Kat’s surgery to have her gall bladder removed went well, but for reasons that still aren’t entirely clear, her doc decided to admit her for a couple of nights. We know her gall bladder was in bad shape - inflamed, but not infected - and she had a drainage tube and substantial post-op pain, so neither of us were bothered by the change in plans, but we’re still a little perplexed why he would have expected to do it as outpatient surgery in the first place. She was only a month removed from having a c-section, which to my layman’s judgment seems like something that could be expected to make her recovery a little rougher than usual. Like I said, though, we didn’t mind the stay. They were able to grant our request to have her admitted to women’s recovery wing just down the hall from the NICU, so she was close to the babies and being cared for by a bunch of nurses we already liked. With the pain level immediately following the surgery, Kate was in no hurry to get home and negotiate the stairs. Financially, it’s already a given that we’ll meet our annual out-of-pocket maximum for the year, so what’s another day or two in the hospital?
When Kate was admitted in March for gall stone pain, one of the frequent questions that doctors and nurses asked her was to rate her pain on a scale of 0-10, with 0 being “no pain at all”, and 10 being the “worst pain imaginable”. Rating pain is a very subjective thing, of course, but the people doing the assessing are not only listening to the self-reported number, but also observing how it’s reported; if a person says “3”, but is struggling to breathe and remain conscious, or cracks a joke while saying “10”, the assessor notes the discrepancy. After witnessing Kate answer this question several times, and evaluating her answers in light of knowing her as well as I do, I concluded that Kate’s 0-10 pain scale actually ranges from 5-7, where:
- 7 = “I’m in excruciating pain. I need pain meds.”
- 6 = “I’m in terrible pain, but I can just barely tell I’m on pain meds.”
- 5 = “I’m in a lot of pain, but I hate to sound wimpy or impose on anyone since they already went to the trouble of giving me pain meds, so I’m too embarrassed to say ‘6’ or ‘7’ again.”
When Kate was being admitted after her surgery, I got to her room a couple minutes before she arrived. She was wheeled in on a gurney, and had to scooch herself over from the gurney to her bed under her own power. It was one of those powerless moments for me when I wished there was some way I could do it for her or make it easier, but she managed it despite obvious pain. She had four (I think) small incisions from the laparoscopic procedure, with a drainage tube left in one of them. The first time I heard her answer the pain scale question, she said “seven or eight”, so I knew it had to feel pretty awful for her to flirt with “8” territory. Kate is to 8 as Spinal Tap is to 11.
On the positive side, all this pain and discomfort came with the knowledge that her no-good gall bladder was now gone, and predictable pain with the expectation of recovery in the near future beats having a gall bladder that could attack at any moment, never knowing how bad it might get. Also, the nurses were nice, and after she improved a little, she was able to ambulate over to the NICU for some mommy time. (Several times now, someone meeting us for the first time in the hospital will say, “Oh, you’re the twins’ parents!”, so apparently our girls are already local celebrities. We heard that even the hospital CEO bragged about them at some fundraiser.)
Over in the NICU, Brooke and Claire are making rapid progress toward coming home. Claire, now about 4lbs, 11 oz., has turned into a bottle-feeding machine. She has been so alert and interested in feedings that she’s been demanding and finishing more frequent bottles than we’d expect at this point in the normal progression. Even before she was “officially” scheduled to nipple every other feeding, she was showing enough interest to try it here and there and finished with no problems. If she continues like this, she could be ready to come home early next week.(!) Brooke, on the other hand, went through a period of a few days where she had a hard time staying awake during bottle feedings, so she was stuck on the every third feeding schedule. We thought maybe she was feeling the anemia more than her sister, but the neonatologist said, “I suspect the only thing wrong with Brooke is she’s looking like an under-achiever in comparison to her hungry little sister. I think she’s fine.” If the anemia does have anything to do with it, we should find out with the next labs on Monday, by which time the epogen should have had enough time to kick in if it’s going to. (If not, transfusion is still an option.) Meanwhile, Brooke has really perked up again in the last day or so, and gone back to finishing her bottle feedings under the time limit. She’s around 5 lbs. 5 oz. We’ll take our girls home when they’re ready, but we’re both hoping that they’ll get in synch so we can bring them home at the same time.
Claire and Brooke are growing and developing so dang quick that they might disrupt our plans to have Mommy fully recovered from both surgeries (c-section and cholecystectomy) by the time they come home. After two nights in the hospital, Kat is at least home, and recovering. (The drainage tube was removed a couple hours before her discharge, which elicited a yelp of pain that looked and sounded like a “10” to me.) Her pain isn’t gone, but the worst has passed, and now she can look forward to treats like showering in a day or two when her drainage hole has crusted over. By the way, please don’t use phrases like “drainage hole has crusted over” to Kat. She doesn’t have the stomach for such talk, and I think she’s puked enough the last few days.
