A Tale of Two Continents
Jetting across the Globe to Have a Baby
by
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Eight weeks later, on Dec. 28, I was driving to my office at The Chesterfield in Palm Beach, heading north on South County Road. I was happy. The celebratory mood of the holidays was in the air, and snowbirds were returning to their winter homes to begin the season of charitable galas and endless partying. Gentle breezes wafted in from the Atlantic Ocean only a block away, and it was a beautiful, balmy, sunshiny day. The fetus was living up to the nickname we’d assigned her: “the dolphin,” because she would jump this way and that inside me, bumping against the uterine wall. Suddenly my ebullience was aborted by a much heavier bump, this one from the outside, at the left rear side of my two-door coupe, a Mercedes 230C. I didn’t even see what hit me, but found myself careening into an electric-power pole off the right side of the road. Boom! I hit it head-on. The airbags burst out, thank God, and I smelled something burning. I was able to get out of the car, and a young man approached. Driving a Budget rental van, he had turned left from Jungle Road onto South County Road, apparently without looking “I didn’t see you,” he said. “I don’t believe it,” I shouted. “I’m pregnant, I’m pregnant. “ “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, and I asked, “What were you thinking?” He answered that the sun had blinded him, but I didn’t believe that, either, and neither did the police. He was a young fellow from Toronto, a worker at one of those beautiful homes that grace the narrow strip of land called Palm Beach, between the Atlantic and the Intracoastal Waterway. The crash not only totaled my car, but broke the power pole, cutting off electricity to the homes in the area. A woman emerged from a home on the east side of the road, and I told her I was pregnant. She said she would call the paramedics, and they arrived in minutes. They couldn’t believe I was standing there. They thought I should be dead, they said while laying me flat on a board and strapping me down. They drove me in the ambulance to Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach, on the west side of the Intracoastal. The doctor told me I would have to undergo a brain scan to see if I were bleeding, and I said, “I can’t have a brain scan and I can’t have a CAT scan, because I’m pregnant.” He said, “But you should, because you could be bleeding. You’re risking your life.” I answered, “I know I’m risking my life. I had a brain aneurysm when I was twenty-three. But that’s the chance I’ll have to take. I know if I’m not feeling good in my head, and I can’t do anything about the back, because a scan might damage the baby.” “You’re playing with your life,” he warned again, and I said, “I know.” I actually was worried that the aneurysm might have ruptured. But then I figured that if I were bleeding, I would feel it, and I would be seeing everything go round and round in colors. The doctor said, “If that’s the way you want it, I can’t even X-ray your hand. It’s broken.”
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About the Book
Childless in her early forties, time was running out for Arnelle Kendall to have the baby she desperately wanted. Her work as a public relations executive required that she travel internationally much of the year, leaving little time for romance. In this memoir, Arnelle describes the long and often painful path to her daughter’s birth—a path she says that was strewn with more obstacles than a mountain road after an avalanche. A Tale of Two Continents describes the many hurdles that Arnelle overcame to be a mother. A health scare added urgency to her wish and narrowed the timetable, and a life-threatening illness from twenty years earlier made pregnancy hazardous. Defying the danger, she decided to have a baby through in vitro fertilization. What followed was a heroic, painful, and numbingly discouraging ordeal that involved a series of trips from her home in South Florida to her native Johannesburg, South Africa, to become impregnated. Tragedy struck along the way, but Arnelle finally prevailed; she is now the mother of a bright, little girl. A story of perseverance, A Tale of Two Continents shows the extraordinary efforts of one woman’s quest to have a child.
About the Author
Arnelle Kendall is the public relations director for Red Carnation Hotels. Originally from Johannesburg, she lives with her daughter, Shaelah, in Boca Raton, Florida. Bob Brink was a journalist for thirty-five years and is the author of Breaking Out. He lives near West Palm Beach, Florida.