Walking through L&D

1.14.15

     I was sitting in my car outside the hospital that we delivered at, and I was feeling brave. I was early, like an hour early, for what I was there for, and I just felt like I wanted to go up to the second floor and see if anyone was around. And to walk through the halls where Kaitlyn was with us for her short time on earth.
     I can't remember if I ever wrote about this or not, and like I've said before I never go back and edit any of my posts. On occasion, I will try to go back and figure out if I've talked about someone or an incident so I can know if I can just reference it or if I need to tell the whole story, but now there are over 100 blog posts and I don't want to read through them all to figure out if I've told it. So I'll tell it again and I assume someone will tell me I'm repeating myself eventually.

     There is a nurse named Nell at our hospital. She called me the Monday before Kaitlyn's scheduled c-section to set up an appointment on Tuesday for me to come in and have my bloodwork drawn and to go over some pre-op things. Our appointment was for at noon on Tuesday so Alex met me at the hospital and we trekked up to the second floor along the same pathway that we would go on Wednesday morning for our official check-in.
     Nell is a tall lady, taller than me, which is saying something, and very slim. She is probably late 50's or so, with short blonde hair and glasses. To be honest, Nell kind of rubbed me the wrong way when I very first met her.
     My biggest fear with the c-section was that stupid epidural. I hated the idea of somebody sticking a big needle in my back and numbing me up so easily. Plus, I don't really take medications so I knew that the dosage they would give me was going to knock me down really easily. My second biggest fear was the Foley catheter. I work in healthcare, so I know what they do to get that stupid catheter in your bladder, and it's neither pretty or pleasant. When I told Nell I wasn't excited about that she said, "You'll be numb, it won't hurt!" I didn't give a hoot about the pain (I was going to do this all-natural in the first place, remember?) but I did care about my hoo-hah being out there for the whole dang room to see. Again, I work in healthcare and I realize that nobody in that room thinks twice about it, all bodies are really the same and eventually they all just blur together (unless you have a really interesting tattoo, then we might remember you), but still, this was my body.
      Anyways, we went over the whole procedure in which I sat in the rocker with Alex right beside me and the whole time I was rocking the chair. I didn't need to hear about the procedure, I knew enough about it to be nervous and could probably draw a flowchart about everything that was about to happen.
       "Is this an active baby?" Nell asked.
       "Yes," I responded without hesitation. In my gut, I really answered a hesitant "yeah, but...", but since I had already been scolded about being silly about the Foley I decided not to admit it.
        The rest of our meeting was pretty uneventful, I remember her handing me my pre-made chart and I signed away all the paperwork for the next morning. Nell escorted us out and told us she would stop by and say hello when she got to work the next day.

       After Kaitlyn passed, Nell and Gail (my main nurse that was training Morgan), came to see Alex and I. They had brought a very sweet card and offered their condolences and hugs. I felt bad about responding to Nell the way I had at first, and we'll just blame that on crazy pregnancy hormones.

