Okay, I'm not sure I HATE the hospital, but there are many things that make me very unexcited to end up there at the end of my pregnancy! Hospital food, dry yellow jello, hospital gowns, complex patterned curtains, and IVs of course. These are some of the things that bothered me as an 11 year old in the hospital.
The day after my 11th birthday, we found out I had an acoustic neuroma, which is a benign tumor that grows on the balance nerve, and mine had grown to touching my hearing nerve, which gave me hearing loss. (To read more about acoustic neuroma, visit the House Ear Clinic website). Needless to say, this discovery made my 11th birthday OFFICIALLY the worst birthday ever.
So as soon as school was out in June, my parents and I, with one set of grandparents (the other stayed with my sister), set out for LA's House Ear Clinic and St. Francis Hospital. The first thing on May 13th that had sent me into a crying fit was the fact that we would have to go to LA for my surgery. I just didn't get it, why couldn't my ENT in Santa Barbara just do this? Well, my ENT had done his doctoral thesis on acoustic neuroma, and Dr. Brackmann at House Ear happens to be #2 in the world (with #1 being in Switzerland). So here I was in LA, in a hospital room with my mom, waiting to be wheeled back into surgery. Gowns. Here is why I don't like hospital gowns. I had to put on a gown (it was huge on me, btw) and take off my panties, now what 11 year old understands that? To me it was just creepy (what I didn't understand is I was having a incision under my panty line...which is now maybe 2 inches above my bikini line thank you general surgeon who told me no one would ever see your 2 inch scar you gave me gotta love fashion...to take out fat from my abdomen to put in the hole the neurosurgeon Dr. Heitzelberger was going to make in my head where the tumor was now)!
The second thing that I was terrified of was the haircut I was going to be getting. Dr. Brackmann had showed us horrible pictures of a haircut another young girl had had, and, going into 6th grade and a new middle school in the fall, I was beside myself. Luckily, I was having a translabyrinthine approach, which would leave me with no hearing in my right ear and no balance nerve (but also less of a chance of facial paralysis), but because the incision was behind my ear, I could have a less obvious hair cut. And the fact that I could cover up my incision and haircut with a low pony tail, I have to thank my anesthesiologist and surgical nurse Jocelyn! When she came back and visited me in ICU recovery, she said she actually got in trouble from Dr. Brackmann and Dr. Heitzelberger for how little hair she shaved off! Yep, she was definitely my favorite person I met at the hospital!
Because I did not like my ICU nurses. First, I wake up from a 5 hour plus surgery, and they try to give me ICE CREAM! Yup, puked it up. Then, they tried to give me yellow jello, which was kind of dry and hard on the edges. Now, if you know the Jones', you know, we ONLY eat red jello! So of course when mom and dad came in, they had the nurses searching the whole hospital for red jello (none=hospital fail...I think I will ask Auntie Wendy to make me some and bring it to me when I have this baby). But really what the nurses and my parents wanted me to do was to SMILE. Yep, hi you've just woken up and feel like a drugged hippo, but SMILE!!! Ok, I smiled, no facial paralysis, now I'm not going to smile any more (I actually told my mom this) because, I am not happy! And I love my family btw, my grandparents came and visited me in the ICU of course, and my moms BFF (also my BFFs mother) Leslie happened to be in town, so mom told the nurses she was my aunt so she could come in and see me:)
All this, and I still had a catheter in. Nope, this will not be happening when I have a baby. If, at age 11, I can threaten an ICU nurse well enough that she believes that I will pull the catheter out myself and get her to take it out, and then manage to go to the bathroom with only one balance nerve (think drunkest drunk you have ever seen), I can do anything. Except convince the nighttime nurse that my mom can come visit more than once. Ugh, I still think about how mean she was!!! My parents and grandparents were staying at a little condo type thing that was across the street (or through a tunnel) to the hospital, so the nurse told me she would call them to come once during the night. Worst night of my life. I was all alone with beeping machines and it wasn't even dark enough to sleep, AND oh yeah I was thirsty (as I had been all day) beyond all belief!!! And all I could have was ice chips!!! So not satisfying!
The next day I was moved to a regular recovery room, where I could have visitors, and my mom could stay on a cot bed with me all night (and Pa Jack would bring her coffee every morning), and I could have water and hospital food. It was here I realized, I have an IV stuck in my hand!!! I was very thankful that the IV was not in the crook of my arm, where I wouldn't have been able to bend my elbow without pain, but instead was in the "webbing" between my right thumb and first finger. So as Dr. Brackmann came and saw me, he wanted me up and walking around to learn to walk again, so there I was in my soccer shorts and t-shirt (it was summer in LA with no AC, it was HOT, I slept cuddling an ice pack every night) and I was pushing an IV stand. Boo. But apparently me walking was entertaining for others. As I "walked", crossing my feet in front of each other thinking I was going straight, I was dizzy and just wanted to stop, but there had been a 14 year old girl Caroline who also had surgery the same day as I did, and she was in the room next door, and we were having walking competitions to see who could go around the nurses station the most times. I think I won. Ha. Eventually, on like day 3, they unhooked the IV and made it a heparin lock, meaning they left the needle in incase I stopped eating or drinking, but I wasn't hooked into an IV any more. But I still had to sit there and watch blood creep up that 3 inch tube on my hand.
To pass time those like five days in the hospital, we watched World Cup soccer and the little TV in Spanish, trying not to look at the curtains in the room, which were some Aztec-y pattern that could not possibly be good for a dizzy person learning to balance again!!! Courtney came down with Grandma Deane and Pa Ray to visit, and Grandma helped me order all of my hospital meals for the week. I wasn't big on the food, so Grandma Alice would bring me things like quesadillas and noodles with butter, and pickles...but the day the nurse took away my pickle before I was done eating it, I cried. I think I had like 30 of my beanie babies there with me in the room, and Courtney and I learned to make those little popular beaded geckos from Emily, Caroline's little sister. The day I got my huge awkward head bandage over my ear removed, Uncle Brian, Auntie Wendy, Ryan, Adam, and Stevie came to visit me! Highlight of my hospital stay!
All in all, this is why I am not looking forward to going to the hospital, even if it is a good place to have a baby. I'm going to be asking my OB and my insurance when I can check in to have to spend the least amount of time there. So any positive hospital stories, send them my way, please. #inneedofencouragement
Sorry that you had to go through that. You were quite brave. I am happy to hear the whole story! I remember when my mom told me about it back then, but didn't know any of the details. You were in my thoughts and prayers.
ReplyDeleteWishing you luck with your next BIG trip to the hospital.