The Mask and other Unpleasantries

The flu has hit us, too. Daniel, Ari, and I left our village-house in order to escape from the flu. Our house-mate was sniffly and sickly, and we figured it would be foolish to stay there. All in vain, or too late, anyhow, because we woke up on Saturday morning with a horrid case of the flu. All three of us. Chills, fevers, body-aches, coughs. All that good stuff.

I am just going to tell you the whole story. Take it or leave it.

I got my achy & sweaty self into the car and drove to the emergency-section of the local hospital.. A doctor's visit would have been easier, but that was not an option on a Saturday. At the hospital, I was swiftly directed to the labor & delivery-floor. Not for my own labor, of course, but for the routine check-ups necessary for pregnant flu-patients. They handed me a mask, scoffing and fussing, because I had not been given one before. It was the start of a LONG and lousy day of check-ups, waiting, blood-analyses, and more waiting. I told them about the aches, the chills, and the wheezy coughs... and they took my temperature. Then, I was sent out into the old and unfriendly hallway. Mask and all. Everyone stared at me: some with looks of pity, but most with the expected dread of, "ew....there's the flu....she better keep her distance!".

No comfy chairs, no magazines, no water fountain. It was two thirty in the afternoon (14:30), and I had no idea they would keep me there all day.

Most of the people there were waiting to meet their newborn children, cousins, godchildren. It was strange to be in the place where I would have to give birth to my own baby just 2 months from now. I didn't like it. I didn't like seeing the fathers outside in the hallway. That's not where they were supposed to be. Call me fussy, or picky, or difficult...but I didn't like anything about the hospital and its employees. I wanted to go back to the daisy-room where Ari first breathed and cried and greeted us. With my sister to do the caring and checking-up.

Anyway, they called me back in and put me on the baby-monitor. This involves laying on a bed for half an hour with two big elastic bands around the belly, which keep a heart-beat monitoring device in place. There it was: the loud beating of my daugther's heart.
I was parched. The nurse only came in to check on me once or twice, and I finally asked her for some water.

Having finished that procedure, they sent me down for blood-tests and a doctor's check-up. That was worse, still. Not allowed to sit in the triage-section, I crept into a little cold corner of the hallway, sat on the floor and wondered if I was in the right place at all. Apparently, I was supposed to be in the waiting-room for relatives, but how was I supposed to know??
They don't tell you anything.

So, after a lot of waiting and sighing and sweating underneath my flu-mask, I got called in for blood-tests. They pinched me, mixed my blood with different fluids, and told me to wait for the results.
The doctor checked my lungs, my throat, my temperature, and told me that I would need to make a decision: she wanted to do an X-ray to see if I had pneumonia or some other lung-problem, but she would need my consent for this. Not what I wanted to hear. In tears, I called Daniel and told him that I just didn't know what to do. I asked him to get in touch with my sister, to ask for her opinion. There we were, all of us on the phone together, sort of: he skyped my parents, who happened to be on the phone with my sister already (blessed coincidence). She gave me the go-ahead: told me that they would need to protect my belly as well as they could, but that it was important to see if anything was wrong.. And that the risks were lower, as I was already this far along. I still felt miserable: I didn't like having to be the one to consent to something that could potentially harm my child. But I signed the form.

Meanwhile, the blood-results were back, and they put me on a drip with some sort of liquid: to boost my electrolyte-levels, as, apparently, they were much too low. (electrolyte-levels, as in minerals and salts...potassium,etc.) I rolled my eyes and thought, "DUH, idiots! I haven't had anything to eat or drink since this morning....."
Then I was rolled to the X-ray room by a particularly bitchy nurse. Excuse my language, but there was nothing nice about her. She looked like she was about 20 years old, and she was the worst kind of rude. And asking, "but you're pregnant, why are you getting an X-ray?? Don't you know how dangerous that is??" I wanted to punch her in the face. I was still on that drip, and the X-ray technician (friendlier than the nurse, thankfully) helped me as I struggled to get my long-sleeve shirt & everything else off, with the drip-tube (wire, hose???) attached to my arm. It nearly pulled the whole thing out, and my blood was running into the tube. She put several protective "shields" in front of my belly and back. Said I was well-covered. That was that.
They pushed me back to the drip-waiting room in a wheelchair. I wore a hospital-robe. It was all very "ER".

The drip was removed, but I'd need more blood-tests. So, they pinched me twice more. Once in my wrist, leaving it all bruised. Then in my other arm. Tubes and tubes of blood. Just to see if I was okay.

Apparently, the drip fixed my electrolyte-level, and the doctor finally released me to go back to the labor&delivery-department. The X-ray results were good, too. No lung-problems, then.
It was midnight! No one had offered me a meal or a drink or anything that a pregnant woman might need after 10 hours of being pinched. I had to get a bag of almonds from the vending-machine. Thank you very much. So, back to the baby-monitor. A hyper male midwife hooked me back onto the monitor, and asked how far along I was. He touched my belly and said the baby seemed small for her age. The ultrasounds have shown no such thing, though.
Anyway, the monitor started to make loud sounds, and the nurses came in to see what was wrong. I said, "she's kicking a lot." They stood there and looked at the reading of the heart-beat and noticed the noises were rhythmic: Baby just had the hiccups.

Got into the car at 12:40 (AM!), mask still in place, all gross and warm. They let me go without any definitive answers regarding my flu. I asked them, "so, is this the swine-flu??" And the doctor just said it could very well be, but that it was unnecessary to actually test me for that. So, for all the blood they took from me, they couldn't go ahead and screen me for the virus. Too much of a hassle, too expensive. Apparently, my symptoms were not alarming enough. No, but they thought it necessary to keep me at the hospital all day!! Weird, WEIRD system.

Spaniards have a tendency to be alarmists when it comes to disease... Antibiotics are prescribed for the most insignificant malaise. But then the doctors can be so useless. They give you no information unless you insist on receiving some very clear answers. Usually, they just send you home with more questions.

In my experience with prenatal check-ups, especially, I have been so frustrated. They would check the most irrelevant things and leave the more important matters unanswered/unevaluated. For instance, they always make a huge deal about how much weight I have gained, but then they've only checked the size of my belly/uterus once!! I'd understand the obsession with the weight-gain if I were obese, but COME ON! How about my baby's growth, huh??? HUH?!?!?!?!
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So, we've all been lounging around Daniel's parents' house (infecting them, doubtlessly :-( ), trying to keep the fevers down with the usual remedies. Ari had high fevers several days in a row, but I was not about to send her to the emergency-room again. (I already took her to the doctor on Friday...which kept us for only 4 hours). No, not after what they did to me. That sounds really dramatic, maybe, but it's just not worth waiting for HOURS only to be told to "drink plenty of liquids and take paracetamol". No, we could have figured that one out for ourselves! And hospital waiting-rooms are full of very sick people. With germs. Without masks.