Thanks for listening

November 23, 2009

I worry that something's wrong with me, mentally speaking that is. It seems like I think about my time in the hospital all the time. I don't know why. It frustrates me. I can't seem to let it go. I woke up in the night Saturday night, Jeremy happened to wake up at the same time. I whispered to him, "I can't stop thinking about the hospital. I feel silly." He reached over and smoothed my hair and said, "It's not silly. You lived there for a long time." I think part of it is that yes, I was there for a long time. I spent almost three months in the hospital in 2008. Three months. That's equivalent to an entire summer. Have you ever spent the entire summer someplace other than home?

I think the other part is that there were very few people who shared in the experience with me. My family - they were there for parts of it. Jeremy - I think there was only one day he missed that whole time. But for the most part, I was alone in the experience. My friends didn't hang out with me while I was there. I'm sure many of them would have if I had been in any kind of shape to have visitors, but I wasn't and actually requested that people not come and visit for the majority of the time. And who wants to hear about the gory details now? Once in a while I'll explain my experiences to people in conversations. Once in a while.

I drove by the hospital at night last week on my way home from a friend's house. Hmmm . . . the hospital at night. I was transported. When things were rough, I had Jeremy or my mom or my dad stay the night at the hospital with me. Many nights though, I was alone. It makes me want to sob right now just thinking about it. I was stuck in that room for so long. Very few times did I actually get outside to even see the sunshine in person.

My nights were so long. I couldn't let myself fall asleep until I had been given my last insulin shot and heparin shot for the day. I hated getting the shots, and there was no way I was going to be able to fall asleep knowing they were yet to come. I usually turned on the television and tried to watch some mindless crap to pass the time. But it was hard to focus, both visually and emotionally. Sometimes I laid there in the silence. Sometimes I cried. Before I lost Harper I would also often get a visit from someone from maternity who would come to listen for her heartbeat. I usually liked that, hearing her heartbeat, but there were times that I didn't. There were times that it just reminded me of how helpless I was and times that it felt pointless to me because I had this foreboding about her.

Things would go wrong in the night sometimes too, when I was alone. Something would cause them to worry about pneumonia or blood clots so they would take me down to the lab to have a chest x-ray done, or bring in the technicians to my room to do the x-rays right there. And there was the changing of the guard every evening. It wasn't till almost 9:00 p.m. sometimes before I would get to know who my night nurse would be. If it was someone new, I would have to explain everything to him or her about why I was there.

Sometimes in the night I wouldn't be able to sleep. Imagine that. So I would pull myself out of my bed, wrap a robe around my shoulders, grab my IV pole, and attempt to walk a lap or two around the nurses station. Saying walk kind of makes me laugh though. It was more like I went for a scoot or a shuffle than anything else. I wasn't always able to do that. For a good few weeks there walking was too difficult for me and I required assistance.

The nights I was able to sleep were interrupted all night long by trips to the bathroom and the night sweats. When I would wake up, my bed and clothes were wet with sweat. Sometimes I would ask someone to change my sheets before I went back to bed, sometimes I didn't want to wait so I crawled in and just tried to position myself so I was on the dry parts of the bed. I hated that. The IV machine beeped off and on all night. It beeped when it was time to change my meds. It beeped when there was a kink in the line, and usually it beeped for a reason that no one could figure. I don't even remember any more how frequently they came to check my vitals during the night. Was it every two hours, or every four? I tried to sleep through that sometimes. And every morning at about 3:00 a.m. they came to draw blood. Because I had a PIC line that didn't require that they stick me, so I was lucky that way, but it usually woke me up anyway.

It's hard you know. It's hard to have all these experiences that I keep to myself. And I don't know when it's okay to purge them. And I don't know if I should be past the needing to purge stage. I really don't know. Anyway . . . thanks for "listening."