Thursday night

        After everyone left on Thursday night, the room was really quiet. Alex helped me get showered and into my pajamas that I had packed happily the week before so that I didn't have to sleep in the hospital robes all week.

         Like I had described before, the layout of the room we were in had my hospital bed on the opposite end of the room from a second queen size bed. Alex was sweet enough to stay with me in the hospital bed room on his army cot the first night, but the second night I wanted to get as far away from that thing as I possibly could without leaving the building.

         I let my night nurse, Terri, know where I was just in case she came in looking for me, and she was super sweet and let me know she was a master at navigating the room and it wouldn't be a problem for me to sleep down there.

         We laid down, and since I had taken my pain meds, I obviously passed out pretty quickly. The problem came in the morning at about 1 AM. I woke up, and I just couldn't stop crying. I was really uncomfortable, and I was completely broken. I didn't want to wake up Alex enough to talk to me, I felt like I was being selfish in asking him to not sleep well for the second night in a row. I let him know I was going back to the other end of the room, and he grunted his acknowledgement.

          Throughout the day on Thursday, I had received a LOT of Facebook notifications on my phone that people were commenting on my status and sending me messages. I had been so busy with people in and out all day, that I hadn't had a chance to read or respond to any of them. This is what 1 AM in a hospital room is made for! Plus, I knew I had another round of pain meds coming at 2 AM and I only had an hour to waste before that blessing would come from Terri. I turned on TBS, which was showing re-runs of Friends, and started reading. I read, cried, and responded during those early morning hours, and I spent some time digesting everything that had happened in the last 48 hours. Terri came in and found me at 2 AM with my iPad in my lap and tears running down my face.

             Terri had been my night nurse the previous night, and at 6 AM when she had taken out my epidural on Thursday, I had asked her to be sure that she would be returning to my room the following night. She seemed a little embarrassed that I specifically wanted her to return, and that I only wanted the now familiar faces of Amy and Terri to be taking care of me. I had requested on Wednesday that there be a sign put on the door that it be kept closed at all times, because at one point a food deliverer came into the room and left the door open and I heard a baby crying in the hallway and I had a complete come-apart panic attack and crying fit. Terri and Amy both had been phenomenal nurses and very attentive to my special situation.

               Anyways, at 2 AM when Terri found me, she asked if she could sit on the bed for a minute and talk with me and I nodded. She told me she has a daughter my age, and she didn't have a clue what she would have said to her daughter if this had happened to her. But she gave me a big hug, and said how sorry she was that this had happened to us, and that compassion was very comforting to me. She gave me my meds, and within the next 30 minutes I was back in the big bed with Alex next to me.