Read on Twitter
finally ready to say to twitter a little more about the worst of my hospital stay. i spent 24hrs with raging pancreatitis without continuous pain medication. dose would wear off, i'd moan and cry alone in my room until they were allowed to give me more, then zonk out. repeat. 1/
i didn't have the vocabulary or frankly the capacity to ask for a drip and a pca button. my mother in law and my second day nurse fought hard to catch the hospitalist's attention to get me switched to that.
SO. What is the lesson here? 1. Covid means you likely can't have visitors in the hospital. That makes advocating REALLY hard. Get someone to make phone calls on your behalf
2. I now know the vocabulary about drips, continuous meds. I'll know to ask for it if I ever need it again. I wish I had had that vocab under my belt before I got there.
3. Do therapy. I did therapy within 48 hours of returning home and it really helped me manage the painful flashbacks and general ptsd from those 24 hours.
4. I wrote about this on IG which I shared on Twitter even though only nerds do that: Make a pod. If I didn't have a pod, my husband would have been completely alone for days with our newborn. I would have been alone my first night home. Make a pod in case you need in-person help
Please share this IG post with any pregnant and postpartum women you know. Looking back, the gallstones started in the second trimester but were dismissed as gas pain. Then postpartum when the vomiting started I was told food poisoning. It's not okay. https://www.instagram.com/p/CD6zJ_EDDO0/
