Hospital 6: The Move

Tuesday, June 16:

I thought stabilization would be a good thing. One by one, the tubes and monitors came off as my condition improved. I could finally sit up straight, move around in bed a bit, without the help of two people. After four days of near complete immobility - freedom at last. The idea of being here for a while, as the doctors have implied, was not seeming so bad. Then, I got moved from Labor and Delivery into the busted, run down Ante Partum ward of Pennsylvania Hospital. 

It sucks here. Unlike the ward that I came from, I have a roommate (along with her entire family), Mike can’t stay overnight with me, and I have to pay daily for the crappy TV (vacuum tube, with a VHS player- I kid you not) and crappy local-only phone. Apparently, the people next to me are equally disappointed and have no problem voicing their discontent to the nursing staff. Brave new world indeed. Hospital bed rest looks like it could be the suckiest thing that has ever happened to me.

The nurses of L and D, the ward I was hastily dismissed from this evening, were amazing. They were patient, sweet, seemed to know their stuff. I get the impression that the nurses here in APU are, well, less successful at their craft. With a 5 to 1 nurse-patient ratio on a slow day, I don’t expect to get much respect around here. I wonder if they’ll remember to feed me. 

Oh, and as I approach day 5, they still haven’t worked out the “bugs” with the “free” wireless internet, deepening my separation from the world. Tomorrow, I demand the window bed. I deserve that much.

Hospital 5: First World Problems

Tuesday, June 16th:

Today is my second day of solid food. Hospital food gets a bad rap, and that’s because it’s generally pretty bad. Well, if you are starving, as I was by 8 this morning, there are far worse things in the world. But, I think it’s funny. They give you a menu to fill out and then they just bring you whatever they feel like. Let me humor myself...

My order for this morning: banana, scrambled eggs, English muffin, yogurt.

What I got: French toast and sausage (same as yesterday), cream of wheat, orange juice, milk, coffee. (Why would they serve any patient coffee? Aren't we all on a half dozen medications? Aren't we all sleep deprived?)

Hospital 4: Homebound

Monday, June 15th

“Homebound” is the term used here to refer to long term patients, not people on their way home. That’s me now- Homebound. Now on my fifth day in the hospital, I still can’t get onto the wireless network. So, I still can’t communicate with the outside word except by text message. No news, no e-mail, no entertaining myself with weird Google searches. To top it off, today is Monday, the day everyone returns to work. I don’t’ expect any visitors until Mike gets here around 6pm. This would all be fine if I could chat with people while they sit in their computers at their jobs. But, I can’t.

Last night was tough. I hadn’t slept since 6 am and, even after they cleared out the other woman and her family around 11 pm, making this (at least for now) a one-bed room, they kept coming in to strap monitors on me or take my temperature every half-hour or so. At some point, my body gave up and I slept through whatever it was they were doing to me—including a cervical exam.

I am still contracting about every 5-10 minutes and am 2 centimeters dilated, as I have been since yesterday morning. At least my cervix has lengthened and I’m not in pain. Trying to keep it that way. Tomorrow marks week 26, still way too early to deliver, and there are no plans to stop labor again until I have been clear of the magnesium sulfate for at least a week. So, if I go back into labor in the next couple of days, the boys are coming out no matter what. It’s life or death, you could say, that I don’t go back into labor.

I get to use the toilet like a normal human being now (no bed pans or catheters jammed into my bladder). But, after four plus days on my back, it is unbelievable how much my muscles have atrophied. I have to support the weight of my belly with both hands, as my stomach muscles are no longer doing the job. It took me ten minutes to get out of bed, get to the bathroom eight feet away, pee, and get back in bed. When I see my doctor today (hopefully around 9), I am going to ask about exercises I can do in bed.

Hospital 3: Toxicity

Part three in the journal I kept while in the hospital:

Saturday, June 13

Magnesium sulfate is not good for the human body in large doses- and I was on a large dose to start. It slows all bodily functions down. It loosens all mussels, including the ones that control breathing and the heart. And it makes you very hot, dizzy, confused. So, for two days, I’ve had a nurse in here every half hour and a doctor every two hours to make sure I’m not getting toxic. Seems that I tolerate it well, which is good because I may need to go back on it at some point.

The Plan had been to take me off the magnesium today at noon and we see what happens. But, since I’m tolerating it so well and it seems to be keeping me pregnant for now, they’re going to keep me on it.

