The story of Keira, Part 2

Read part 1 here.

We get to the hospital. It's gotten chillier since we left home, and I'm thankful for the sweatshirt I grabbed on the way out the door.

We head up to the maternity ward, and just like she said, they're waiting for me. We pretty much get escorted straight back to a room to get settled in right away. Then the nurses come in with a stack of paperwork for me to fill out, and we're setting our stuff down and looking around. They have me get in my pajamas and lay down immediately, bed rest and all, and hook me up to the baby heart monitor, and the blood pressure checking machine, alternatively known of as the arm clincher and destroyer. I've never had one of those things before, and it hurts. Zero regard for the fact that it can only squeeze your arm so tight.  Funny, because now all my blood pressure checks are with those evil sucky machines.

The doctor who called me comes in, sits down at the foot of my bed with my file, and speaks frankly to us. She lets us know that we are on borrowed time. I will not be leaving the hospital until after our baby is born. Hopefully we can make it to 35 weeks, but she's not betting on it. They want to give me a shot of steroids to develop Keira's lungs as quickly as possible. They will be checking my blood pressure every 15 minutes 24/7. They will be doing blood work every hour. They will be monitoring Keira's health, and keeping a close eye on mine, and the minute any liver or kidney damage shows up on my tests, or the minute they can't control my blood pressure anymore, they will deliver her. She assures us that their NICU is top-notch. They're going to do everything they can to make sure she's healthy and well-cared for, but they also want to make sure I walk out with zero/minimal permanent damage from the high blood pressure, so it will be an hour-by-hour balancing act we'll be walking until we deliver.

We are so thankful that she's so blunt and upfront with us. We didn't really have any idea up until this point about the 'what and why' of how serious the blood pressure was, so talking to her was very enlightening and refreshing. Almost like it was just a relief to know what was going on, even though it wasn't great news, and to be informed of what the best plan was. She assures me that while being diabetic probably isn't directly the cause, (although my chances of getting pregnancy induced hypertension are higher), it happens to a lot of women. Nobody knows why it happens to some, and not to others. Almost like an extreme allergic reaction to being pregnant is the best she can describe it, and not likely to happen again. This is a relief to me, as I carry around the guilt and fear of my diabetes and my management thereof affecting my children's health constantly. We tell her we'd been confused about how serious this all was because everyone seemed to think it was a big deal, but no one ever explained why. We tell her about our experience with the doctor the previous night, and how casually he'd treated my high blood pressure. Her and the nurse both stop what they're doing and look at us in shock. They cannot believe it.

 We get settled in, I get the steroid shot for Keira's lungs, and the countdown begins. We don't want to deliver her before Saturday, because then the steroids won't have had enough time to work, but after Saturday their effectiveness begins decreasing, so we're torn as to what to pray for... an early delivery and effective steroid shot, or waiting as long as possible to deliver her? We're just praying for whatever God's plan is, and for serenity from one minute to the next at this point.

We try to fall asleep. The sound of Keira's heart monitor comforts me immensely. That makes up for the every-15-minutes TORTURE of the beeping, squeezing blood pressure machine of arm-death. Within a few checks, my arm is literally numb and tingling, and that makes for a long night. Coupled with the foot slapping nurses up and down the hallway all night long. Why must nurses wear shoes that slap when they walk?!

The next few days are a blur in my mind from the time warp that happens when you're in a hospital.

I am still on bed rest so my showers are the only time I'm allowed to stand up. Therefore I am the cleanest, most well-groomed person in the hospital. I guarantee it. :-)

We hit it off really well with the day nurse for the next two days... she walks in the room, and it's like we've known her for a really long time. Nurses have the power to make your hospital stay as great as a hospital stay can be, or completely horrible, (As you'll see the more you read of my kid's birth stories.) so finding a good one is always a treasure. She tells us it's nice to have a patient who's part of a happy couple. We are a happy couple, and the world doesn't always seem to have a lot of those anymore, so I can see how that might be true. We also, however, have nothing much to do between blood draws and blood pressure checks than engage in witty repartee with each other, so we may have appeared a bit more jovial and clever than we actually are.

The sound of Keira's heartbeat comforts me immensely. It's like this reassuring pulse in the background of whatever is going in the room. Through conversation with the nurse and Garrett though, I find out that it's driving my poor husband banana sandwich. I can't comprehend how that's even possible. The nurse finds this amusing--apparently every couple that comes through is like that. Momma loves to hear the heartbeat, and it drives the daddy crazy. I (eventually) have mercy on him and she shuts the sound off, but my eyes wander over to the screen constantly to watch it, and she assures me that alarms will go off if it stops for any reason.

