33 weeks 5 days & a roach

We are getting close to the 34 week point that I never thought possible - yay! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can still go home at 34 weeks (this Friday) as my Dr's once suggested. Based on my ultrasound Monday, I have remained stable for a few weeks now and the kids are still looking perfect. Once I hit 34 weeks the Dr's say the kids will be at a very safe point for being born (that would be the equivalent of a singleton baby being born 3 weeks early). They feel it is very important for my mental health to get out of the hospital and into my own environment to try to derail the onset of "bed rest psychosis". So, if I go home and end up going into labor the next day, there are no (out of the norm) worries about any one's safety and at least I'll have had a restful night in my own bed with Mark & Cooper. Obviously I'll continue my strict bed rest at home, especially considering I have no energy to do anything at all!

Today my nurse was Casey. She waddled in, almost 36 weeks along and 3 cm dilated. She said this was her 2nd to last shift before she was going to take off to give birth. I felt horrible guilt as she carried in my breakfast tray, changed my sheets, went in and out of my room to help other patients. At lunch time Amanda brought me my tray and informed me that Casey was no longer my nurse - she was now a patient in Labor & Delivery. I knew I shouldn't have let he change my sheets!

Now you're probably wondering where the roach comes into play in this post... don't worry it's not me loosing my mind amid this bed rest psychosis I'm slipping into! It's more an observation as to why health care costs might be so high! On Friday of last week I was in my room visiting with a friend who happened to notice there was a water bug (aka roach) trapped in the air vent above my bed. Alarmed and amused we watched the poor fellow pace back and forth inside this steel cage and realized that's where he was stuck for the rest of his life. My human friend left and I soon decided that this roach, even if he wasn't human, would make a good companion. I sat in bed and watch him pace, rest, circle, and meander for a couple of hours. After lunch I decided that befriending a roach was probably not in my best interest. I asked the nurse to call maitenance and have the poor fellow removed.

A maintenance man arrived and, moments into the rescue, he called for backup. A second maintenance man arrived and they banged away at the vent and couldn't open it enough to get my little friend out. Their failure meant bigger guns had to be called in and my room had to be closed down and I had to move rooms for a 3rd time during this hospital stay. We then waited one hour for housekeeping to finish "cleaning" my new room (aka, finish watching her stories in the room she was "cleaning"). A little bit later an outside pest control man was called in to euthanize my poor friend in the air vent. The rest of the day was spent mourning the loss of my newest friend and looking out my new larger window in my now smaller room.

The next morning I woke up to the sound of construction coming from my old room. Two air conditioning repair men had to climb through the vents and internally disassemble the vent to remove my deceased, former friend. One hour of hard labor which involved hammers, saws, grunting and swearing lead to the grand re-opening of "Willis Knighton South's Ante-partum Corner Suite". It took 5 men and 2.5 hours of labor to rid a room of one measly roach. So when you look at the grand scheme of things, roaches are to blame for the extraordinary costs of our health care system.