A Postcard From the Edge.....

A funny thing happens when you are on bed rest for an extended period of time...you slowly lose your mind.  It may sound funny and some of my story is funny...but in then end I know I took a temporary leave of my faculties and its not a place I ever want to go to again.

~~~

On my first day in the hospital, Dr. Greene decided that I should take a test for gestational diabetes.  I explained to him that I had a test done less than two weeks ago and that I had a clean bill of health.  But Dr. Greene insisted and I had to drink a sugary soda like substance.  Now here’s the thing.  When I took the test two weeks earlier, my womb was filled with amniotic fluid and I could feel the baby having a great time on a sugar high.  This time there was no fluid...and the baby was kicking fiercly...and there was no fluid buffering the kicks.  I laid there in pain for two hours waiting for the kicking to stop.  My child was literally kicking my ass from the inside out.  All the nurses could do was hold my hand and tell me they were sorry and assure me that Dr. Greene was the top doctor in world when it came to gestational diabetes.  Turns out that part was true, but that doesn’t excuse him from being a jackass.  When the test came back it showed no signs of gestational diabetes...just like I said.

~~~

I was at Mass General for over 30 days waiting for my baby to make her big debut.  And I had nothing but time on my hands.  Time to spare, loads of time, time to burn...just time...alone.
At first I tried to keep busy.  I made huge lists of what the doctors would tell me.  That way any visitor coming to see me could read it and keep up with what my doctors were saying.  It helped fill my time, and it got old having to repeat the same information over and over again, every day.  And when there was more news, I updated the list.

I had a great view of the Charles River.  It was nice watching the cars dart back and forth on Storrow and Memorial drive.  I’d see people making their way around.  It was January and it was cold.  I found that late in the day when the temperature drops, the Charles River freezes into a solid sheet of ice.  When the sun rises the next morning and the river defrosts, the ice breaks apart in perfect squares.  I thought that was kind of odd and spent a lot of time thinking about it, after all I had nothing better to do.  When I would redo my lists I would doodle squares in the margins of the paper.

~~~

There are certain things you figure out when you are in the hospital for such a long time.  One of the things I will never forget is the ketchup.  Lets say you would like to order a cheese burger and fries for lunch.  When your lunch gets there, you only get one ketchup.  So you have to decide.  Will the ketchup go on the burger?  Or the fries?  Sure you can ask the lunch lady if you can have another ketchup, but one of three things will happen.  One...she’ll forget.  Two...She’ll remember, but she will bring the ketchup after your lunch is cold.  Or three...she’ll remember and bring you the ketchup after your tray has been cleared away.

So just to be sure I always had a spare ketchup I started ordering ketchup with each meal.  And I would tuck it away in my nightstand in the event I would have some ketchup related emergency.

About three weeks into my stay, my then husband brought me some magazines he thought I would like.  “I’m just going to put them in your nightstand.”  Imagine his surprise when he opened my the drawer to see 60 packets each of ketchup, mustard, salt and pepper.  He took some ketchup in his hands and was in complete disbelief, “Soni, why do you have so many...”
He never finished the sentence before I went absolutely ballistic.  “Those are mine!!  You can’t have them!!  They’re for me!!  Put them back!  PUT THEM BACK NOW!!!  THEY’RE MINE!!!!”

My life had gone on without me.  And I was sitting in a hospital room and I had control over NOTHING.  Nothing except the ketchup.  If I saved the ketchup packets, that was something in my control.  I think it was pretty obvious that I was losing my mind.

~~~

One of the saddest things I saw happened on my way to an ultrasound.  An orderly came to take me to my test.  My room was all the way at the end of the hall.  As he wheeled me down the hall I peeked into everyone’s room.  Room after room was exactly the same.  In each room, a single solitary pregnant woman sat in her bed and stared out the window.  And I knew when my test was over and I was taken back to my room, I would assume the same position and look out the window like all those other women and watch my life go on without me.

~~~

It really wasn’t a long jump from ketchup hording to all out delusional.  

I would sit in my room and stare at things.  Stare out the window.  Stare at the TV.  Stare at the floor and count the tiles.  Stare at the wall paper.  It was pretty, very light pink stripes with a swirly border at the ceiling.  I made a joke once that the stripes were like prison bars and the swirly border was like barbed wire.  I would think about how much I wanted to go home and how I couldn’t  because I was sick.  And then it turned into how I wanted to go home but couldn’t because they would say no.  And finally, I wanted to go home, but they wouldn’t let me leave.  And it didn’t help that I was in a locked ward.  You needed to hit a buzzer to get in or out.

Because I am naturally a silly person, I spent my days thinking up escape plots.  I got a lot of amusement out of it.  I think I started after I saw a movie with Clint Eastwood in it and how he and a few others escaped from a prison, it may have been Alcatraz.  I would think about tying the sheets together and repelling down the side of the building.  Or hiding among the linens.

While I was in the hospital, the only time I was allowed to get out of bed was to take a shower or use the toilet.  Those were big field trips for me.  One morning I took a shower and when I opened the closet to get a fresh set of pajamas I noticed a bag.  My mom had brought back my clothes from the night my water broke.  I had clean clothes, socks, panties...everything.  Hmmmmm.....then I checked my coat pockets.  I found my house keys and $5.  That was enough for a train ride to my town and a cab ride home.

I was giddy!  I was finally going to leave.  I climbed into bed and hatched my plan.  I would wait until 5:00pm to change my clothes.  The floor got busy after 5:00 because that’s when visitors would start arriving.  I would get dressed, keep my head down and walk out as someone was walking in.

I remember I was fully dressed and I was putting on my coat when I heard a familiar voice,
“Soni....what are you doing?”

I was busted.  My mother, godmother and god-sister were standing at the door.  

“I got tired of wearing pajamas, so I thought I’d get dressed for a little while”

My god-sister was very gentle.  She told me she understood.  And said “Let’s get back into bed.”  I slinked back into bed, defeated.  It wasn’t long until the whole family knew of my botched escape attempt.  My brother in law said he could imagine the headline in his head “Crazy Woman Escapes MGH to Give Birth on Train.”  My mother left that night with my keys and my $5.  

Traitor.

