The Empire… err… "Hospital" Strikes Back

Before I start, let me point you to the first pictures of Daniel to hit the blogging world. My friend KC over at Our Life paid a undisclosed amount of money for the exclusive rights to post the first pictures. So make sure you click here to check them out! There will be pictures of Daniel on I’m just sayin… this weekend, so make sure you check back Saturday night (or Sunday morning).

It has been stated a number of times on this blog that there is a “hospital” in this area that we have been forced to use to deliver our children (it’s the only place The Wife’s doctors deliver at). I won’t bother posting links to any of my previous posts about this “hospital”… you can find them if you want to read them (I think some were posted back in October 2009 when Susie was born). I think I’ve made my feelings known for this “hospital” in the past (i.e. the only way I could hate them more is if the Westboro Baptist Cult worked there or received some kind of financial support from this “hospital”). I don’t know if I’ve ever actually put the name of this “hospital” on here… and I’m not going to bother to do it now. I don’t want you to think that I’m just trying to dent what I’m sure they feel is a great reputation.

Anyway, let’s talk about our latest trip to this “hospital”. We arrived at the “hospital” last Wednesday night. The Wife wasn’t feeling well… she thought maybe she was having contractions… but she wasn’t sure. Since this was just our 3rd child (2nd within 17 months, 5 days give or take a little) I understood how she couldn’t be sure. So, we called The Mother-In-Law to get her to come over and watch the girls while we headed off to the “hospital” (***Side note: It only took 3 calls to wake up The Mother-In-Law and get her to come over.***). We get there and they set us up in a room. Before I have a chance to complain about anything, they moved us into a different room (because the computer in the first room wasn’t working). I walked into the new room and realized that this was the “hospital’s” way of flipping me the bird and yelling “F*** you Mr. Blogger Man”. Right away I knew the gloves were coming off and the “hospital” was letting me know that they feel the same about me as I feel about them. In a way, this set my mind at ease. At least now I knew we wouldn’t have to play any games and act like we could “get along”. What was so bad? What did I immediately notice that seemed to go unnoticed by every woman who ever stepped in that room? There was a bed (for The Wife… we all agreed on that) and the only other piece of furniture in the room was a wooden rocking chair/glider. I made somewhat of a show of looking around the room and the nurse assured us that we would be moving into another room before long. This was at about 11:30pm. So we kick back and start watching The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (given a choice, we usually aren’t up late enough to watch any of these shows… but when we are, we watch The Tonight Show. And for what it’s worth, we like Leno more than we like Conan. And I know I’m getting off subject here, but I’ve always found it funny that Conan pretty much pushed Leno out and then cried when Leno pushed him out). Anyway, Carol Burnett was a guest on the show and it’s the opinion of I’m just sayin… that one can never go wrong with Carol Burnett. Trust me… we know funny and that woman is funny. One thing leads to another and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon comes on. I can probably count on one hand how many times we’ve seen this show… but we do like it. So this was a case where we were happy to have a chance to watch it. But as much as we like the show, it was getting late. The Wife dozed off and around the end of the show I decided that I just couldn’t sleep in that chair. So I did the only thing I could do… I looked for a pillow. When I couldn’t find one (well played “hospital”, well played) I laid on the floor and used my hands as a pillow. Around 2:30 – 2:45am, our nurse (who we liked) came in and said we needed to move to another room because I shouldn’t sleep on the floor… I needed my rest because I wouldn’t be getting much sleep after the baby gets here. Since I liked this nurse, I didn’t say the first thing that came to my mind. Anyway, she moved us into another room that had a chair that folded out into a “bed”. This “bed” was about 5 feet long (I’m 5’10”) and I’m not 100% sure how wide it was… but I can tell you it wasn’t as wide as I needed. If I laid on my back, the metal bars on the sides hit me on the inside of my armpits. As for the “mattress” on this chair “bed” that was in this “hospital”… it was springs (that you could see from the side) with a very itty-bitty little layer of foam sitting on top (it wasn’t really attached). Last but not least, this “bed” was designed to hold someone in the 80 – 90 pound range (I’m over 220). Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the bar that that ran from one side of the “bed” to the other right where my lower back was, I would have fallen down to the floor when I tried to lay down on it. Of course, that bar in my lower back was helped by the two bars hitting me in my armpits. I came thisclose to just getting back on the floor. Again… score one for the “hospital”.

