Sometimes I Like Spending the Night at the Hospital

It does get old after a while...

My husband left town Monday morning to help his mom. I was looking forward to enjoying a few nights to myself watching my shows and updating my fall wardrobe with recos from

Kim France

of

Girls of a Certain Age

. I did get some new outfits because sh*t happened. Literally. Check out my looks for early fall hospital stays when you get covered in bodily fluids and run out of back-up clothes: 

My four-year-old son has an ileostomy. What’s that? I asked the same question four years ago when he returned from surgery sporting one at five days old. He was diagnosed with a condition called Hisrchsprung’s disease which impacts nerve endings in the colon. Since he was five days old at the time, on the smaller side, and did not have a lot of innervated colon, the surgical team created an ileostomy. His small intestine is routed to his stomach and he wears an ostomy bag. According to the United Ostomy Associations of America, there are over one million people in the US with an ostomy, and in many cases it has saved their lives.

Since my son’s colon is not currently in use, he is prone to severe dehydration when he contracts gastrointestinal viruses and we land in the hospital for IV rehydration. Sometimes we are there for two-three days, sometimes it is a week or more depending on how long it takes the virus to clear his system and his ostomy output to stabilize. Showing signs of improvement over the last weekend, we were hopeful we could avoid a hospital admission. That changed dramatically after my husband was already on a flight Monday morning and I brought my son into the ER. 

This happens several times a year, mainly in the winter during the school year now that he is in the petri dish that is preschool. I teeter-totter between wanting my kid to enjoy typical kiddo experiences and building him a self-contained Clorox bubble. Every birthday party, family trip, and social gathering comes with a side of mild anxiety and lots of hand sanitizer (and then I worry that we are probably ingesting too much hand sanitizer). Getting sick usually leads to hospital admission, disrupting our lives and splitting our family apart. 

Yet we are no strangers to hospital stays after my oldest spent two months in the NICU, and my son spent three weeks in the NICU as well. My IUD baby was discharged the next day, go figure (more on that here). Between the three of them we’ve logged almost 140 days in the hospital in the past seven years.

It does get old after a while, it is disruptive, and this stay was particularly hard with one here and two at home while my husband was gone, but I’ve accepted this is part of our life. We’ve all adjusted and adapted. And I like sleeping here at the hospital. (As of this writing, we are still at the hospital). 

My mom worked as a physical therapist assistant in a hospital and then in nursing homes later in her career. I grew up spending time in hospitals. It’s where my mom worked and she loved her job, so there was never anything too scary about it. What a gift that part of my childhood was, because it sure did prepare me for this chapter of my life. Guess God/The Universe really does know what it’s doing.  

The thick cement and steel walls of Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center give me a measure of comfort. In this fortress of caregiving, there is a surety that comes with knowing you are in a place where if the worst case scenario happens they can handle it. Sure beats my rickety teeter-totter. During the day the warriors in this fortress bustle back and forth in their quest for healing. At night their rolling computer carts disappear and are replaced with the occasional floor polisher. I’ve walked the quiet curved concourse from A to E many nights. The outside world becomes invisible and you can only see the reflection of the dimmed lights in the inky black windows. As if to say all that matters is in here, not out there. 

After getting my son settled in for the night, I get myself settled in, lulled by the advance and retreat of the IV pump clicking forward and whooshing back like ocean waves. There is no laundry to fold or put away, no dishwasher to load and unload, no toys to pick up and put away. There is no pressure to do anything but try to rest and recover. Here there are people that ask me, “what can I get for you?”, “is there anything you need?”, “what else can I do for you?” When you are the mom, you are the one doing the endless asking. In the hospital you get a reprieve from that. In a way, I feel taken care of here too. In the hospital at night, my mind can be dark and quiet just like the sky outside.

I couldn’t keep my regular newsletter cadence this week given the circumstances, but it flows because today is Ostomy Awareness Day.  Thanks for your support and healing vibes.

Photo credits: myself and Samuel Ramos on Unsplash