Back to the ER and back on an IV with more Dilaudid and little to no submission of the pain this time. I was in agony, tears, delusional at some points. Why isn’t this over yet?! They couldn’t see the stones or give me any effective medication to help them pass. All I got was narcotics and a worrisome cluster of my parents and Jesse standing around my bed. At some point, I had been transferred up to the prenatal floor. I remember getting a little sleep and moving to another room. I remember the pain getting so bad I was crying and rolling around and I couldn’t focus on who was there or what someone was asking me. I remember the obstetrician from that hospital coming in and telling me I was taking too much Dilaudid. I was taking too much? This was the guy signing off on the medication. It wasn’t like I had an all-you-can-eat tray of narcotics in front of me! Then he threatened that I’d stop breathing soon and started lecturing me about just dealing with the pain; that he’d had kidney stones too. I was too drop-mouthed to ask him if he’d been limited due to pregnancy at the time as well, but my husband intervened. Let’s just say I was quickly transferred to Beth Israel Deaconess where my OB practiced.
Now I was concerned, not panicked really, but concerned. What if the medication was damaging my baby? What if she became addicted? Could this harm her development? What took that doctor so long to notice one of his patients’ situations so that he felt he needed to talk to me like that? I remember the paramedics wrapping a few blankets over me for the cold November night, then a short ride into Boston, then I was in a Labor and Delivery room at the BI. Maybe I was delirious from the medication and pain, plus my head was swimming with questions, but the transfer couldn’t have been more night and day. Now, I’ve nothing bad to say about the nurses in the other facility, but the care at BI was so overwhelmingly comforting that my questions and stress melted away almost instantly.