I am getting, shall we say... puffy. I've never retained water in my life, and I am making up for it in a matter of days. They're keeping track of my fluid intake and outflow, and I'm retaining A LOT of water. My weight is going up drastically.

The phlebotomists are coming in several times a day to take blood. After a few days of this, my arms are BLACK and BLUE and holey from the elbows down. Every single one of them makes noise about drawing from my feet. Then they look at my puffy feet, and they say things like, "Well, maybe we could try this vein over here one more time." I'm usually a phlebotomist's dream--it's never hard to get blood out of me. But they're taxing my poor veins, and I am getting blacker and bluer every time, although they're still doing okay on getting blood out of me.

All my test results are showing steady though. My blood pressure is high, but it's not getting higher. We are holding steady.  Garrett goes back to work to try to get as much work time in as possible so that he can have as much time off as we originally planned when Keira comes home.

I call my boss and I'm officially on maternity leave. I hear from work often enough to know that they're holding steady. The files are going to be a mess, but at least they are funding all the loans and getting the paperwork out for the new ones. As long as things appear normal on the member's end, I can rest a little easier. I wish desperately that they'd call me and ask questions a bit more often so a few less things would be screwed up, but I'm also at the point I should have been in the first place, wholly focused on making sure that Keira and I are as healthy as possible. As the week wears on, it gets easier for me because I know that my co-worker will be back the following Monday. I feel HORRIBLE about the mess she'll be walking into, but I know her well enough to know that she'll roll up her sleeves and take care of it one problem at a time, and it will all be under control as quickly as she can get it that way. A few fun facts about my work after all this: The loan officer who came in to cover for me that week? He ended up not leaving our department, and being promoted to stay working in it. And, he'd always joke about how he owed his promotion to Keira.  Also, I worked at my job for almost 4 years after this happened. And, fairly consistently during those years someone would bring different files to our desks and say something like, "Something is really messed up about this file!! Will you guys look at this and figure out what happened?!" And, after a while we wouldn't even look at them. We'd just say, "Was that loan inputted, processed or funded at the beginning of September 2004?" And without fail they'd say yes, and we'd just look at each other and start laughing. Because what else are you going to do?

We get sent down to a different department to have a long test ultrasound. Since we have no idea where we're going, my nurse takes us down. I ask if please, pretty please I can walk, and I get a flat NO.  So I get wheeled down. I had packed one of my favorite robes--A knit one from Land's End that zips up, and has a hood. I am so glad to have it with me, it's like a warm blankie.She tells me the hospital halls are cold so I put it on for the long ride. I don't remember a lot of specifics of the details of what they were looking for, but basically it's a set period of time ( 1/2 hour, I think) and the infant has to do a list of 5 different things in that half hour, otherwise we start worrying about her a bit more. She does 4 of the things really quickly, but they want to see hiccups. I've never felt Keira hiccup, so I'm doubtful that it's going to happen. The ultrasound tech gives the impression that Keira really appears to be healthy and she's not too worried about the lack of hiccups, but she goes a few extra minutes for us for the test's paperwork sake, and Keira gives a few hiccups right at the end. The first I've ever felt. Phew. The ultrasound tech wheels me back to my prison cell aka hospital room, and she takes one corner kind of fast. Before I even think about it I make a tire-screeching noise. Garrett starts cracking up. We are back to the prison cell room way too fast.

I have my Bible. Family visits. They bring magazines and flowers. Short magazine articles are about all I can concentrate on, I apparently get a little ADD in a crisis. It's an odd combination of bored and one thing after another in the hospital. Friends visit. We're so thankful for the visits to break up the stretches of nothing--other than the blood drawing and the blood pressure checks, of course.

My arm is still numb.

Being diabetic and being in the hospital is a very obnoxious challenge. Because due to litigation and so on, they INSIST upon handling your insulin and diabetes management themselves--I'm not even allowed input because the doctor who figures out my dosages never even comes to meet me. They tell me every time I'm admitted to a hospital that I'm not allowed to give myself any insulin from my stash, and basically they stop just short of confiscating it. Then they send my file off to a hospital endocrinologist, and that doctor, whoever they may be, doesn't know ANYTHING about me other than my height and weight and what my caloric intake "should" be. So basically they screw it all up royally every single time, just to make sure I don't kill myself on their watch. It's a royal pain in the donkey, and I won't say anything more about it than that, because it wouldn't be very nice at all. But basically, as a diabetic in the hospital you have to assume that everyone who walks through your room door is an assassin sent to murder you.

