and granted me a private room...
As I sat yesterday afternoon, listening to my roommate yell into her telephone, "Grandma, turn your hearing aid UP!" and bitching at her husband to bring her two double cheeseburgers from McDonald's (yes, this is the woman whose elevated blood pressure is threatening her with seizure, coma and death, the pre-eclampsia trifecta---enjoy those fries, dumbass), an angelic faced nurse, wearing the same scented body lotion as my mother wears, appeared from the other side of my curtain and asked in a lilting voice, "Would you like a private room?"
Stunned silence. Private? No roommate? No yelling? No constant phone-dialing and incessant rambling? No listening to someone whose been on bedrest for 4 f*cking days complain about feeling like a "caged animal" and calling her doctors office three times an hour to get permission to go outside in a wheelchair? Could it be true???? Could the universe be so kind to me?
Indeed it was. It is. I am now in Hotel High Risk---my own private room; far, far away from the sodium-guzzling preeclamptic and her deaf granny. Sigh. Even the wheel-chair ride over to the room was pure joy. I had not been so far as the hallway in 9 days. The nurse pushed the chair fast enough that my hair even blew back a bit. I can't describe the rush. It's that great and that pathetic at the same time!
My room is fabulous, as hospital rooms go. It is a smaller version of the other room, which means it can't possibly make room for another guest--I am here alone, for the duration. It is unspeakably blissful.
My own private bathroom, which is a very big deal for a pregnant lady in a hospital. Yesterday, before learning of my new room, I had to text-message husband to bring Clorox bleach wipes with him when he came to visit because the roommate had been allowing all manner of visitors to use our shared bathroom--even though it clearly says, "PATIENT RESTROOM ONLY" on the door. Fortunately, I did not require the use of the newly-annointed public bathroom before being wisked away to my new home.
It did boggle my mind, though; do people not realize there is a reason why women running the risk of preterm labor are in the hospital??!!! To avoid infections, dumb-ass! That is why I endured 5 days of IV antibiotics in my "dainty" veins and now take a gigantic industrial-strength antibiotic pill daily--I'm not going to negate all that by sharing my bathroom with the general public and all their germs. This isn't Starbucks, people...I shouldn't have to cop a squat in my own bathroom. Ha, as if I could cop a squat anymore---I lost that ability at about 5 months into the pregnancy.
As if I needed the extra nod of approval from the powers that be, I was given my first dose of terbutaline in pill form last night with dinner and experienced a beautifully contraction-free night of silence and peace...no bee-sting shot in the arm, no phone ringing, no roommate snoring, no toilet flushing while I was sleeping, no nurse coming in to wake someone else up for vital signs.
And now, I can listen to television or music without headphones. I can sit and talk to my baby without anyone thinking I'm a loon--I was seriously fretting that the little man wouldn't recognize my voice considering how much of my day I spend silent---now I can chatter away like a crazy person in my private room and the baby will know who I am when he comes out. And that, of course, is what all of this is about....
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