abdomen

SAPD: Man shot in abdomen during argument; gunman at large

SAN ANTONIO - A man was taken to University Hopsital in critical condition Saturday morning after he was shot in the abdomen during an argument, police said.

Authorities were called to the 100 block of McMullen Street around 10 a.m. and found a 30-year-old man suffering from a gunshot wound to his abdomen.

Police said witnesses told them that the gunman and the victim were arguing when the suspect pulled out a gun and fired multiple shots at the victim, striking him once. Witnesses told police that the triggerman got away in a red Dodge Charger with a black racing stripe.

While authorities could not say whether the victim and the suspect knew each other, they did say they believe the suspect is a 27-year-old man. 

"That's part of what the homicide unit is here to do - actually look into the incident and to see what was the motive: What happened?" San Antonio police spokesman Carlos Ortiz said when asked whether the two knew each other. "All we know is that at 9:46 in the morning, there was some kind of unknown altercation, which ultimately led to the suspect shooting the victim in the abdomen area."

Police deployed their helicopter to try and locate the shooter and his car but were unsuccessful in their search.

Those with any information about the shooting or the shooter are asked to call the San Antonio Police Department's Homicide Unit at 210-207-7372.

Copyright 2019 by KSAT - All rights reserved.

Fingers, abdomen slashed in missing rake row

A GRIPE over a missing rake led to violence between two neighbours, landing one in hospital with serious knife wounds.

The feuding men, both aged in their 60s, were living in neighbouring unit complexes at Redbank Plains.

The Ipswich District Court heard of trouble brewing between the two for some time, culminating in one being accidentally stabbed.

Christopher Richard Meeson, 67, pleaded guilty to doing grievous bodily harm to a 62-year-old man; and unlawful wounding at Redbank Plains on September 19, 2017. At the time he had an alcohol reading of 0.168.

Crown prosecutor Cameron Wilkins said there was ongoing animosity between the men.

The stabbing was deemed not to have been deliberate.

The incident occured when the neighbour asked Meeson if he had taken his garden rake from the front yard.

The court heard he was verbally aggressive and made threats.

Both men went back to their units where the complainant made a coffee, then went outside to water his garden.

A drunk Meeson walked out with a kitchen knife, which he swung during a verbal confrontation.

The other man told him to "go back to the loony bin", swinging a spanner at Meeson in an attempt to disarm him.

Meeson swung the knife, with its blade slicing the man's right hand, cutting across all four fingers, the thumb on his right hand, and the right side of his abdomen.

The injury damaged his nerves and tendons and he needed surgery.

Meeson claimed he had been pushed over by the man during the altercation.

The Crown case centred around the allegation Meeson acted in a dangerous way in wielding the knife.

Prosecutors sought a jail term of 12 to 18 months.

Defence counsel Scott Neaves sought a fully suspended jail term, and lodged medical documents detailing Meeson's poor health and physical difficulties.

Mr Neaves said the retiree had stopped drinking alcohol since the incident.

"He was in the wrong.

"He accepts his guilt," Mr Neaves said.

Judge Dennis Lynch QC accepted the stabbing wasn't deliberate and that there had been ongoing conflict between the men, and Meeson had been fearful of his neighbour.

He said it was clear Meeson was "grossly intoxicated", his actions impulsive and in response to earlier hostility.

Judge Lynch noted Meeson had no criminal history and not likely to re-offend. Meeson was convicted and sentenced to 18 months' jail, immediately suspended for three years.

I didn’t want to breast-feed, but weaning is breaking my heart

The first time I breast-fed my daughter, I was surrounded by strangers. Someone had helped me slide free of my delivery gown, slick with my daughter’s newness. Someone else had helped me into a new gown. There were hands everywhere: first pressing my tender, flaccid abdomen; now sliding a new pad beneath my hips; now holding my newborn to my breast. The hands — blue-gloved, shiny — squeezed my flesh, guided it into her mouth. My husband, Adrian, stroked my hair. I didn’t know what to do with my own hands. I watched, like the most unnecessary stranger in the room.

*

Weeks before Josefine was born last April, Adrian and I shared a fajita plate at Lupe’s Tortilla, a cavernous, kitschy Mexican restaurant near our San Antonio home. I usually avoid such places — I know what real Mexican food tastes like. But Lupe’s had surprised me with tortillas that tasted like my childhood. We went there when I needed comfort in my unexpectedly painful pregnancy.

Over our food, we talked about a trip we were planning for Hawaii the following January. Adrian is from Sydney, and Hawaii is the halfway point; his family would meet us there. Josefine would be 9 months by then, outside my body for as long as she’d been in.

“They say if you nurse on takeoff and landing,” Adrian said, “it eases the pressure in their ears so they don’t scream.”

