34 Wks, 3 Days: On Saying Goodbye, Rude People, and Gloom/ Doom

8 More Days!

Last night, Home RN came to give me my last 17P injection. I've been counting down to the last one of those for some time now. The first few didn't hurt as bad, but after they increased them to every 5 days, I think my hips had such little time to recover between injections that they started hurting more and more. And the expense! My copay for each injection visit was $135. Multiply that by 6 shots in a month, and add the other stuff like doctors, hospitals, pump, and monitor, and you can quickly determine why it is that I have been broke. But what I did not count on was feeling sad. The same nurse has been coming to my house to give them the whole time. It may be because we have something in common with my career in healthcare, but her visits were almost social. She got to know me and my family, learned to read the expression on my face and know when it was that I needed a pep talk. We would talk about everything from history to our kids. She won't be coming by anymore, except, as she mentioed, coming to see the baby when I get home with him. As she was leaving last night, she hugged me and told me how proud she was of me, that I am going to have a healthy and beautiful baby, and reassured me that everything is going to be fine. Today, I plan on writing a letter to the company to let them know how awesome she is!

After she left last night, my little family headed to Wally World. Gah! I really do hate that place and swear with each trip there that I am going to become one of those people who boycott the place. But where else can you find everything you need under one roof? It's right around the corner from us, too. Target is about 15 minutes away. So we are here, and get on my little scooter, not because I am worried about popping out a baby anymore, but because I cannot walk more than 5 steps without the contractions getting horrendous. All I needed was small stuff for Zachary's arrival, but we had E with us, and I always end up getting more than I need when he is. So J was pushing a cart, too. (We did manage to score the Baby Einstein entertainer thingy I have been looking at--it was the only one and looked like it may have been a return from an online purchase, and we got it for $65 instead of over $100, which is what it normally is.) So I have the baby items I need, and we head over to cosmetics/ health/ beauty section. I just wanted to get travel sizes of my toiletries for my bag to the hospital, J needed razor blades (he looks like Grizzly Adams and when I nagged him to shave, he informed me he was out), and cotton balls for Zachary's umbilical cord. It should not have been a big deal. But I swear, my inner trailer-park almost came out and I was about to get arrested. There was this younger woman with an empty cart in the shampoo aisle, taking up the entire aisle. I politely stopped, with J and E behind me, to wait for her to pass so I could go. She looked directly at me and rolled her eyes, then scooted her cart over so that I only had about enough space to pass with about an inch to spare. I didn't want to run over her foot, so I kept waiting. This is when E said, "Mommy, just say 'excuse me'." She looked at my son and said, and I kid you not, "Tell your Mommy to get off her lazy ass and walk!" To my kid. My. KID. Granted I don't look disabled at all. I'm very visibly pregnant, and I am sure after all of this time that my face has a haggard appearance. But you can't always tell by looking at someone. So I looked her straight in the face, and hitched the leg of my shorts up a half an inch to reveal the huge plastic bubble that protects the infusion site and catheter from my pump. Of course, once that was done, she couldn't miss it or the bright-blue tubing that runs from my leg to my pump that was in my purse in the basket in front of me. I feel kind of bad now, though I know I shouldn't. I have never played that card before. J is a nursing student and even he hates to see my infusion site becaue it honestly looks like this plastic piece is embedded in my leg. And the girl looked horrified. But I couldn't help myself--I was not only angry that she thought she had the right to speak to my young son that way, but that she assumed that I was just being lazy. I think it probably took a few hours after the trip for my blood pressure to return to normal.

So anyhow, on another note...

Over the past couple of days I have been kind of worried. C-sections are safe. They scare you because they have to let you know of every potential risk. Ahhh, the joys of Informed Consent legalities. You never think you will be one of the ones who has a freak incident occur, though. Especially when you are just having a spinal. Eliminating general anesthesia cuts out some of the risk, at least. But lately I have been wondering: what if I am one of The Ones this time? I don't know why I am thinking this way. I had no fear at all when I had E. Of course there could be several reasons behind it. I've started my career in medicine since then. We medical people make the worst patients because we know exactly what can happen, regardless of how rare it is. And on the heels of the pregnancy from Hell, is it possible that the delivery will go that smoothly? But in truth, I think the real reason rests on the incident from last summer and E's reaction. J's sister (I'm calling her X) had a baby by c-section last summer. E was down there visiting his grandpa when it happened. Apparently, her doctor botched it or something didn't hold, because while they were all visiting after the baby was born, my son included, her blood pressure bottomed out and she almost coded. Apparently she hemorrhaged from an artery. They had to take her back to surgery, and she ended up on a ventilator in the ICU for a day or so while her blood count came back up. Of course while this was all going on, J and I were up here, and J's parents were at the hospital with E. I kept telling J that we should make the trip to pick E up, but it was a 4-hour drive one-way, so the decision did not come lightly. But when we called J's dad to tell him E didn't need to be in the middle of all of that, he insisted E was fine, that he was playing games with everyone in the waiting room and was oblivious. I was still worried. E is very,very intelligent, and with that, he absorbs everything like a sponge and doesn't forget a thing. We didn't know just how he was impacted until months later, when he overheard J and I talking about my repeat c-section. For days, his little face was clouded with worry, until he finally spilled it. "Mommy, just don't lose your pressure, okay? X lost her pressure, Mommy, and she almost died. Please don't die, Mommy." That didn't just pop into his 8-year-old mind. He heard it. Turns out he wasn't so oblivious. And it tore my heart out. Of course I promised him that Zachary and I will both be fine, that what happened to X will not happen to me. That he was born by c-section, and he and I were both fine. That it will all be okay. So maybe my gloom and doom lately is rooted in this. Because everything has to be okay. I promised.