The Romaezis

Day 64: Who the Hell is Dr. Red?

Before I start, don’t forget that today is THE LAST DAY to enter your vote to win a free custom made hat!

We have learned many things during our stay in the hospital.  How to live with each other in one room for months.  Which, surprisingly has been easy for us.  How to get a decent night of sleep with interruptions every 4 hours, and how to get around eating hospital food (thank god for awesome cooks in the family).  In my old room we could hear  when emergencies were coming into the ER.  They announce “Code [blue/yellow] ETA [xx minutes] by [ground/air].  On New Year’s Eve we estimated lots of codes over the loudspeaker but we were surprisingly wrong.  We figured out that code blue is in really bad shape and lots of them come via air (I’m sure my friend who works in the ER here would describe it differently), and code yellow isn’t doing so hot either but isn’t as bad as code blue.  Sometimes code yellow’s are upgraded to code blue and that is no good.  One thing we could NOT figure out was this whole Dr. Red thing.  And those announcements are always very very loud.  Sometimes at 4 a.m., waking us up.

We would hear lots of announcements that said “Dr. Red please report to [yy unit, zz floor, further instruction].”  Then, a bit later we would hear “Dr. Red, please return to your office.”  When we had no idea who this Dr. Red guy was, I would joke that he must have horrible time management for them to ANNOUNCE where he should be and when he should go back to his office.  We agreed that Dr. Red wasn’t a soda but also wasn’t one person in particular but more a set of people.  We learned a few weeks ago that Dr. Red is a fire–at times it is a fire drill.  They either have lots of small fires here or lots of fire drills.  Maybe a bit of both.  Regardless, it now makes sense why Dr. Red needs so much instruction.  And it isn’t that he is a bad doctor.  We hear a lot less codes now that I have moved on up, to the East side…really.  I’m on the east side now.  But the code for Dr. Red is still very easy to hear, thank goodness.

It seems my move has caused a few of the nurses concern.  Last night we had one of the nurses we really loved.  She walked into our room and breathed a sigh of relief as she said, “Oh thank goodness, you are still here.”  She lives 4 hours from the hospital and works both here and at her local hospital.  She is “on” for 2 weeks at a time here then off for two.  So, whenever she leaves for 2 weeks she says “I will see you in 2 weeks and you better be here.”  She must have had someone in my old room and assumed I delivered.  So last night I got a big ole hug from her.  It was cute.  She is oh so sweet and really loves her job and babies…and baby momma’s.  I don’t get to talk to my night nurses much since I’m asleep midnight and they are gone by 7:30.  Sometimes I wish I could talk to them more.

I went to social hour yesterday, as I do every Thursday.  The topic was postpartum but the nurse wasn’t prepared and she was late.  She talked for maybe 25 minutes and they let the rest of us socialize for the rest. This was the first time it didn’t fill a full hour.  We had a small group yesterday and it was really nice to talk to the other women.  I know I’m not alone in here but talking to them just puts things into perspective for me.  I could have a kid at home which would make this SO much harder…I don’t.  I know how much I miss my dog and cannot imagine going through this with a kid already at home.  I have also said to Kayvan that I couldn’t imagine going through this without his support.  It would be so much harder to do this as a single mom.  I learned that one of the girls is my neighbor to my left and another was moving into the room on my right.  We joked that they should just let us sit at our doors and gossip with each other.  Wouldn’t that be nice?

The non-stress test went well today.  No fights from the little guy and he did his 15x15s without apple juice.  I am still convinced that this little bit is a night owl like his daddy.  I just hope that his daddy can continue to be a night owl while sleep deprived.  I’ll do the early morning wake ups, I PROMISE!