Feb. 17, 2008 - An End and A Beginning - part 1

January 31, 2002
Letter #6 - An End and A Beginning

Dear Friends and Family,
So much has happened since I wrote you last.  Our little one has finally made his appearance into the world, bringing to an end a most incredibly trying period of our lives.

December 31 at 3:00am, I was in the emergency room at Beaufort Memorial Hospital.  However, this time it wasn't me who was the patient.  Russ was lying in the bed beside me, writhing in pain while waiting on a promised morphine injection.  He had been taken there by ambulance after awakening with pain in his lower right abdomen so strong that he was unable to walk to the car.  Initially everyone thought it was his appendix but tests and x-rays revealed the true culprit of his pain to be a kidney stone.  Russell, as most of you know, is not one to succumb to pain very quickly. (My husband's favorite motto is "pain is weakness leaving the body.") He also rarely needs a doctor and had never been hospitalized.  It is an irony that follows the tradition of the rest of our pregnancy that the week his body fails him is the same week we have scheduled the cordecentisis to check our baby's platelet levels and possibly deliver him.

Russ was released from the ER with prescriptions for heavy pain medication and instructions on coping until his stone passed.  No problem.  We went home at 7:30am and slept until noon.  The rest of this New Year's Eve went rather uneventfully.  We made plans with friends to spend New Year's Day together. But New Year's Day, I had to call them to cancel; Russ' pain medication was not working so we returned to the hospital.  This time, they admitted him so they could give him fluids and intravenous pain medication.  Morphine was his new best friend.

On Wednesday, the 2nd, the urologist gave permission for Russ to be discharged from the hospital the next morning in order to go to Charleston with me for the cordecentisis.  To manage his pain, they gave him a shot of pain medication right before he left the hospital; to last him six hours, after which he could take the prescription medications he had been given.  My neighbor Pat was to accompany Russ and I to Charleston in case I couldn't drive home after the procedure or I had to stay overnight.

The next morning at 7am, Russ, Pat and I headed for Charleston.  I was supposed to have been fasting since midnight just in case surgery was needed; being pregnant and fasting do not go well together. On the way to Charleston, I had one solitary saltine in order to ward off increasing nausea caused by not eating.  After checking into the hospital, to my dismay, that single saltine had the anesthesiologist very concerned so he delayed my procedure for six hours in order for it to clear my stomach.  At the time, this was a big inconvenience for everyone.  Later we would find out that it was a very good thing I had admitted to having that saltine.

Russ' intitial shot of pin medication wore off far sooner than the six hours they had promised. He took percoset and phenergan and slept most of the day.  Because of the six hour delay, my procedure had to be fit in among all the other things being done in the labor & delivery operating room that day.  After being bumped several times by emergency c-sections, we were finally going to have the procedure done at 5:00pm.  I was told I would have to stay overnight for observation.  So, at that point, I sent my neighbor and my very drugged and tired husband home.  At 5pm, the nurse came in to give me pre-op medication in case there were complications with the procedure which required  emergency c-section.  I was assured they would come get me in fifteen minutes.  Forty-five minutes later, my nurse came in and informed me that they would not be doing the procedure and that my doctor would come tell me why.

The story unfolded:  The doctor coming on duty at shift change was reviewing my chart and asked how many units of platelets they had for the baby in case he had to be delivered because of a low platelet count.  Apparently her words were met with questioning stares.  Everyone had been so optimistic that my treatments would work and the baby would be fine that they hadn't thought to order platelets just in case.  Woops!  Had I not told them about the saltine, they would have gone ahead and done my procedure, not thinking about the fact that they didn't have platelets.  The platelet type we needed is so rare they don't store it at the blood banks.  Donors have to be called each time the platelets are needed. The closest donors were in Charlotte, NC and that week Charlotte was under a terrible winter storm.  There would be no platelets until Monday.  I was released from the hospital Friday morning with instructions to come back Monday.

Saturday, January 5th and Sunday, January 6th were the only two days out of the first eleven days of the new year that our family did not have a member in the hospital.  Monday morning at 10am, I was taken to the operating room for my cordecentisis.  Russ was still on heavy medication because he had not yet passed his kidney stone; I told him not to worry about sitting through the procedure with me because I would be heavily sedated and wouldn't know he was there anyway.  In truth, I don't remember a thing from the time they put the sedatives in my IV until I wokke up after the procedure.  My doctor said they were just waiting for the platelet count to come back from the lab and they would "let me out of there."

 ...up next - part two: birth and beyond