 

Hospital 2: Expect nothing

Second entry in the journal I kept while in the hospital:

..."What the hell is going on?" - Mike Kennedy

Friday, June 12

What is going on: the drugs seem to have worked. I am on antibiotics, magnesium sulfate, and another oral medication (Indicin) to stop the contractions, which have spread out from every 1-2 minutes to every 15 minutes or so. I’ve been told that I could be here for weeks with a baseline of contractions without labor progressing. Either way, I’ll be here, if all goes well, for 7 weeks or more. That’s the best-case scenario. We want to make it to 32 weeks at least. So, that means around two months of hospital bed rest. It’s a brave new world for the Kennedys.

The outlook for a 25 week-old fetus is not great. Add a C-Cam (lung abnormality) to the equation and things look bleak for Mr. A. Not hopeless. Just very difficult. But, at this point, I have come to accept that ‘difficult’ is just my lot in life. When pregnant, make no plans. Expect nothing specific. That’s the wisdom I have garnered.

Hospital 1: But I Feel Fine

I have not posted in awhile because I was in the hospital for two weeks (the first to stop labor, the second to deliver our twins and recover from a c-section) where I had no internet service. I did keep a journal and will be posting it in sections.

BUT I FEEL FINE: Sunday, June 14, 2009

Thursday (now three days ago) seemed pretty usual. I woke up without issue, got on the train, and headed to Children’s Hospital for my weekly ultrasound to monitor Mr. A’s lung lesion. Though the news on this front had not been great as of late, I was prepared for whatever the doctors were going to tell me. Except this: at 25 weeks gestation, I was in labor. Well, they didn’t use the word ‘labor’. But, I had a backache, my cervix was very thin, and I was having painless contractions that I hadn’t thought much of. Collectively, that would be labor.

I didn’t get it at first. The message seemed murky, even cloaked in positivity. Children’s Hospital was sending me across town to Pennsylvania Hospital with a packet of ultrasound reports to “be evaluated”. I responded with, “Okay. I’m going to get a bite to eat and then I guess I’ll take the train down there later.”  Um, no. Within ten minutes I was in a cab (with an empty stomach) on my way, not to be evaluated as it turned out, but to have my labor stopped. This is not how it was supposed to happen for me. I was supposed to be the one who carried to term.

Here’s how it unraveled in short order. I was admitted. Mike left work and rushed to meet me. A monitor for each fetus and one for my contractions were strapped to my belly. An IV was put in my arm. That seemed normal enough. But, I still didn’t quite realize how serious the situation was, not even with nurse after nurse looking at my read-out and saying, “Wow, you’re contracting like crazy!” This was about 11 am.  By noon, they had me on an IV drip of magnesium sulfate to stop the contractions long enough to give me a course of steroids (to hasten fetal lung development) and I was moved from triage to labor and delivery. Still, I was pretty calm. I figured, these are normal, preventative measures… right?

By about six o’clock, the pain really set in. A doctor came to evaluate my cervix and that’s when I realized what was really going on. As the words, “two centimeters dialated” were uttered-- it hit me. These kids were on their way out. When Mike, who had been in the hallway for a few minutes on the phone, stepped back into the room, I was in tears as a team of nurses strapped, poked, stuffed, and manipulated me with everything medical, and our OBGYN rambled on about a C-Section. As Mike so aptly asked, “What the hell is going on?

 

Month Six

It's hard to believe that a) this is actually happening and b) it's happening so fast. Six months ago, Mr. A and Mr. B were jokingly referred to as Nick Knack, an imaginary baby that no one believed would actually come into being. Yet here I sit, 30lbs heavier,  gradually becoming completely immobile, incubating two future people made from half my genetics.

I am not immune to vanity and two things are preoccupying  my mirror-mirror. First, my legs are developing a bluish hue which, upon closer inspection, are revealed to be a dense map of spider and vericose veins. I like to think that I'll have this unsightly mess "taken care of" once de-childed. But, if I can't afford the simplest of luxuries now, it's clear I'll never have the dough to zap my legs pretty later on. Second, though I have thankfully avoided getting stretch marks up to this point, they are undoubtedly on the way. Even if they are mild, I can't imagine the disaster that will become my belly once I am no longer pregnant. Spongy, saggy, deflated... you get the picture. Does it ever go back to "normal" after twins? I'm pretty sure this extra skin cannot be zapped with the same ease as spider veins. Shorts and bikinis never again. Oh well.