfully suggested that maybe I should call her one of the 30 other names that are used in the Hindu religion for the same goddess; the names had a much more positive image, than Kali. I was adamant that the baby would be called Kali. Whatever powerful, frightening symbolism this name carried was not going to put me off.

Maybe I did tempt fate with my stubbornness to keep the name. The goddess Kali brings both death and rebirth, and the irony was that my Kali's birth brought both of those or very nearly did. Her birth and my near death. The fighting spirit associated with the goddess was seen in baby Kali's own personal instinct to survive as she came out of me fully intact and ready to face the world.

Kali entered the world six weeks early, before we'd decorated her nursery or thrown a baby shower or even packed an overnight bag for my stay at the hospital. Her early arrival, although a shock to both me and my husband, Patrick, is probably the reason I'm still here today.

At the time of Kali's arrival I didn't know I had Pulmonary Hypertension. No one knew. I'd felt tired through my pregnancy, actually exhausted. Imagine running up a 100 steps without stopping: that was how I felt walking one block. Climbing into bed made me gasp for air as if I'd just hiked a steep incline. I could just about muster a shower in the morning, and then I'd flop on the couch to rest from the effort. Before you start envisaging a huge round bellied woman, I want to put you straight - I wasn't big. I actually looked like I'd shoved a soccer ball up my T-shirt. I blamed my pregnancy for my shortness of breath. But my pregnancy was not the cause of my illness. My illness was discovered due to my labor and it had been with me for over eight years but misdiagnosed as asthma.

The day that Kali was born was the day that my life took on a whole new meaning. I don't mean in the sentimental sense where I finally realized my calling, to be a mother, no I mean, I finally understood the phrase, "It's a matter of life and death". The morning started on an up, I had woken to find I could breathe easier than I had done for the past seven and a half months. I felt good but I instinctively knew that something was not quite right with this miraculous change. I walked to the bathroom. And then I saw it. Or did I feel it? I'm not sure now, but it was blood. Thick, congealed, sticky red blood. Like red jelly. I felt sick with fear, frightened that I had done something over the past seven and a half months that had led to this. And worse, I didn't know what was happening. The books and Lamaze class hadn't prepared me for this.

I yelled for my husband, Patrick, who was stepping out of the house, and he rushed back into the bathroom. As I tried to work out what was happening, he was trying to work out the best thing to do. He kept asking me, "Shall I call an ambulance or shall I take you to the hospital in the car?"

"For God's sake, I don't know" I snapped at him as I tried to work out the best thing to do. It was obvious that he was panicking but I couldn't help him all I knew was that I had to get to the hospital soon. Finally, after what seemed a lifetime of dithering, it really was only five minutes, we decided that waiting for an ambulance was not the best thing. So wearing a pair of pink pajamas and my spectacles and feeling a little stale from not having a wash, I rushed off to the hospital. The baby was coming, the nurse calmly informed me and thoughts started to run through my head. Ridiculous thoughts like" Shit, I look like hell, I can't believe I'm wearing my specs," and "Oh my God, we never had a baby shower" and then more serious thoughts like, "How do I give birth I've never done it before?" and the main one," Please God, let her be all right."    My Miracle Kali Continues

Priya Balachandran - Born in Barbados in 1972, and then brought up in England. Priya is of Indian descent (from India). A first time writer of non-fiction, Priya has been working as a TV producer for over 8 years and started her career writing short PR articles. She currently works and lives in LA writing TV show ideas for Granada America as a development producer. In the past year she has discovered that she has a rare, incurable illness called Pulmonary Hypertension which has led to her writing non-fiction. Email her at priyainla@hotmail.com.

Originally published by Moondance.org (wINTER 2005)