« Success | Main | Get Rich Quick Scheme »
March 30, 2006
The Day's Round Up
"You'll probably be done and good to go around 10.30am" turned into having the check-up chest ultrasound around 11am, and then waiting to get a chest x-ray at around 12.15pm. After that we had to wait for them to look at the x-ray pictures, and we didn't end up leaving until 3pm.
Hospitals are tedious places. And there's a distinct lack of access to decent and copius amounts of fresh tea (that doesn't involve going down to the daytime-only and super-overpriced café).
Sleep wasn't as easy to come by as I had thought, as there was a last minute addition to our side of the ward around 12.30am. The baby's mother was nice and loud while explaining at great (unnecessary) length about her daughter's medical history. Not that curtains really keep out much sound anyway, but it's not that hard to keep ones voice down a bit so that other people mere meters away can't hear your conversations verbatim. It was annoying because PreZ and I had already laid down on the fold out couch and were attempting to sleep in the darkened ward. The baby's parents had all walked past us to get to their curtain, so it's not like they hadn't seen that there were people next to them trying to sleep.
Then after all the doctors and nurses had finally left them alone, it was quiet enough to fall asleep, until Dashiell woke up around 3.45am and decided he'd be awake for a while. I can't blame him really as he'd slept through most of the day, and I have to give him big props because he was in a great happy mood, yet content to be fairly quiet and he didn't even try to roll over (which is usually something he does a lot and almost immediately upon noticing he's on his back), and he didn't complain about it either. So we spent some time cooing quietly back and forth, and he ate a bit too and played with his glow-in-the-dark toe* and various other cables that were stuck all over him, and I watched some Firefly on PreZ's Archos. At 7am or so he started nodding off again, and I attempted sleep once more.
Sadly, I had to wait a while, as the mother next door decided to start calling all kinds of friends and family to tell them they were in the hospital, and why, as well as that lengthy medical history replay again. Thankfully after two loud 10+ minute phone calls she stopped calling people. By now I could almost regurgitate everything she had said, having heard it several times. Finally she shut up and I could fall asleep again until PreZ woke me at around 9am. He was under the impression that things such as the echocardiogram and x-ray would be happening fairly shortly (as we'd been led to believe by the nurse), and that we should get up, shower and make sure our things were together so we could leave at 10.30. Which of course didn't happen, so my sleep was cut short for no good reason.
After all the echo and x-ray stuff I dozed a bit until it was time to leave and go get raped by the parking attendants for $35. And that included a reduced first-day hospital-patient rate of $10... I know it's Manhattan, but really, it's a hospital, it'd be nice if you didn't get price-gouged when your kid is in the hospital.
We got home at around 4pm finally, and ate something. At 6pm we were all in bed asleep, though I was up sometime after 9 because Dashiell woke up. PreZ got up for a little bit at midnight, fiddled with some stuff, and went back to sleep. Dashiell had some catnaps and kept waking up every time I decided to go back to bed. So here I sit with a movie playing in the background at almost 5am. sigh. At least the little trooper is okay and he was stellar througout the whole hospital ordeal.
*They attach a blood-oxygenation monitor to a big toe, which is essentially a bright red light that gets taped onto the toe. In the dim light of a hospital ward, a bright red toe is a fascinating toy for someone who likes to play with their own feet.
Posted on 06:22 AM to: Dashiell