Part 2 of the Horror Story

So, I had a bad delivery right and things should be good now right? Well after the delivery, I started to get this horrible headache. They told me that they had given me enough medicine to last 24 hours, but could give me some morphine if needed. Well, not that my cut hurt, but my head was hurting. So, I asked for the morphine. Wouldn't you know it, the tubing in my IV got clogged again or something. No big deal, another new tube and we are on our way. I stayed on my pain meds as much as I possible could, but mostly for this headache. Monday night it hit. I was so nauseated and my head was killing. Machel ordered a shot in the hip for the nausea and Ted came in to assess whether I had a spinal headache. Luck would have it and as Ted said, "I'm not surprised, you have the spinal headache. There are two options. One is the passive treatment. You stay on your pain meds and drink lots of caffeine OR we can do a blood patch. Where we take blood from your arm and put it into the spine to seal up that leak." Hmmm...let me think about this...I'll take option 1. There's no way I was going to let them stick another needle into my back. In the mean time, my pulse was high and I had a bit of fever, so they had to draw blood to make sure I didn't have an infection. My legs were as swollen as a hippo and supposedly my blood count was really really low, so Machel ordered an Iron supplement for me. A couple of hours later, Dr. Naisbett comes in and says that the hospital doesn't have any Iron supplements and canceled the order. WHAT? Seriously? What kind of hospital is this? He told me to just take prenatals when I get home. Tuesday, my head felt fine, but there was this constant ringing in my ears, which soon developed to a load thumping noise and everything anyone said, echoed in my ears. It was horrible! So, on Wed. morning bright and early, I decided to do the blood patch. I was suppose to go home that day, and thought to myself "there's no way, I'm going to be able to care for my girls if I have this headache." I told the nurse at 6:00 am and she said she paged the anesthesiologist. At 8:00, the nurse came in and was like packing our stuff. Not really, but she sure was in a hurry to get us discharged. She couldn't believe the anesthesiologist hadn't been in yet, so she paged him again and said he was in surgery and he would be in at 10:00 am to do the procedure. Waiting for the horror of it all dragged on forever. 10:00 came, 12:00 came, 1:00 came, and he still hadn't shown up. Finally at 2:00 he came in to do the procedure. I ask him what are the risks of this procedure and he says, "Well, your situation is a bit different. Because when Ted hit your spinal, normally fluid leaks into the catheter and that's how you know you hit the spinal. But, that didn't happen with you. SO, it's very possible that I could put blood into your spinal fluid, you could get an infection, be paralyzed, and he listed about 5 other concerns." So, with that in mind, he says, "Ok. Should we try and do this thing? Well, let's not try, let's do." Already shaking and nervous, now I was about in tears. How in the world could I let this guy "try"? Yeah, I started crying instantly. It took him several jabs and he kept saying what Ted said, "I can't seem to find it" and he said "I'm going really slow so we don't have any problems." and finally my favorite, "I just can't find it, I'm going to have to have you sit up." That's when I thought to myself, if I sit up, this procedure is over. Just then he found it, and they drew blood from my arm and it was finally over! I laid on my back for an hour. The headache did not go away. Since I was laying flat, I asked the nurse to take out my staples since we were being discharged any way. I ask her, before doing anything, "is this going to hurt?" "no, you might feel a pinch, but nothing compared to what you just went through." BOY, was she wrong! She goes to take out the first one and I yelled and screamed. Then the second one, again even worse. And then the third one, I couldn't take it any more. I said, "I thought you said, this wouldn't hurt!" She said, "they just don't seem to want to come out. It's this tool. Let me go get another one." So, she comes back with a brand new "tool" and again pinched me to death. Brad instantly jumps up and comes over. After looking at the "tool" and what the girl was doing, (seriously...maybe 2 seconds) he says, "you're using them up side down." So, instead of losing the staples, she was crimping them down tighter. She flips the tool over and takes out the other staples. I didn't feel a thing...when she was using the tool right. But, what about the 3 or 4 staples that she had already tightened. She couldn't get them out. I felt her shaking as she kept trying. Finally I said, "Can we maybe take a break for a minute?" She says, "yes" and leaves the room. About ten minutes later, she comes back in with another nurse who says they are going to give me a shot to numb the area so they can get the other staples out. And there you have it! Part 2 of the Horror story. Not to mention other little things like the pain meds that they scan, 2 of them didn't have bar codes on them so they couldn't scan them and when they were taking blood from my arm for the blood patch, they couldn't find a "wet" swab to sanitize the area. They were all dry. I think they opened like 3 or 4 swabs, before they found one that was wet. The last nurse says, "I don't know what it is about this room." So...either the room is jinxed or I have really really bad luck. You decide.