Tattoons and other random thoughts tonight

The thing about hospital stays is how magnified everything feels. The smallest bit of good news warrants a parade down Main Street. The smallest bit of disappointing news has you sitting in sackcloth and ashes. At least it’s been that way for me. 

Mary Katherine’s fever disappears and I’m on cloud nine. Her oxygen levels drop a few percentage points and I am tearful all evening. The facts of our general situation stay relatively unchanged, but my heart is swinging back and forth like it’s dragging behind MaryKat’s little purple swing.

Just to give you an update, we are generally in a good place. Her temperature, heat rate, respiration rate, blood work and overall demeanor are all great. She is eating and sleeping well and has even smiled a time or two at the nurses. But her oxygen still isn’t what it should be. They want her over 90 (I’ve heard someone say 94…?) and she is jumping back and forth from 82 to 87. So right now we are really just waiting for those blinking digital numbers on the screen to stop dropping once we turn her oxygen off.

I am so grateful for the good medical care here and am in no rush to take a still-unwell baby home. I am no longer sick with worry now that she seems more like her old (still-quite-new) self. And as something of an introvert I haven’t minded the walls of this tiny room 24/7 and four days of no sunshine nearly as much as you might think. Now that I am a bit caught up on sleep I read a lot and piddle around on the internet. Thank goodness for Kindles.

Even so, last night I went to bed with a knot in my stomach I felt like I could feel with my hand if I wanted to. (My emotions and body often get their wires crossed like that. Homesickness feels like thirst to me, a weird thing my sister claims to experience too.) The blah-ness may have something to do with hearing the little kid crying in discomfort next door or reading an eerie book about genetic research and civil rights abuses that made me feel yucky (a Kindle special. Go figure). But more than anything I think I am just missing Bryan and Annabelle, my firstborn who is still just a baby too. The nursing staff don’t really want her to get exposed to more germs up here visiting, especially as she is just getting over something too, and she isn’t really happy stuck in a little room with sick baby sister and no toys anyway. She adores her Papa and is having a blast with him. But generally, our little family doesn’t do well apart for too long.

That being said I had the great joy of having a lunch date with Annabelle today. Bryan hung out with MaryKat while Annabelle and I crossed the street to a Java House where we finished off lunch with ice-cream cones and milk-shakes. I still can’t believe sometimes that I can sit in a restaurant booth and have hilarious conversations with my not-quite two year old. My favorite thing she does these days is ask a question, (“That is?”), receive the answer (“That’s an external hard-drive for the computer,”), after which she thinks for a second then throws her head back in affected laughter and says “Oh yeah…” as though she had just momentarily forgotten something she had known all along.

 

Before she left the hospital Annabelle and I each put on one of her stick-on tattoos (“tattoons” she calls them, which seems appropriate to me). She picked out a koala bear for her tummy. I got a butterfly for my hand. I told her it would help me not miss her so much while we are apart. And even though her Papa says she is a little clingy and emotional while I am away, she says goodbye very matter-of-factly and doesn’t make a big scene. This helps my heart.

So I crawl into bed tonight so thinking of all the families that have to do this for weeks or months even and say thank you that only five days apart feels so sad. I kiss the baby beside me in her little hospital gown that makes her look like an old-fashioned baby doll; I talk for a long time to Bryan on the phone and then tell him I love him; and I kiss my tattoon. 

It will be good to have all this behind us.