At my now weekly ob-gyn visit yesterday, the doctor asked when I had scheduled my C-section for. I told her I hadn't. She said, "Well, do it this week." I didn't have the heart or the gumption to tell her I wanted a VBAC (since I really don't) especially in the face of her assurance that I could get the catheter after the spinal and that P would sit next to me during the entire operation, holding our baby girl after she gets cleaned, so that I can kiss her whenever I felt like it and nurse her as soon as possible. I also think I asked, "Heat blanket?" And the doctor smiled at me. Damn, I shivered like a loon the last time I had a C-section. Ninety-five degrees is not my normal body temperature, that's for sure.
Lately, at night, on the strange hospital scale of "how much pain are you in from a zero to a ten, zero being no pain and ten being the worst pain you can possibly image", I've hit a two or three pretty damned regularly. I start my day at zero, generally, and progress to a number higher than I'd like by the time I sleep. I know that the C-section won't be easy, but sometimes, I do want it more than I possibly can imagine. I'm fairly sure that I'm going to weep like a baby at receiving the IV and spinal, but once I get them and I'm numb, things are ready and it's on and I'm done being pregnant. Only four or so more weeks, yay!
Speaking of that strange sliding scale of pain at hospitals, I hate that question. I never know how to answer because I feel like if I give too high a number when I'm in a moderate amount of pain, I look like a wimp, so I'm always trying to moderate my number which means I get less pain medication. Also, I've got a really good imagination. So, when I went in with my blood clot last pregnancy, the day I went in, I thought my damned leg felt like it was falling off. I had to get up one last time before they attached the IV to use the bathroom and I wept at the amount of pain I felt in my leg.
Then, I got back, and was asked the infamous "rate your pain" question, I gave it some serious thought. This was more pain than I had probably felt in my entire lifetime, I thought, but was it as much pain as I could possibly imagine? For instance, if I got bit by a shark or run over by a semi, it'd probably hurt more, right? So, to be safe, I rated it a seven or eight. Like I said, I can imagine a lot of things that were possibly more painful than my blood clotty leg. A day or two later, I asked the nurse on duty when I could get another hit of my morphine like drug because my leg was starting to bother me again. He frowned and looked at his chart and asked if I felt pain already, only two hours after my last dose. I assured him I felt some mild but increasing pain. Ten minutes later, he came in and dosed me again and explained that after talks with my doctor, they felt my dosage had been too low. He asked me, "Didn't you tell them you were in a lot of pain when you came in?"
I assured him I had, but maybe they expected me to say nine or ten when describing my pain? I will say, that the morphine substitute they gave me at the hospital was super powerful when first received. The five or so days I spent in the hospital are a lazy hazy memory of what seemed like extreme drunkenness. I would drowse and eat and get more pain meds and it was fine with me. As I told P when we left, "It's a good thing that I hate and fear needles more than almost anything because I can see how people get addicted to drugs."
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