Chapter 3 Just the beginning

We arrive at the hospital. I can feel my anxiety building. Mark doesn’t seem to be concerned. Or maybe he is just shielding me from his concerns to keep me calm. What a great knight in shining armor he is. We walk into the hospital lobby and introduce ourselves to the secretary. She picks up the phone and tells us someone willl be down in a moment to escort us. A transportation aide arrives with a wheelchair. I stare blankly at the wheelchair, then make eye contact with the aide. “It’s standard for all patients to use a wheelchair even if they don’t need to. It just helps prevent falls. I can’t make you use it but the nurses will be upset with me if I let you walk.”. I look to Mark for reassurance. “How about you walk and I will ride in the wheelchair, since il be the one paying for it” jokes Mark. My husbands sense of humor is poorly timed but calms me down. I just give up and decide to sit in the wheelchair.
The elevator opens and I am greeted by a nurse. “Hi Im Jillian, I will be your nurse today. Lets get you to your room.” The room is a standard room. Luckily I have a private room. Most rooms in the hospital are packed tight and have 2 patients. “Kelly I need you to take off your street clothes and change into this gown for me, then I will grab a set of vital signs, an EKG, and draw some bloodwork for labs, all standard things we do when a patient is admitted.” Jillian hands me some bath wipes and a hospital gown. I head into the bathroom to remove my costume and wipe the blue body paint away. Its strange seeing myself in a hospital gown. She draws my blood and checks my blood pressure. “Alright, here’s some ice cream and jello to snack on. The doctors will be by the assess you in a bit. Please hit he call light if you need anything.” With that Nurse Jillian leaves the room and I have a minute to get comfortable in the bed and learn how to work the tv remote. I flip the channel to family feud and dig into my ice cream.
The door swings open and in walks a group of doctors and medical students. “Hey I am Dr. Smith and I reviewed your scans from your OB/GYN Dr. Fernandez, and looked over your bloodwork that Nurse Jillian drew earlier. What concerned me is that some of your electrolyte levels were lower than expected, but you had an especially low blood sugar level. I am not sure why it is this low, but it is so low that we need to address the concern immediately. I am going to place a nasogastric tube inside of you. You make have heard it called a feeding tube. It is a plastic lumen that will run from your nose, down your throats and into your stomach. This will allow us to feed you the additional nutrients you need to grow this baby quickly. One advantage to this, is that we can run your tube feeds around the clock. Running the tube feeds while you are sleeping will allow us to get additional calories in you.” My heart is pounding. “Is it going to hurt?” I ask the Doctors. One of the medical students answers, “no it won’t hurt, placing the tube is uncomfortable because you will feel like your gagging, but once the tip of the tube Is past your throat you’ll be fine.” “Ok I guess if its my only option il do it.” I don’t like this idea but I really down have a choice. “I will go gather the supplies and be back in a few minutes.” Says Jill.
Jill placed the tube a few hours ago. Il spare you the details since it involved a lot of coughing and gagging and crying. The tube has been in place for a few hours and it is no longer uncomfortable. Jill enters the room with what looks like IV tubing with a bag attached to the top of it. “So Let me explain this process. The rate of your feeding is controlled by this IV pump. I pour the nutrition into this bag. You are on Neutren 2.0 the most calorie dense option we have, it contains 2 cal/ml of feed.. As you can see it just looks like a milkshake. I just hook the end of the tubing from the pump onto the end of your tube. You will be getting exactly 1500ml per day (62.5ml/hr) of the feed which is 3000 calories per day. This feeding is in addition to your normal meals and should help you gain about a pound per day.” Jill sets the rate on the pump and presses play. “I can feel it in my stomach a bit, its so weird feeling my stomach full but not tasting anything.” Jill replies, “ its normal to feel it at first, eventually you’ll forget its even running.” I have a moment of clarity where the math adds up.. “wait a minute… around per day??? Jill I have 8 weeks left that’s 80 lbs!!!!” Jill replies “ well we are feeding at that rate just to be safe, if your gaining adequately and the baby responds well we will be ablate decease the feeding rate.” I look down at my body. I can’t even begin to imagine what I will look like with 80 lbs on my body. I just want to rip this damn tube out and leave. *Next chapter coming 10/26*