Showing posts with label hospital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hospital. Show all posts

Saturday, April 18, 2009

24 Hours Out

What a thrill when the diabetes midwife told me I could go home last night! I almost cried! I was starting to get really fed up with being in the hospital... and so BORED! But they let me out about 5pm last night. Sweet freedom! I've been home now just over 24 hours and have been doing the diet and insulin here. So far so good, though sometimes I think my bloods are higher than they should be. I still have to work at getting a good balance on my plate and watch out for too many carbs. It's kind of like a pseudo-Atkins going on, though I can have more varied fruits, I would say. I've got some Easter candy in the freezer for baby's birthday! Can't WAIT! Not only to actually eat chocolate again, but to finally hold my baby.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Bloodsucking Fiends

Hello from the Coombe Maternity Hospital in Dublin!

No, I haven't had the baby yet, I've been admitted to the hospital for a blood sugar series. Basically, they take a vial of blood once before and after each meal for 24. I also have to do a finger prick to test my blood sugar eat time as well and keep track in a glucose diary. This will help the endocrinologist decide if I need insulin and if so, how much. I'm assuming I'll have to have insulin as the diabetic chief midwife lady, Ethna, has already handed me loads of information on insulin... and these people generally know before the doctors do!

So far, I've been stuck 6 times in a vein in my left arm. Two of those sticks didn't work, but just added to the track marks being left. Apparently, my veins are superficial... which is fine by me as long as the rest of me is not!

I've decided, as an homage to my stay here, that I'm going to wild release a Christopher Moore book, 'Bloodsucking Fiends' somewhere in the hospital sometime tomorrow. A kind of good humored nod to my stay here. Hmm, maybe it's poetic that I chose to bring with me the Twilight series number three book 'Eclipse' to read while here?? I still have one more vial of blood to go tonight, and then two in the morning!

But, all's not THAT bad. I ended up with a PRIVATE room (loving my health insurance right now). I've heard the public ward can be a bit difficult to deal with and that it's hard to get any sleep. So I'm quite chuffed to have a room all to myself where I don't have to worry about leaving my purse unattended while I go to the bathroom. Also, I got to hear baby's heartbeat today. They strapped me to the baby heartbeat monitoring machine, so I got a nice 20 minutes of locomotive sounding beats to lull me into a trance. Midwife Rosanne said it looked good.

My blood pressure was up, though, but I am attributing this to being in hospital, a bit weary and nervous for what they'll say tomorrow. It probably didn't help that I was listening to baby's heartbeat, which is much faster. My second BP was lower, and my last one was MUCH better, 128/86...though I don't like the 86, that's still higher than usual for me.

Rob came for a visit and I send him off about 45 minutes ago to go home and get some food. I'm hoping to be out by about noon tomorrow, but I'm now not holding my breath. From what I understand, they want to also do a scan to check baby's weight, and then if Dr. Endocrinologist decides I need insulin, I may have to stay another night to make sure I react fine to it.

So that's the story at the moment! At least I have nice new comfy clothes from Motherhood to wear (thanks to Tara's mum for bringing them to me!).