Category Archives: Hospital

The Waffle

Posted on by

0

I don’t even know how to start this.

I had a miscarriage. And it sucked. Still does. More than you’d even expect. It’s so horrible, in fact, that the internet won’t even tell you about it. If you googled “experiencing a miscarriage” you would find various websites telling you scientific facts: miscarriage commonly occurs before 12 weeks. More prevalent in “older” women. You will have some cramping and bleeding. You’ll get your next period in 4-8 weeks.

IMG_1147

December 2, 6am.

But what they aren’t telling you, is what I wish I had known, and I would love for every woman that comes after me will know. It’s the truth.

Miscarriage is the messiest and grossest and most physically uncomfortable as well as most emotionally uncomfortable event you’ll ever experience, aside from what I imagine a full-term birth to be like. I said full-term birth, instead of just “giving birth” because that’s exactly what you are doing, in the worst sort of way. You will have horrible cramps. You will bleed for weeks on end, coming and going, and presenting itself in colors you didn’t know could come out of you. Your baby gets flushed down the toilet. It got so gruesome and intolerable for me, I would make Jon come sit with me when I went to the bathroom so I wouldn’t have to experience it alone. And when you aren’t busy sitting on the toilet, you are living your day-to-day life in the weirdest way. Oh, just in the grocery store, but also having a miscarriage. Enjoying a nice dinner out with the in-laws while passing large clots of fetal tissue. I remember thinking to myself “I can’t believe how normal this is, and how normal I am feeling, I can do this. Ain’t no thing. We got pregnant quickly and it’ll happen again in no time.”

And then the bleeding slows, and stops, and then you are left behind. Alone. Where you were once pregnant, just a few days ago, you are now a lone person, empty, missing something so important to you that you can’t get back. It really hurt my heart and stomach to process what had just happened to me. And then it begins. The darkness sinks in. What happens next? After the storm is over? Can you just pick up where you left off? I thought I could.

IMG_1343

Christmas Eve, after we shared the good news.

I don’t even know when or where or how it began, but slowly as the days, weeks, and now months went on, I sunk into a pit of despair that is impossible to climb out of. In January we missed my “fertile cycle” because Jon was in Florida for work. In February I got my “period” 3 days after having just ovulated. March, we will see, but I have a feeling we aren’t in the clear yet as far as my body goes. In the middle of all of this, my right hip has started behaving like a little bitch, making me second-guess my decision to get pregnant and toying with the idea of getting the hip fixed, which breaks my heart every time I think about it.

This wasn’t supposed to be what happened! I had my plan! We got pregnant right away on our Belgium trip, and I felt relieved and like I deserved this, after what a crappy year it had been for me otherwise. We would have a bouncing baby waffle arriving on August 11. It would be the best thing we’d ever done. But the lingering thought of miscarriage was ALWAYS on my mind.

At this point there seem to be more good days than bad, but when they’re bad, they are debilitating. Nothing I do can take the thought out of my mind of what (I believe) SHOULD have been. I should have been X weeks pregnant (I’ve stopped counting). I should be feeling the amazing movements everyone talks about. I should be decorating our nursery. I should be excited about talking to and seeing my best friend who is two weeks less pregnant than me and taking the bump pictures we had always dreamed of. It stings. It burns. I start sobbing out of no where. I can’t function. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can hardly breathe, which how large a lump i always have in my throat. I certainly can’t form words to talk about it. Everything seems so unfair, it feels like my body is against me and the world doesn’t want me to be happy. Everything makes me annoyed and irritable and pissed off. The kids selling lemonade on our street? GTFO my yard. My dog barking to go outside? Who do you think you are, you selfish asshole. My husband who didn’t wipe the counters after he cleaned up the dinner dishes? Oh HELL NO you did NOT. My computer that dares take 3 second to load? I will pound my fists on the keyboard because clearly you’re against me too. I just can’t do it. How am I supposed to go on and just LIVE MY LIFE? And how are other people just going on and living theirs? I feel forgotten and left behind and sad all the time. Those words don’t even seem heavy enough for what I feel. It is physically exhausting to try to survive during a bad day.

My body still doesn’t seem to have recovered, because it just keeps bleeding whenever it wants to. It doesn’t help that my OB doesn’t seem to be much help. In fact, I haven’t seen her at all since before I got pregnant. I only saw and talked to the nurses while I was pregnant and miscarrying. Again, I feel like I got forgotten about and no one cared enough to talk to me.

What do i do next? Where do I go from here? HOW do I go from here? I am just supposed to… wait and see? Doesn’t anyone realize how difficult and disappointing that answer is? I shouldn’t HAVE to wait, I should be pregnant! Or at least, my body should be back to normal so I can get pregnant again! I don’t have a lot of time. My hips don’t have months or years to just… wait.

