This is the continuation of my hospital stay. If you didn't read about the boys' birth, you might want to read that first...
The first few days after the boys were born were a whirlwind of
NICU visits, doctor consultations, antibiotics, nurse visits, and breast pumping attempts. I was in pain, but it was nothing that the
percoset** couldn't take care of.
On Tuesday morning, my OB came in to check on me. We talked about my release. He asked if I wanted to go home that day or the next. I chose Wednesday because I wanted to stay near the babies for as long as possible. The plan was set. I was to be released on Wednesday.
On Tuesday night, in set a low grade fever. My temp hovered between 100.1 and 100.3. Sweat poured from me and I begged for the air conditioner to be turned on. My poor mom and Is.
aac were frozen, but I was burning up. As long as I stayed below 100.5, the nurses were not too concerned. I drank gallons of ice water to try to cool myself off. Nothing helped. That lasted through the night.
I started to feel better the next morning. My temp had lowered to below 100 degrees. I was excited to leave and go home to my beloved bed. (Oh, how I missed my bed!)
My OB came in to do his final check before releasing me at around 8:00 am. He pushed on my belly. I almost jumped off the bed. I reached for his hands and threw them off of me. My reaction had surprised me and him. He looked at me and asked me if I was in pain. I assured him I was not (I so wanted to leave), but when he touched my stomach again and my reaction remained the same, he knew I was lying. No discharge for me until we knew what was going on in there.
Twenty minutes later, a technician came to my room with a wheel chair. I was whisked off downstairs to take an x-ray. Back up to my room.
Twenty minutes after that, he was back with the wheel chair. I was whisked off for a CT scan. It was not looking good, that was clear because of how popular I had become, although no one had said anything directly to me about what they were thinking.
My fever had inched up ever so slowly and was again hovering at 100.1 degrees, but I was feeling relatively fine except when someone would push on my stomach--which was now a favorite past time for everyone who entered my room. I wanted to go home so badly that I had started to suck in my breath just before they'd push on my stomach making myself able to get through each exam without wincing much.
I begged them to let me go so often, I nearly convinced myself that I was going to be able to!
At three that afternoon, was my first visit with the surgeon. Exploratory surgery, incisions running from my section incision to my sternum, and
NG tubes were brought up. I had an obstruction. They weren't sure if it was tangled intestines or if there was something else going on. I was booked for the OR at 6 that evening.
WTF?
We declined the surgery for the moment, requesting a wait and see approach. They inserted an
NG tube (took 6 attempts
pre sedative and only 1 after--I will be forever emotionally scarred from that experience) with the hope that it would eliminate the pressure on my intestines and allow an obstruction to move.
My fever went up to 102 degrees.
Medical professionals panicked. I was placed on even more antibiotics.
My memories of the next two days were pretty fuzzy. I do know that I started having diarrhea episodes fairly regularly. Diarrhea coupled with the fever led them to call in the Infectious Diseases doctor. My room was red tagged, which meant that nurses and doctors had to suit up in full body gear and face masks to enter my room. (This was not a common occurrence on the post
partum ward, apparently. The nurses were totally afraid of me, and no one wanted to come to my room. It took hours to have them come bring me something. Is.
aac started to just go to the nurses' desk to get stuff himself it was that bad.)
When the Infectious Diseases doctor got involved, the surgeon stopped pushing to do his exploratory surgery. My OB continued to come check on me, but was now apologizing that everything had spun so out of control.
I have a thing about my nose, so the
NG tube was pure torture. It was heavy, I couldn't move with it, and my throat was killing me. Let's not even mention how
disgusted I was at what was actually in the tube. Bile is not pretty.
On Friday evening, the
NG tube was removed. I was finally feeling better. I still had diarrhea, but the had cultured the hell out of every single drop and could not find the big, scary bacteria they thought would be there.
In the end, it was decided that I was allergic to the antibiotics I was taking so much of (we're talking every 3 hours for at least two weeks).
And the obstruction? Probably shit. The veal Parmesan I was given Tuesday night didn't like my system very much. Wouldn't that have been cute? Exploratory surgery for them to find me full of shit. Poetic justice?
When I left the hospital a full eight days after the boys were born, I had lost all of my pregnancy weight (and
IVF weight for that matter) except for two pounds.
So. There it is. Pretty ugly, huh? No wonder I had some serious PTSD issues.
----
**I did find that while I like morphine, it didn't like me. I was on a morphine pump right after delivery. At first, things were okay. I pumped that sucker every ten minutes on the nose! Then, I started to throw up. That led to more pain, which led to more morphine. I hit the morphine pump, and then I would throw up. It took me a few times to figure out the correlation. The clincher was when the nurse came in. Apparently I had broken out in hives, too, so that was the end of morphine and the beginning of
percoset.
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