       Back to the present: I was sitting in my car outside the hospital and I felt brave. I felt like I wanted to go up to the floor. I had been adamantly avoiding it every time I came to the hospital, but I felt like I wanted to go up there today.
       So, I went in by the ER just like Alex and I had. I got on the elevators and took them to the second floor. My heart was beating really fast just remembering when I had been there last. I stepped off the elevators, took a left and then a right: passed the family waiting room for the OR, and ended at the nurses' station where we had checked in for our meeting with Nell and also for the surgery.
       "Is Nell here today?" I asked the nurse at the desk.
       "Yes she is, she's in the break room."
       "Um... Can you tell her Amy M. is here? I'm a former patient of hers..." I had no idea if Nell would remember my name or not. I can tell you the name of every patient I have ever had a complication with, but I didn't know if she had seen so many people in her career that the worst ones don't stand out anymore.
         The nurse went over to a break room I had just passed and poked her head in the door. A few minutes later, Nell came out. I was relieved and nervous to see her.
         "Hi honey," she said as she gave me a big hug. "How are you?"
          I told her that I was doing okay. I was dressed in scrubs and I had to remind her (or tell her for the first time) that I was a vendor for the hospital and actually came to work there once a week or so. She was surprised to see me, but she was excited.
          "What are you doing to remember?" she asked as intertwined her fingers in front of her.
           "I write." I admitted. "I write a lot. I have a blog. I don't know if Gail shared it with you or not..." She kind of shrugged, but told me that was really good.
           "Gail's not here today, but I'll definitely tell her you came by. Carol is here, remember the CRNA that did your epidural?"
            I laughed a little and told her I would love to see Carol if she had time. She called over to Carol's phone and Carol was busy with a patient, so I would need to wait around. I had told Nell that I wanted to walk over to postpartum and see if Amy (my day nurse) was working, so she pointed me in the right direction and told me I would have to go back downstairs and walk through the lobby to get back to where we were standing (remember, this is a big L&D hospital so they have some tight security). I walked over to postpartum and watched as a family rolled their newborn down the hall. I felt sad, but I didn't cry.
             "Is Amy here today?" I asked another nurse at another nurse's station. Our room had been all the way down the left hall, the last door on the right. I thought about asking if I could walk down there and see the room, but I wasn't ready for that yet. I think it would have been too painful.
             "She's not, but can I help you with something?" the nurse asked. Me wearing scrubs was throwing everybody off.
             "Oh, no... I'm just... I'm a former patient of hers and I wanted to come say hi. I was here in September." I said kind of quietly.
              The nurse looked at me and said, "Were you in room 217?" I don't remember why I knew my room number, but I did. I slowly nodded my head and said, "Yeah."
              "She would want to hear from you, I'm sure she'll be sad she missed you." the nurse told me. "Would you like to leave her a note?"
               I nodded I would, and out came the stack of yellow post-its. I dug a pen out of my bag and scrawled out something like this:
              "Hi Amy,  I was in the hospital for work and just wanted to come by and say Hi and get a hug. I would love to hear from you sometime! Big hugs, Amy M., aka 217, aka Kaitlyn's Momma." (It was only when I got back to Nell's side of the hospital that I realized I left no way for her to get a hold of me.)
              I handed the post-it back to the nurse and got back on the elevators to go see Nell and Carol.

              Nell asked if Amy had been there, and I told her that I had left her a note. "That's good, she'll really enjoy reading that. We don't ever get to hear from our patients again unless they come here for another birth."
               "I know," I admitted. "In my last job I had a lot of patient follow-up, and its the thing I miss the most from that job to what I do now."
               Nell poked her head in one of the rooms as I waited across the hall (Privacy acts and all, and I didn't really want to get more than I came here for). After a few minutes, Carol came out. I didn't remember this, but she also has short hair and today she wore a sparkly headband. She was younger than Nell by maybe 5-10 years or so.
               "Hiiiii," she breathed as she gave me a big hug. "How are you?"
               "I'm doing okay," I said. I went through the same story as I had gone through with Nell about being in the hospital and just wanting to come say hi.
               "I thought about you so much and wondered how you were doing... You guys were just so strong, you and Alex (she called him by name without prompting), in the OR. I went home that night and told my husband you're story, I hope you don't mind."
                "I don't mind at all, you've got to talk about it." I reassured her.
                I told them about going to see Kate. And about having spots in my memory that I don't remember.
               "What do you want to know?" asked Nell.
               "Well, I don't really want to know anything else... I just..." I looked to Carol, "I didn't know they did CPR on her."
               "They did?" Nell asked, looking from me to Carol. Carol nodded.
               "I know, I don't understand why they did that." I said. Again, I've grown up around medicine and I know that if you have no clue how long someone has been down, there is a really slim chance that you are going to get them back. Plus, the fact that Kaitlyn's body had deteriorated so badly indicated that she had been down for a while because otherwise her body wouldn't have been in the state it was.
                "I think they just really wanted to be sure, they wanted to know they did everything they could," said Carol.
                 "Well, I just didn't understand it. But its okay. Your memory (I was talking to Carol) and Alex's memory of that day are very different from mine just because I couldn't see everything."
                 "Are you going to try again?" one of them asked.
                 "Oh yes, and I have an appointment with Dr. L next week. We'll definitely be back here," I told them.
                 "That's good to hear!" said Nell. "A lot of people don't want to come back after they've had a tragedy like this."
                 "Are you kidding me? I'm so glad I was here. I was so blessed to be at this hospital. I was surrounded by people who knew what they were doing and who had our best interest at heart. I'm so thankful to Gail for recommending NILMDTS, Mallie did some great pictures and those are something we will treasure for the rest of our lives," I said.
                 "Well, when you come back you can request the same team to take care of you..." Nell leaned over and kind of whispered to me like a conspirator.
                  "We will do that! For sure!" I smiled back at her.

                   At that point, I needed to get back to the Cath Lab to do my job (that's kind of important), so I hugged Nell and Carol goodbye and headed out of the L&D Department.