As for the Big Day… I could tell there’s a huge difference between Baby #1 and Baby #3 when I walked into the waiting room and saw Mom and Dad. That’s it, that’s the list. When I walked in there the day Mary Ruth was born, it was standing room only with just about all family members (from both sides of the family) being there. Oh well, Daniel… Daddy knows how it feels. Anyway, they give The Wife something to help her along and a little after 11:45am she started pushing. By 12:16pm he was here. At 8lbs he is the smallest baby out of our 3 (MR was 8lbs, 3oz and Susie was 8lbs, 9oz… and she was 2 weeks early). The other two also took longer to come out. I can’t speak for The Wife, but this felt like the easiest delivery to me… of course, that might be because this was the first time The Mother-In-Law wasn’t in there with us. :)

Based on our previous experience with Mary Ruth and Susie, we had a good idea that he would have jaundice. So early Friday our family doctor comes by to meet Daniel and say hello. I wasn’t in the room, but The Wife saw him and had a good visit. Just from looking at Daniel, Dr. Keller said he might not have jaundice and we might get to go home later that afternoon. They still needed to draw blood and run some tests and so on and so forth… all routine stuff. A couple of hours later the lab results come back and sure enough his bilirubin level is high. The nurse tells us this and then says they are waiting to hear back from Dr. Keller to see what he wants us to do. She comes back in every so often to check on Daniel and to tell us they are still waiting to hear back from our doctor. As she was leaving after about her 3rd time, I heard another nurse outside the room say they should just put Daniel under a light (a special light they use for this stuff) until they hear back from Dr. Keller. It sounded like a good idea to me. About 30 or 45 minutes later, the nurse comes in with the light and sets everything up. As she’s leaving I ask if they’ve heard from Dr. Keller (I asked, because I noticed she hadn’t said anything… so I was pretty sure of the answer, but I wanted to hear it from her). She said that they HAD heard from Dr. Keller’s office and that they wanted us to stay overnight. This was something we were prepared for, but I was still a little pissed that we had to ask her… she wasn’t going to just tell us.

Saturday started with some more tests. Our new nurse (some woman with an Eastern European bloodline [my guess]) seemed to speak English as a second (or third) language. She told us that his bilirubin levels were looking better and that he was now at a Level C (Level A is the best… Level C isn’t great… but it could be a lot worse). They still needed to hear from a doctor before they could discharge him from the hospital. The Wife’s doctor came by and said she was good to go and that she would go ahead and get the paperwork started to discharge her. Now all we needed was a doctor to discharge Daniel.

In the meantime, we were told a Dr. Tillman would be by to circumcise Daniel. Dr. Keller didn’t do it because he never does them. We had been told before that he doesn’t do them because he had a bad experience once. Of course, my first thought was he must have cut too much one time… but he later told us that since he doesn’t do them that often, he decided not to do them at all… it’s not something he wants to mess up (Amen to that!). So anyway, we’re told that a Dr. Tillman is coming by and my ears perk up. Why? Because I grew up playing baseball on James Island and, therefore, knew the Tillman name well. Sonny played baseball with a slew of Tillmans over the years and I played for (and coached with) a Tillman. Anyway, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the Horres family and the Tillman family are friends (as most baseball families on James Island are). So I hear this name and figure she has to be married to one of the JI Tillmans (***Note: I don’t know if we were ever told Dr. Tillman was a woman, I might have just assumed. I mean, I love the Tillman family, but I wouldn’t even let any of those guys get near Scooby with a pair of scissors. Haha). To keep this long story going… I wasn’t there when Dr. Tillman came by (I wanted to make sure I had plausible deniability later when Daniel was pissed off for what was about to happen) but I made sure to get The Wife to ask her if she was related to any of the JI Tillmans. Come to find out, she is married to one of them (and yes, Sonny played baseball with him and I am friends with him). It was nice to know that this procedure was being done by someone we could trust. I am happy to report that she did a great job (though it still hurt me to see it). I would like to now take a minute to thank my friend who warned me about this and say I’m not very happy with my friend who didn’t warn me. I also expected more of a warning from Sonny (and I told him as much when I called him and said, “Thanks for the heads-up, jackass”). I also got a visual warning when I was in the hospital visiting my godson Lucas and they were changing his diaper for the first time after his “procedure”.

So with that behind us, we were left waiting to be discharged. I decided to go down to the cafeteria to grab some lunch. While down there, I discovered a dessert that I can only assume God put into my life. I admit that I am a little slow on things and I typically stay away from foods with a fancy name. It took me about 28 years to realize that apple pie, ala mode’ meant apple pie with yummy ice cream on top. Wow… what I was missing! Anyway, the new dessert in my life is Jello Parfait… which, I now know, is yummy jello with a layer of yummy cool whip on top followed by a yummy layer of jello with a final layer of yummy cool whip. I don’t want to overstate this… but when my eyes fell onto this perfect little dessert, I almost cried. So anyway, after lunch I decided to take my favorite new “fancy” dessert up to the room so I could be there when they discharged us. I think you see where this is going. Sometime after 1 or 2:00pm, our “nurse” comes in and tells us that Daniel is not being discharged today (Saturday). This did not make us happy. Even The Wife (who had been sleeping in a bed and had been waited on hand and foot since Wednesday night) was mad about this. So we started asking questions.

Us: Why?

Nurse: The doctor said he needs to stay.

Us: What doctor?

Nurse: Dr. somenameI’veneverheardof.

Us: Is he going to talk to us?

Nurse: Um, I think he has already left.

Us: So why does he think Daniel needs to stay?

Nurse: He needs to stay under the light.
(At this point, I can tell The Wife is upset… so I mainly do the talking for the next few minutes)

Me: We can take a light home with us. We’ve done it before.