The longer I wait the harder and worse I feel. Nothing is good right now. I am just so sad.

IMG_1378

December 28. Baby’s first (and only) picture.

It’s been a solid 8 weeks since I last edited this post. That lonely, dark Sunday was a turning point for me, when I decided I couldn’t do this alone anymore. The next day I called a therapist, and met with her a few days later (February 18). I cried while telling her how dark everything felt, how I felt the world was against me, but left relieved knowing there was somebody else on my team. It also helped (in a twisted way) that she experienced her own miscarriage a few years ago and was currently pregnant with her long-awaited rainbow baby.

At her suggestion, I reached out to my OB for more help and to check in. I made a list of all my symptoms: Constant sadness. Tearfulness. Easily agitated. Anxiety about future pregnancies. Feeling numb. Panic attacks. Seeing it written down made it seem so real, so sad, and made me realize that I really had a serious problem. When I handed that list over (because no way I could say those words out loud), she validated all of my concerns and reassured me that everything will be ok. We created a game-plan for future pregnancies to ease my anxiety. She gave me a script for some antidepressants that I was originally hesitant about, and now wish I had gotten them months ago. I almost immediately felt stable, level-headed, and able to make rational decisions.

It is now April 12. I have been on antidepressants for 4 weeks, and have visited a therapist 5 times. Both things combined have made me feel whole again. I feel like I am waking up to life again – I am looking forward to the weekends once again. I seek out the company of my friends. I honestly answer “I’m doing fine, thanks” when asked. I am at a point where I can’t remember the last time I cried (down from crying – sobbing – many times a day). I can see the goodness in tomorrow.

What the heck was I thinking?

Posted on by

0

(Written Wednesday evening, a few hours after we arrived home from the hospital. Most of it didn’t hold true starting the next day, but I still need to post it because it shows the horrible, along with the great)

Day 3.

I have made a horrible mistake. How could I have decided to do this to myself? Every time I make a movement my crotch cries out “WHYYYYY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!” And I cry right back, because I don’t have a good answer. It feels like there’s a little elf in there with a tiny knife when I move in a terrible way.

Otherwise, The last two days have been pretty good pain-wise. I was walking and talking and had a great appetite and all of that went downhill the second I got home. Actually, it got shitty the second the nurse tried to “help” me into the car but didn’t realize I couldn’t put full weight on my leg/hip and let me almost fall and die. Traumatic. I think that episode is the cause of my extreme discomfort currently.

Then we get home and realize we had left my saving grace, the Kodiak water machine ice pack, on the curb of the hospital. Jon zoomed back to get it but it was gone for good.

Now I am positioned ever-so-carefully in my bed with a zillion pillows and all my pain pills within arms reach. I can’t see myself sleeping very well, though I don’t have the CPM machine tonight strapped in tonight, so we will see. I already miss the nurses coming in every 4 hours to give me meds and take care of my needs. It was nice to not have to worry about my pill schedule, and it was extra nice to be able to try out a bunch of different meds to figure out what worked best. My current concoction is 2 Norcos every 4 hours, a Vistaril every 6, and a naproxen every 12. It worked well in the hospital but I’m a little concerned about my pain levels now, so we might have to reevaluate tomorrow.

Well, wish my husband luck. I’m so unhappy. This is a side of Lydia you never ever want to see.

The day my life changed.

Posted on by

0

We arrived at the hospital at 10am on a bright, sunny Monday morning. I hopped and skipped all the way to the hospital, knowing that it would be my last chance to do so for quite some time. It was easy enough to find surgery registration, where we signed my life away and took a seat in an enormous, cavernous waiting room filled with waiting families. 10ish minutes later, my time was up.

We were taken back to a semi-private gurney area where I changed my clothes, took a urine sample (surprise! not pregnant), got stuck 3 times before they finally got an IV going (I normally have excellent veins, but today they were not cooperating), answered “What are you here for?” more times than I could count, and gave my husbands’ hand the death grip. I was so nervous and on the brink of tears the whole time. Finally, Clohisy and his resident came by to verify everything and signed my hip and that was that. They stuck some anxiety meds into my IV and I don’t remember anything after that. I wish I remembered giving mangosquash a goodbye kiss.

Before I knew it, I was awake in recovery and feeling okay. The only semi-funny thing I remember exclaiming was “it doesn’t hurt very much!”, and then I remember being annoyed because they kept telling me it would be 2 hours until my husband could visit. Then 1:45 until he could visit. Then 1:30 until he could visit. DUDE BRING ME MY HUSBAND I’M SCARED AND ALONE AND SO COLD. I also remember they made me arch my back so they could shove an x-ray screen behind my hips and I though “you’re letting me do this myself? after you just chopped my hips in half?!”, and then I demanded they make me a copy of the X-ray so I could show everyone. I am glad for high, pushy Lydia because otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten to see the X-ray at all. So proud.