I rolled my eyes. “I highly doubt I’ll still be nursing by then.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not easy!” I said, passionate. I’d been reading blogs, watching YouTube videos, scouring the What to Expect forums. I was a breast-feeding voyeur: cradle hold, football hold, letdown, prolactin. My sister had exclusively pumped for six months because of her daughter’s undiagnosed lip tie. My best friend had loved breast-feeding, but she’d rather have another drug-free labor, she told me, than suffer mastitis again. Breast-feeding successfully seemed like the realm of the very lucky or the very determined; I didn’t feel like I was either.

“You’ll rock it.” Adrian smiled at me, the wide, disarming smile I’d fallen for in a plane 13 years earlier.

I smeared guacamole on a tortilla, irritated. “Right. Because everything else has been so easy.”

I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) in early 2017, after I’d been off birth control for nearly a year and a half. After that, I took Clomid and Letrozole and slid needles into my belly; my ovarian cysts multiplied, enlarged. Since insulin resistance was the source of my PCOS, I went on a ketogenic diet to sharpen my insulin sensitivity. I wondered who I was, without the foods of my culture.

I found out I was pregnant the day we were to start the process for intrauterine insemination.

And, despite warnings “not to get too excited,” she grew. Hiccups after meals. Ripples and thrusts beneath my skin, a closed-curtained ballet.

As she grew, so did my pain. It was eventually diagnosed as symphysis pubis dysfunction (SPD), thought to be caused by the hormone relaxin overly loosening the ligaments that keep the pelvic bones aligned. I went from daily Pilates and training for a half-marathon to walking with a crutch from 20 weeks onward. Adrian had to help me out of bed in the morning, squeezing my hips as we shuffled to the bathroom together. The pain was shocking, debilitating, enraging.

Guilt was the constant companion to my complaints. After all, I had been told I had less than a 2 percent chance of conceiving naturally, and we had. Family called Josefine our “miracle baby.” I should be grateful.

But no one can be grateful every moment. And with the same ferocity as I longed to see Josefine’s face, to know her shape in my arms, I longed for ownership again over my body, the kind I hadn’t felt in years. So, when I told Adrian that breast-feeding was hard, that it probably wouldn’t work — “Women with PCOS almost always have low supply,” I told him sharply at Lupe’s that day — I almost hoped I was right. I had sacrificed enough.

*

Josefine, first born: dark almond-shaped eyes, wide and alert. Quiet and calm, except when she wanted to eat, and then she was open-mouthed, lunging, ravenous; she knew what to do. She taught me.

On the second day, her pediatrician told us that because of certain physical markers — epicanthal folds on those fairy-tale eyes, her snub nose, the gap between her first and second toes — she suspected that Josefine had Down syndrome. For 11 days, as we waited for the results of genetic testing, we planned. We cried. We danced with her. And, around the clock, I breast-fed. I undressed her when she fell asleep mid-feed, the way the nurses suggested, holding her skin-to-skin. I rubbed balm onto my cracked, bleeding nipples. I learned to recognize the letdown, when she sighed and gulped and eventually pulled away in satisfied, duck-faced sleep.

When I breast-fed her, everything I could not control fell away and I understood that I would share my body with her forever, if I could only keep her as safe and happy as she was in those moments.

The test results came back negative.

*

As I write this, Josefine is almost 9 months old. She is calm and curious and observant, messy-haired with a mischievous grin and a new queenly wave she reserves mostly for the dogs. We fly to Hawaii in 10 days. My husband was right: I’ll be breast-feeding at takeoff and landing.

Though she is still nursing, lately it’s only three times a day instead of 16. She eats solids voraciously. She pushes me away sometimes, frustrated or impatient with my dwindling supply. I pump and fight tears when I collect one ounce instead of six. I order supplements that taste like anise and fennel and cheap whiskey; brownies and granola bars; pills; and drops. I try to come to terms with the fact that this part of our relationship is ending. That soon, just as I thought I wanted, I will have complete ownership of my body.

Now, I don’t take a single feeding for granted. Her burnt-caramel eyes on mine, her strawberry-scented fingers reaching for my hair. The times she smiles, the times she sleeps. No one gets to stop time from passing. We can’t protect our children forever. But this, for me, is as close as it gets.

Katie Gutierrez is a writer living in San Antonio with her husband, daughter and two dogs. She is working on a novel. Find her on Twitter at @katie_gutz.

Follow On Parenting on Facebook for more essays, news and updates. You can sign up here for our weekly newsletter. We tweet @On Parenting and have a Facebook discussion page about parenting and working. Join us.

More reading:

Doctor says when it comes to breast-feeding, your happiness matters as much as baby’s

A man, a baby and a mountain of bottles: When mom goes back to work

Workplaces must give mothers a place to pump breast milk. Here’s the reality.