Hospital Tales

Time for another round of tedious titillating tales from the bogan extraordinaire! This week we are telling our hospital tales.

I must admit I am extremely fortunate in that I have never been in hospital for any serious life threatening reason. Unless you count the time 15 years ago when I was admitted into hospital for suspected appendicitis which actually turned out to be the wrong diagnosis. In fact, what I had was ovarian hyer-stimulation or some such thing (I forget what the technical term is) - a nasty and potentially dangerous side effect from the fertility drugs I was taking at the time.

There is nothing quite like being wheeled into surgery looking and feeling like utter crap only to have your High School nemesis suddenly appear as one of the theatre staff beaming at you in the same utterly patronising way you remember from years gone by.

"You've lost all your hair!" she exclaimed as if I was bald instead of just having short hair. Luckily they knocked me out with the anaesthetic shortly after that and ended the pain of that reunion as well as the ovarian pain.

Other than that incident I've only been in hospital for day procedures to have wisdom teeth extracted and to investigate my fertility issues during my 20's. Can you believe I ever had fertility issues? Yeah, I can't either! I've also had a tubal ligation a few years ago so I don't have to think about contraception anymore. In spite of this, I STILL worry that I may fall pregnant. Everything about pregnancy has been completely bizarre for me so I worry that I would be that one in a billion bizzarro person who couldn't fall pregnant for love nor money while I was still young and in my 20's even with fertility drugs but might fall pregnant now in my 40's despite having had a tubal ligation. I'm not paranoid AT ALL.

My only other trips to hospital were when I had my babies. The worst of them was when I had a still-birth experience in 2007. I've never really written about it because it's hard to find the words to describe something like that.  The birth had to be induced and I was awake for it and felt all the pain of a normal birth. When I changed my mind after declining the pethidene shot for several hours, the midwife, who was obviously due to finish her shift, got all huffy and slammed the door when she went out to get it. I know nurses and midwives are over worked and underpaid but I imagine that if it was a contest as to who was having the worst day that day I would have won. A bit of empathy, please. The only consolation was seeing the baby and being able to say goodbye to him.

Another memorable hospital experience was when Micky Blue Eyes was diagnosed with Cancer. He had to have a blood transfusion immediately as he was severely anaemic and losing blood. He was joking around and saying that maybe he should become a vampire and drink it because it would be quicker! Meanwhile, I had to leave my squeamishness at the door and get over myself very quickly. Then the surgeon came in to describe what he was going to do and it all sounded rather gruesome  It seemed that he was going to slice the bejesus out of him. Long story but we ended up changing surgeons and he had a specialist colo-rectal surgeon and I'm SO GLAD we did. Nine years later he's still here to tell the tale.

Me and Mr 5 when he was brand new.

Fortunately, after the still birth in 2007 I was pregnant again the following year. I had decided to change obstetricians because I was slightly uncomfortable with my former female obstetrician's rather blunt and straight forward beside manner. She was no Nina Proudman. Although that's possibly a good thing when you think about it. Isn't Nina just a little too neurotic to be a obstetrician? And doesn't she have rather too many complicated daydreams about her love life when she's supposed to be delivering babies? But this post isn't supposed to be about Offspring. Oops. Back to my point...

When the day rolled around and it was decided that I had to have an emergency c-section due to my alarmingly high blood pressure my obstetrician was away and the back up one was also away that day - so who did I end up with? You guessed it. Ms Blunt who expertly cut me open and delivered my baby (now Mr 5), tiny but breathing. That was all I was concerned with. Then, with her usual bluntness she cornered me, which wasn't very difficult considering I was completely numb from the waist down from the epidural thingy. I certainly wasn't going anywhere.

"How many more babies are you going to have? she barked.

"None," I replied "this is it."

"GOOD!" was her emphatic response "You were just lucky this time."

Thanks for the information, love.

I have to admit I did feel lucky. And I still do every day when I look at my boys.

Linking up with Kirsty from My Home Truths for I Must Confess. 

                                                    What are your hospital tales?