~~~

It was a weekend and I had a new nurse.  She had gotten the idea in her head that I would benefit from a trip to the NICU, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  There was a very high chance that my baby would have to spend some time in the NICU and Nurse Ratchet felt I would benefit from visiting the NICU so I would know what to expect.  I told her that I didn’t think it was a good idea.  I didn’t much enjoy visiting the ICU to visit a dying adult, now I have to see dying babies?  I didn’t thing it would be good for me to see sick babies.  She just stood there and smiled and said ok.

During the day she managed to get my husband alone and explained to him that I would benefit from a trip to the NICU.  Knowing that I didn’t want to go, he caved, he took her side.  The two of them ganged up on me and told me how it would be good for me to see the NICU.  Next think I know, I’m in a wheel chair and we’re on our way.

I saw things that no expectant mother should ever see.

I saw babies that were no bigger than the palm of my hand.  I saw babies that were so covered in tubes and wires, that all you could see of them was a foot or maybe a finger.  I saw babies who could only breath with the help of a machine.  I saw that the nurses station had baptismal robes behind the desk in case a baby had to be baptized before it died.  I saw mothers sitting in rocking chairs, staring glassy eyed and stone faced at incubators.

I started to notice that it was really hot in the NICU, I was sweating and I was having trouble breathing.

Another nurse joined us.  Nurse Ratchet says “This is the patient I was telling you about.”  They wheeled me over to an incubator to show me a baby who was born at 26 weeks.  He looked like a potato wrapped in a blanket, he didn’t even look human.  And then he opened his eyes and it was like I was looking at a dead baby who suddenly opened its eyes.

The room started spinning.  I couldn’t even speak, I could only make a bleating noise.  All Nurse Ratchet could say was “Doesn’t he look great?”  At least the other nurse realized I was not doing well and asked if I was ok...I couldn’t answer her.  She turned to my husband and asked “Does she speak English?”

“JUST GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!”

The nurses kept telling me to calm down and that everything would be ok.  

“GET ME OUT OF HER NOW OR I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL WALK OUT!”

All I got was more cooing that it would be ok.  I stood up out of my wheel chair and ripped the IV out of my arm and walked out leaving a trail of amniotic fluid and blood behind me.

The ward was locked.

“OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR YOU BITCH!!!”

The trip back to my hospital room was filled with apologies.  I laid in my bed looking out the window at my frozen Charles River.  I was so angry with my husband for not taking my side.  I know what I can handle and what I can’t.  He sided with a nurse and not his wife.  I couldn’t even look at him.  I just stared at the river and told him to get the hell out.  

Then I sobbed for two hours.

After I calmed down a bit Nurse Ratchet was back, “I’m sorry, I thought you could handle it.”

“I told you I didn’t want to go, I told you it was a bad idea but you didn’t listen to me.  NOW GET THE FUCK OUT!!”

~~~

The next morning, the attending physician came to see me.  Every week there was a different doctor who did rounds.  He was the first doctor I saw when I entered the hospital a month earlier.  And now he was back on rounds.  I had made it all the way back to the top of the rotation.

“Hi Mrs. McNair.  How are you today?”
“I want to go home.”
“Oh I understand, for women on bed rest it can be very frustrating to spend so much time in the hospi....”
“No, you’re not listening to me.  I’m not a prisoner here.  I know my rights.  I’m going home today.  Please bring me my discharge papers.  I’m signing myself out and I’m going home.”

I had never seen a doctor look so panicked in my life.

“Please.  Just give me 10 minutes, just 10 minutes!”

“FIVE!”

And that man ran down the hall like a bat out of hell.  And I was crazy enough to time him.  It was 4 minutes and 26 seconds.  He was back with the head of nursing and the head of Obstetric Psychiatry.  Apparently there is a whole school of psychiatry dedicated soley to pregnant women.

For the next 45 minutes I basically heard pleading, “What can we do to make you stay?”  “How about a weekend pass”  “How about time with a therapist?”  They tried everything to make me stay.  And finally I gave in, “I will stay if I can go home on weekends otherwise I am outta here!”  They promised that they would do everything they can to plead my case to the rest of obstetrics.  After all, I was there for over a month.  I had gone through 4 roommates.  I was there longer than any other patient currently on the floor.  And it was perfectly obvious that I was losing my grip on reality.

The date was February 13, 2001.