The one thing that I stand firm on EVERY TIME is that they will absolutely not, under any circumstances, give me my injections. Soft tissue injections are how I took my insulin at the time of this event, and once you've given them to yourself for years and years, there's nothing more irritating than having someone else try to give one to you. People are forever poking them in at the wrong angle, or in odd painful spots, or pushing the plunger too hard and making it painful, or pushing it too slow and then the needle wobbles and it's super uncomfortable, and basically the fastest way to piss me off is to give me a soft tissue injection. I know that probably sounds a little extreme, but I feel strongly enough about it that I won't even apologize for being extreme about it. The added benefit of insisting that I give them to myself is that I can check and see what dose they're giving me and make sure they aren't screwing it up too badly.

So, one evening my night nurse comes in. And, you take one look at her and you can tell she hates her job, and possibly her life. In short, I'm glad she's my night nurse because I don't have to see too much of her. Also, she slaps her feet when she walks, so I automatically find her annoying. I hate sloppy walkers. If you're going to walk, you should pick up your feet and do so confidently, and not make me listen to you walk. She slaps her way in before dinner with a syringe for my dinner dose of insulin. And I take one look at it from across the room and I know we're going to battle. That syringe is FULL. Allow me to explain. My typical dinner dosage of insulin is somewhere around 6-8 units. At that point in pregnancy it's around 10-12 units. The syringes they used at that hospital were 100 unit syringes. I could tell that it was almost full. She goes for my arm, and I back away. I'll do it, I say. I want the syringe in my hand, because they're one time use syringes and I want to be able to pop the "used" tube up and instantly make it un-injectable any more if she's going to try to wrangle me. I could do that trick all night-she's in for a battle because that insulin is not going in my body. She sighs this huge sigh like I've just inconvenienced her beyond belief, and grudgingly hands me the syringe. I look at it, and it has 80-some-odd units of insulin in it. I can't take this, I tell her. That is WAY too much insulin. She looks at me like I've just stabbed her firstborn, and says, "Well, how about we just give this to you tonight, and you can talk to your doctor about your dosages in the morning." I am in disbelief--apparently she doesn't know anything about insulin. "I WON'T BE HERE in the morning if you give me that! It will KILL ME!" I say--which might have been a slight exaggeration, but I'm not actually sure--that's a crazy amount of insulin, it would have been really, really, really bad. She sighs a please-why-don't-you-just-die sigh, slaps her way out of the room, and slaps her way back shortly thereafter with a syringe that looks much more correct. I called the doctor, she says with mild sheepishness and still far too much irritation, you're right, the calculations were wrong. And, she goes for my arm again. Ahh! I'll do it! I back away and take the syringe, but she lets go of it before I've actually got it in my hand, and the "used" tube slips up over the top, making it un-usable. Not gonna lie, I was snickering inside at that. She'd scared me SO bad with the crazy dose of insulin and even more, her sloppy attitude. She sighs again, slaps her way out of the room again, slaps her way back in again, reaches for my arm again, I say I'll do it again, she sighs again, I take the syringe again, and finally get my dinner injection. Assassins, that's all I'm going to say.

My arm is still numb.

Saturday morning dawns--the time for delivering Keira with full steroid effectiveness. A few different doctors come in to talk to us. She is doing well, and progressing. I am a puffy black and blue mess, but my blood results show that I'm hanging in there-no permanent damage to my liver and kidneys yet. My blood pressure is holding steady at high-ish, but doesn't seem to be going up yet. The doctors feel that we should try to hold out longer. So, we do. Family and friends visit on that day, and we go to bed hopeful that we can last another week.

We awake the next morning to alarms. The blood-pressure machine of arm agony is going off. And it's not good. I feel horrible. The phlebotomist comes in (I think it was around 6:30 am) and takes the first draw of the day. The doctors and nurses are looking at the blood pressure machine with concern every time it goes off, and they get the test results back from my first bloodwork of the day, and the numbers aren't good. The damage has started on my liver and kidneys. My blood pressure is up around 190/100, and since we're still in the "sweet spot" with the steroids for Keira's lungs, they inform us that it is time for a c-section. Since it's my first pregnancy, I haven't had any contractions yet and my blood pressure is crazy high, they don't think it would be wise to induce me--they want to get her out as quickly as possible so the damage to my body (and her) is minimal.

Within minutes the room is swarming with doctors and nurses and people.  I get weighed--I've gained 36 pounds total in the pregnancy. If you recall, I'd gained 16 pounds total at my last good non-stress test. That's a lot of water weight-I look like a puffer fish. I get cold--my teeth are chattering as they're all doing who-knows-what around the room. I think I just got a bad case of nerves. Someone gets me a heated blanket, and that helps a lot. Hospitals suck, for sure. But, the heated blankets? Definitely a redeeming quality.