Nurse: He’s better off at the hospital.

Me: Why is that?

Nurse: He will need blood work done at 6:00pm.

Me: Fine. Can we leave after that?

Nurse: No, he will need blood work done again tomorrow morning.

Me: We can come back. We don’t live that far away and we know the way here.

Nurse: He’s better off at the hospital.

Me: I’m not sure I agree with that.

Nurse: He needs the light to get better.

Me: Not only have we used a light for this kind of thing before… we did it only 17 months ago. So not only have we done this before… we have relatively recent experience. (I have to admit, I was thinking of KC when I said this).

Nurse: He is better off at the hospital.

Me: My wife had to help you set the biliblanket up. I’m not sure he’s better off here.

Nurse: Well, this is the best place for him.

The Wife: Well what if his blood work comes back tonight and he’s better?
Can we go home then?

Nurse: The doctor said he has to stay.

Me: But this doctor doesn’t know us. See, I know that because we don’t know him. (Ok, maybe I was a little mad at this point. You have to remember, English wasn’t her thing and it sounded like she was working a help desk somewhere giving us standard answers).

Nurse: I’m sorry, that’s what the doctor said.

Me: Is the doctor going to comp our stay?

Nurse: (Nervous laugh)

The Wife: Greg!

The Wife: (I admit, I don’t remember this question… but it was a good one).

Nurse: I don’t know.

Me: Well there is someone here who does know. I know there are people here above you and we’ll need to speak to one of them. We’re going to need to keep talking to people until someone can tell us why he is better off here.

Nurse: I will see if I can find the doctor but I think he is already gone.

The Wife: We don’t mind talking to him on the phone.

Nurse: I will try to find him.

The Wife: We're just so ready to leave.

Nurse: Well you have been discharged, so you can leave but the baby has to stay.

Us: That's not going to happen. (I didn't say it at the time because she wouldn't get it, but I was thinking "I wouldn't leave Scooby here alone with you people... I'm sure not going to leave my son!").

Let me explain to you how mad I was at this point… I couldn’t eat the jello parfait that was sitting right in front of me. That’s how mad I was. I ended up having to go take a walk and call Dad to help me cool off. Even hours later as I was on my way back to the “hospital” after going home to let the dogs out, I told Sonny that I was fully prepared to be tased once I walk into the “hospital”. I was also ready to tell the “nurse” that we would be leaving on Sunday… even if it meant having to take Daniel straight to a real hospital (or even a free health clinic… which I would rate over them right now). Basically, this "nurse" counted on us to be passive. She counted wrong. Anyway…

We did get a call a short time later from the doctor who had said Daniel couldn’t go home. First, he apologized because he had been called in to consult on this case but that the family doctor was supposed to talk to us to explain everything. As this was a Saturday, our family doctor was off… so the on-call doctor should have come talk to us. Second, he told us that Daniel’s numbers were up… I won’t go through the whole conversation because The Wife is the one who was talking to him, but I will say that he pretty much told us that everything the “nurse” had told us about Daniel getting better was wrong. He wasn’t getting better (but he wasn’t getting worse). He said that we could call him back later that night (after his blood work at 6:00pm) if we had any questions. He then ended up calling us back later that night to make sure The Wife didn’t have any questions.

We also got a visit later that night (after 9:30pm) from the on-call doctor at Dr. Keller’s practice. She came in and said that Dr. Keller had called her and asked her to come by and check on us and see if we had any questions. Maybe this is normal, but I choose to believe that Dr. Keller somehow found out that we were not happy and called this other doctor and told her to fix it. She was nice and talked to The Wife for a while.

I don’t want to point any fingers, but things started getting better for us once we got a better nurse.

Sunday morning was ok. More tests and Daniel’s numbers weren’t great but they were going to let us go home with a biliblanket (they told us this at 10:00am). So our morning nurse (a very nice young lady [and my nice I mean easy on the eyes {and by easy on the eyes I mean… well, you get the idea… I may or may not have a picture on her on my phone ;) }]) came in to tell us the medical company that we were getting the blanket from wouldn’t be there until sometime between 2:00 – 3:00pm. No problem! All we wanted was for someone to let us know so that we could plan. And it helped that a smokin’ hot nurse was the one telling us this (it helped me… I can only assume it helped The Wife).

So that’s it. That’s my story. We ended up getting home around 3:30pm or so. I can tell you that I got so mad at the “hospital” that I agreed to get a vasectomy (something The Wife decided she wanted me to get about 39 weeks ago). More on that later. Let’s just say I’ve agreed in principle to getting a vasectomy because I want to make sure we never have to go back to that “hospital” again. I know what you’re thinking… Greg, what if you get a vasectomy and The Wife still gets pregnant? (It could happen)… What would you do then? Where would you have the baby? If I get that done and The Wife still gets pregnant, we will have that baby in a manger… or a free clinic… or at home… pretty much any place but that “hospital”.

Know Your Medal of Honor Recipients:

This part of I’m just sayin… will return next week.