After what felt like forever. my dear husband came back and I was soooooo relieved. He showed me all the text conversations he’d been having with my loved ones (thank you to everyone for your prayers and and care and concern and good vibes and juju and everything! I know it helped get Jon through while he was waiting) and I tried responding, but every single word had a spelling error (full disclosure – so did every single word of the previous two blog posts I posted. It took me a VERY long time to have to backspace and correct every. single. word. I wish I was kidding. Don’t blog high, kids.) so I took some selfies instead.

From recovery, they took me up to my room. I don’t remember much of the transfer but I do remember asking many, many times if I would have my own room (thank you again, high Lydia, for being my advocate). The nurse said “technically it’s a shared room, but we aren’t very busy so 90% chance it’ll be all yours”. And I got lucky, which meant Jon could stay both nights with me. I can’t imagine sharing a room, with all the midnight wake-ups and people coming and going for me AND another person, I never would have slept!

That first night, my pain never got above a 6 or 7, and that was only when I had to move around. When I was stationary, it was a comfortable 3 or 4. I had a pain pump (AMAAAAZING!) and a catheter (ALSO amaaaazing!) so I had a constant flow of relief AND I didn’t have to get up to use the bathroom. Seriously, if you have an option to get a catheter during surgery or any hospital stay, DO IT. It seems awkward and uncomfortable, but it saves you from having to get up at all. I wish I had one now for pure laziness reasons…..

With my nurses help, I was able to get up and take a little journey around my room with a walker. It was a shock to my system, for SURE, plus I was battling super low blood pressure for the duration of my hospital stay, so I ended up getting sick not too long after. I started drinking sugary juice with every med time and drinking lots of water, and I was luckily fine for the rest of my stay.

Sleeping ended up not being as horrible as I anticipated, either, one of my drugs (Vistaril) ended up KNOCKING ME OUT, like falling asleep with my eyes open and jolting myself awake kind of knocking out. My surgeon had requested I sleep in a CPM machine (continuous passive motion) to keep my hip flexing throughout the night. When the CPM delivery man came in to fit me is when I had my one and only hospital breakdown. The machine is the length of a leg, with a leg cradle attached to a motorized base. There was a metal bar that sits parallel to the bed right under the thigh, but because of the angle at which I had my bed positioned at the time, it ended up about 2 inches off the bed and right underneath my butt (RIGHT where I just had some bones rearranged). The CPM man was NOT a medical professional at all, and just kind of grabbed my leg and plopped it in the cradle with no regards to my broken hip, so that was shocking and painful. He started babbling on to me about how it works and I’m sitting there overwhelmed and in pain from his actions and this stupid metal bar under my butt, and he kept saying “oh you’ll get used to it” and finally, through tears, I managed to tell him “NO I WILL NOT THERE IS A BAR UNDER MY BUTT THIS IS NOT OKAY, you need to fix it!”. He still didn’t quite understand and finally my nurse came in and she realized what I meant. We just needed to flatten my bed almost all the way and then it was fine. I am still mad at Mr. CPM machine. I wish I could fill out a customer service survey on my experience with him. Luckily, it ended up being ok, and sleeping was more comfortable with the CPM machine because it kept me from getting stiff, and also kept me from wanting to roll onto my sides, my usual sleeping position.

Tuesday was an overall amazing day. I had a physical therapist come visit me to teach me strengthening exercises and get me up walking. Because of how well my surgery had gone, Clohisy had released me to 50% weight bearing (normal is 20%!) so moving around was a lot easier because I could actually use my bum leg for more than just balance. I quickly decided that my crutches would be my main means of transportation, mostly because our house is too small for a walker, and also they’re just easier to maneuver. My PT was amazed with the ease at which I could move around which made me feel GREAT. Honestly, I had expected everything to be WAY more difficult and MUCH more painful than it was. The only thing that really caused me any excruciating pain was swinging my legs off the bed. I have figured out that I can slide up from the bottom of the bed and crawl my way back to avoid this, though, so that’s great. I also had a visit from the occupational therapist to teach me how to use tools to put on my pants and underwear and socks and shoes. That visit wasn’t very exciting, honestly.

The two days at the hospital flew by. I tried out some different pain meds before finding a combo that would work at home. I found that my brain was extremely fuzzy, making it so hard to focus on anything, including watching a simple TV show, so I sat and colored and went on Facebook and talked to Jon and the nurses. Speaking of nurses, I had three AMAZING nurses and one nurse I didn’t see much of the day of my release. Shout out to Annie, Marie, and Michael! My dear friends Lindsey and Maria came to visit, along with a pastor from our church and Jon’s parents. It was nice to see some outside faces, but MAN did it wipe me out.

Finally, on Wednesday, I got to go home!