The Aftermath

I wish I could say that labor was the worst part of Adam’s birth for me.

It wasn’t.  The aftermath of the c-section has been one of the worst medical experiences I have faced, starting with the anesthesiologist and ending with a gastrointestinal specialist.

Adam didn’t eat well after the c-section and his blood sugar had been a little off so the nurses took him to the special care nursery for the first night.  I woke on Saturday morning early and did everything the nurses told me so that I could get up and go see him in the afternoon.  Finally, around four pm,  I held my tiny little son with the hairy, hairy head for the first time that I really remember.

And my head exploded.  Dr. Feelgood with the huge epidural needle punctured my spinal column in several places.  Turns out that when I sat or stood up, my spinal fluid leaked out of the holes and created the “spinal headache” that paralyzed me.  I had visitors and I barely remember any of them that first day.  All I wanted to do was lay down and let my headache ease.

Know how they “fix” a spinal headache?  Another anaesthesiologist comes to your room, draws blood from your arm, and shoots it back into your spine to patch the hole.  It works sometimes.  I had two of those beauties and finally my headache eased to something I could stand.

I learned that Vicodin makes me act like a crack addict.  I didn’t sleep the rest of the time in the hospital and at times felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin.  Sleeping pills didn’t touch this.  By 5:30 AM on Tuesday, I was on the phone with Ismael begging him to come get me and take me home.  I cried and threw fits until the nurses found a doctor in my practice who would come release me.

Friends came and cared for Adam.  Ismael went to work.  And I fell face down in my own bed for the next five hours.

The following weeks brought a hematoma at my incision site that burst loose on Sunday morning and I bled til I thought I would die.  I was already anemic and that bleeding erased my gains.  I agreed to a transfusion on Halloween to put a merciful end to my exhaustion.  That was the most magical experience of my life.  I can’t say enough for the cute male nurse who took care of the transfusion and brought me warm blankets from the emergency department.  It felt like a spa compared to my initial hospital stay.

Three weeks later, I was in the emergency department myself at 11:30 PM thinking I might be having a heart attack.  Horrible sharp pain pierced my back, over and over again.  A quick ultrasound determined that it was gall stones.  A LOT of gallstones.  The nurse gave me a shot of something decidedly non Vicodin in my IV and I was blissfully happy.

When I met with the surgeon, I stressed that I wanted my gallbladder out and that it had to be before the end of the year, thank you high deductible insurance.  The only date/time available was Christmas Eve morning.

Fabulous.  I’ll take it.

My son’s first Christmas Eve was spent with my sainted sister who added him to her two kids for the holiday.

I spent the rest of Christmas Eve unconscious due to my new best friend, Percocet.

That surgery was the best Christmas present I ever had.  After that, no more heartburn.  No more vomiting.  No more attacks of pain.  No more acid reflux.

And three and a half months after Adam’s birth, I was finally recovered.

…