Yesterday 8 of the 34 channels the hospital had been providing vanished because DirecTV changed their rates. I was already bummed on Monday night to discover that they didn't have TNT (I had planned to watch the Closer at 9pm), but then yesterday channels I had been watching (ex. Hallmark and TVLand) were discontinued. Bummer! Regina, I can't do any shopping online as the hospital has all "shopping" sites blocked (eBay, Amazon, Target, Etsy, Money Saving Mom, etc.). They also have blocked Pinterest (they say it's a dating site?!?), online games (I thought I'd pass the time playing word games like Boggle), and streaming media sites (You tube, Netflix, etc.). At least they haven't blocked Blogger or Facebook like the first hospital I stayed in did. I read one book on Sunday, two books on Monday, and two books on Tuesday, but yesterday I had a hard time getting interested in reading although I had three books left. This is a bad combination to lose channels on the tv that I had been watching plus to lose interest in reading. Hopefully it's just that the two books I started reading yesterday weren't really my cup of tea and I'll get back into reading when Paul brings me fourteen more library books tomorrow.
It's a shame I don't have a hobby like knitting because I could accomplish quite a bit given all the time I spend in a hospital bed these days! I'm just not the artsy/craftsy type. I recently made a photo book, and not many pictures have been taken lately since I've been in the hospital so much. A photo book would have been a good project for me to work on during this hospital stay. That is one of the things I really have been missing lately - taking pictures of the kids with my camera. Photography has become one of my favorite hobbies, although I have SO much room for growth and improvement. I'm sure I'll be taking lots of pics in September once Oliver and I come home from the hospital. Paul is bringing me a radio tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to that because although they don't block K-Love, it often freezes up so it's difficult to listen to music through my computer in this hospital. The quiet really bothers me since I'm used to the noise of two little kids. Having music on in the background will be greatly appreciated.
Yesterday at 4pm they gave me another steroid shot since it had been 4 weeks since I had the last set, and they are only effective for 2 weeks. I had the second shot at 4am this morning; that's also when they started up the iv again as I'm not allowed to eat or drink anything after 4am. Normally they wait 24 hours in between the shots, but my transfusion has been scheduled for 1pm so there wasn't time to wait 24 hours. They did try to schedule it for 9am, but the blood bank said they couldn't be ready that early. 9am would have been awesome, but 1pm is better than 5pm (although it was technically scheduled for 3pm last time). It's still hard to skip breakfast and lunch, especially while pregnant. I don't usually eat anything between dinner and bedtime, but last night I went and got a bag of popcorn and some vanilla ice cream from the lounge around 8:30pm. At 3:00am I had some cereal. Hopefully this will hold off the hunger pangs as long as possible. I think my stomach has growled more over the past 6 weeks than any time in my life. I had planned to take an Ambien at 11pm with my Procardia because last time I couldn't sleep after the steroid shot, but I hadn't had trouble sleeping between 9:30-11:00pm so I decided to skip it. Unfortunately I woke up at 12:30am and could NOT go back to sleep - hence part of the reason I was up eating cereal at 3am. I asked the nurse for an Ambien with the second steroid shot at 4am. It didn't help at all. I'm functioning on at most 3 hours of sleep, and the bad news is that I won't be getting more than that tonight since I'll be undergoing 24 hour monitoring in L&D tonight.
The nurse and aide who were on duty when I was bleeding last Friday night were on duty yesterday. They hadn't seen me since Friday. The nurse described the bleeding as "horrific," and the aide said, "I've never seen so much blood before in my life." It was pretty scary for me also, but actually I lost more blood on May 30 than I did on July 6. I wish that Paul was able to come down to the hospital today. Dads are allowed to be in the OR during this procedure (unless general anesthesia is used). His advisor is out of town, but he didn't feel like he could come down since he won't be getting much (if any) work done tomorrow since he's picking up the kids at his parents' house and then coming down to visit me. It's just hard for me (emotionally) to go into an operating room knowing no family members are there in the hospital with me. Last time the transfusion itself only took 17 minutes (albeit I was in the OR for about an hour). They said it went as smoothly as possible because Oliver was in a great position. His bottom was on part of the umbilical cord, which helped to hold it in place after they partially paralyzed him. Hopefully it will go just as smoothly today. I'm also hoping that I can hold it together better emotionally. I cried off and on for a good 3 hours the last time. At least I'm not wearing contacts today, like I was last time. I have been emotional since they told me I wasn't coming home so I have just been wearing glasses since Monday because contacts and tears are a very bad combination. Today is day #20 of being hospitalized since May 30. Twenty days down and at the most 57 more days to go. I just need to take it one day at a time.
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