"Our" nurse from the previous few days comes walking in. I'm surprised because I knew she wasn't supposed to be working. She'd called that morning to see how I was doing and found out I was delivering. They'd needed an alternate--she was the second alternate. She'd traded with the first alternate so that she could be there for us. I'm SO glad to see her, and SO touched that she did that. She gets Garrett disposable jumpsuit scrubs, and starts prepping me for surgery. He's standing over in the corner of the room, and we both look over when he says, "Uh, are these supposed to fit me?!"  He looks so funny! The scrubs look ridiculous on him--the shoulders barely come up to his chest, and the legs aren't nearly long enough. She cracks up laughing and literally runs and gets him a back-up pair of doctor's scrubs. (He still has them--he called them his $65,000 pants when he brought them home. :-))

I get wheeled into surgery. They give me an epidural, and set about draping their blue sheets of paper and whatever else all around the room. I'm annoyed because I want to see what they're doing, but they won't hear of it, of course. I still think I'd rather have seen. It would have been interesting and distracted me from my own misery. Garrett sits down next to me, and the anesthesiologist settles herself by my head and straps the oxygen mask on my face. She's very grandmotherly and soothing, and I'm glad she's there. They turn music on, and The Cranberries, and Norah Jones and Fleetwood Mac are loud. Weird that they're all girl singers that I remember. The doctor is talking about his weekend while he cuts me open. I remember something about golfing, how cliche' is that?! Garrett and I are holding hands, or more accurately I'm hanging onto his hand, and I'm crying because this is not how I'd ever imagined this would go, and I don't feel good at all and worst of all, our baby is being born at 32 weeks and 3 days, and I am SO SO SO scared and worried about her. Garrett is cheerful--"We're having our baby today!" he says, and kisses me. The anesthesiologist talks to me through the surgery, tells me how many of these she's sat through, and that Keira is going to be just fine, and wipes my tears with a folded tissue. And then she's saying, "Garrett! Stand up and you can see your daughter!!" He stands up, and he's standing for a split second before he sits down, heavily, like his knees collapsed on him. I'm all, Well?! "She's beautiful!", he says, "but gross!" Me: Gross!? What's gross? "I saw your guts!", he says, shuddering. "And when her head came out, it went pop! through the incision! That was disgusting!!" Now, I know it's not normal to laugh while you're having an emergency c-section, but I find this hilarious and start snorting behind my oxygen mask. Because I know my husband very well. And I know that for the rest of our lives he will be disturbed by this. And he is. Someday hopefully we'll be smacking our gums and banging our canes in our rocking chairs on the front porch, and I will say "You saw my guts!" and he will find it just as disturbing as the day it happened. He insists that he could see anyone's guts and it wouldn't bother him, but because they're MY guts it's disturbing. Fair enough.

That moment passes very quickly though, because every part of me is waiting, yearning, reaching to hear her cry. I've never given birth before, or been in the room when someone has, but somehow as a mother you know that's what supposed to happen and you anticipate it with bated breath, and it's scary when it doesn't. Sure enough, there are no cries. I'm panicking, and panicking some more while they check her over and finally they say "She looks good! She doesn't need help breathing! She's doing great! She's 3 pounds, 3 ounces!" Everything they say is positive, and the NICU nurse/doctor who are in the delivery room take her away--they need to keep her warm and monitor her lungs, so I don't even get to see her. I don't believe that she's okay, because I haven't heard her cry or seen her yet, but the anesthesiologist explains to me that preemies don't usually cry, and we may not hear her cry for a couple weeks. I'd had no idea about that, so that's my first intro into being the mother of a preemie. They're sewing me up and stapling me together, and Garrett leaves to be with Keira and take care of her. I want him with her and taking care of her as much as possible. I don't quite believe she's really there yet and okay, so it's comforting to know that he's with her. They wheel me into recovery.

This is where my memory gets really fuzzy. I think they might have given me something to sleep for a few hours. They also had me on pain meds, and they immediately started me on Magnesium Sulfate. My first real recollection of recovery is itching, all over my body, beyond any kind of itching I'd ever experienced before or since, and being thirsty beyond belief. The nurse checks on me, and I'm so itchy I'm trying to scratch myself all over at once like a crazy person. "Why do I itch?!" I ask her. "Oh," she says all casual like, "One of the side effects of the pain medicine you're on is itching." Are you kidding me!? That is SO not cool. Who would rather itch than be in pain?! She tells me she can cut back the pain medicine, but then I'll be in pain. Please, please, please do it, I say. So she does, and the pain is like a blissful spa compared to that itching. I still don't understand why anyone would invent pain meds that make you itch. Unbelievable.

The next 24 hours are the darkest part of this story for me...  Stay tuned, and we'll finish this up in the next couple days...

Read part 3 here.