About a month after Justice came home from the hospital, she had to return. Stabilizing Justice’s feeding was turning out to be much harder than anyone expected it to be. The original plan was to have her eating orally before we left the NICU but it had become clear that it could take weeks or months. Years, on the other hand, never entered anyone’s minds. Nonetheless, we had to return and it was quite different from the NICU.
It was still the old hospital at that time so all the rooms were double rooms. You had a bed, hospital equipment, a small closet, a TV and a chair that transformed into a very small bed on each side of the room with a curtain separating you. The chair was actually kind of cool if you knew how to work it. The bad thing was, you had either to be a frequent flyer at the hospital or get lucky and your nurse remembered to tell you the chair transformed. Overall, the rooms weren’t bad if you didn’t have a roommate. Otherwise, they were a little crowded.
The hospital was very understanding with their frequent flyer families. In countless stays in the old hospital, we were only assigned a roommate one time and that was on a day we were being discharged. This I felt was kind and understanding of them on so many levels. Most people never think about it, however, if a healthy child in the family needs to go into the hospital, many times, the whole family shows up with presents, balloons, cards, etc. They can end up making a huge production over getting tonsils out while in the bed next to them is a child that has spent most of their life there. The cards and balloons have long stopped coming and they might be have something very serious done like brain or heart surgery. The other family is not doing anything wrong by bringing presents to their child; it’s just hard for the second family to see again and again. It was very nice of the hospital to think of this and not assign roommates to the frequent flyer families unless they absolutely had too.
Aside from the room, another major change from the NICU was your nurse was no longer only a few feet away. You had to use a call light and they couldn’t see your child if they left the room. This just didn’t feel as safe as the NICU. I know it was safe. She was no longer in as critical condition as she had been but I can’t stress how hard of a change this is for parents. The only thing I can compare it to is sending your child for kindergarten for the first time. You know they’ll be alright but you’re still nervous.
One thing I do not miss about the old hospital is having to walk down the hall to use the public restroom. There was a sort of a unspoken law, once visiting hours were over, you could wear whatever you wanted to walk to the restroom, pj’s, slippers, your hair could be a mess with make-up running down your face, there was no judging after this time of the night. You were free to use the restroom, get a cup of coffee or the worst thing of all, use the shower.
Let me try to describe the shower situation for you. First off, the baby and toddler rooms were on the sixth floor of the hospital and down the hall from the shower room. You had to pack up everything you needed to take a shower, including the one thing you were bound to forget at some point, a towel. Once you were there, assuming it was open when you got there, you got the joy of taking a bi-polar shower. This shower could give you 3rd degree burns and frost bite at the same time, without warning. More than once, I thought someone was going to busting in due to me screaming. Six floors of people flushing toilets, turning on sinks and patient room showers on you. It astounded you and they did not even have a mirror so you could see the damage. You just had to pack up you things, put clothes over your wounds and painfully walk back to your room. However, if their goal was to get your mind off your child for a few minutes, they certainly had a sure way of doing it. Nothing will make you take some “me time” like needing some medical attention yourself.
Lastly, and I can’t completely blame the hospital for this but they do hamper my recovery, is my total addiction to coffee. There are only so many things to do while you’re in a hospital with your child. You can color, watch cartoons, go look at overpriced things in the gift shop you have no intend of buying until they think you’re a shoplifter or you can walk out of your room to go get yet another cup of coffee. It’s bad coffee but it’s free and it's something to do. One always thinks, maybe I’ll get lucky and get to make the pot. This gives you another thing to do and you know the coffee will be fresh. It’s a win win situation. Before you know it you’ve drank two pots that day. Not that this is all bad, it does help wake you up when the students and residents start rounding at 4:30 a.m. Plus, you do get some exercise walking out to the coffee pot. However, I always feel a little like an addict when I get home and our visitor’s drink 1 or 2 cups and I’ve just downed a pot and a half and am starting to shake because I just shared the last of the pot with my guests. Maybe someday when Justice moves out I'll start a rehab program for hospital coffee addicts. But that's another blog.
0 comments:
Post a Comment