Our Lovely Day at the Hospital

So I am skipping my daily pictures for now to bring to you a special presentation of some pictures from 11w3d (or according to my official date, 11w4d) visit to the hospital!

Friday night, I had made plans with someone to go out to a very nice flower festival and to see Kim Yuna, the world champion in figure skating, perform (for free!). I was very excited about getting to just go out and relax and have a good time. Unfortunately, I suddenly felt really sick around 12:30am Friday night/Saturday morning. I threw up and immediately knew it was NOT pregnancy related because of how it happened and because I did not come close to feeling better afterwards. Up until 6am, I wound up tossing cookies all night. Other complications that need not be mentioned also arose. It was not a good night, and I was so zapped of energy.

So 6am was the last of the cookie-tossing events, thankfully, but I was still not able to really take in very many fluids. Standing was something I was happy not to do. I knew I had food poisoning. It's not like I've never had a stomach bug before. It's just different when you've got a little one inside of you. You know that he/she will be okay because they'll zap everything out of you before any real harm comes to them, but you still worry about how quickly you'll be able to recover and whatnot.

After talking with mom and having Hee Suk call my doctor, we decided to go to the ER to get me hooked up to an IV for fluids. I forgot to write it all down, but my blood pressure was way high, something like 142/75, surely from my poor little heart trying to compensate for having nothing to run off of. The doctor came to my room, if you could call it that, and was like, "Well, we can't give you medicine since you're pregnant, and we can't take an X-Ray, but I am pretty sure you have gastro-intestinitis."

No duh.

Koreans love making use of every single diagnostic thing in existence. The medical care here is fantastic, but it is overly cautious at times. If I weren't pregnant, I would have been home with my water and Powerade and some crackers, calling it a day. Here, she's talking medicine and X-Rays! In my mind, all I could think of was, "Woman, I know what's wrong with me. Just get me my fluids so I can get out of here." Hee Suk asked her how long the IV would take, to which she replied with, "About two hours." Yikes! We decided I would lie down and rest up while he went and had a good lunch.

IVs really stink. Well, getting them hooked up, at least. They first drew some blood from the spot they were putting the IV in, and then they attached the IV. Hee Suk asked if I was okay, to which I replied, "About as okay as one gets with a sharp needle poking around in your hand!" I just wiggled my toes and laughed while it was going on, recalling how one of my dear siblings ripped their own IV out with their teeth once.

I didn't realize IVs were so cold. The fluids in the tube just made me feel so cold, but after some time, getting replenished helped me to warm up. You'll see in the pictures below that my ears at quite red. The pictures were probably taken around the 3-hours in mark. Yes, 2 hours wound up being 4. I was kicking the IV bag by the end to try to make it go faster.


My IV, what I more endearingly referred to as Chinese Water Torture. If you don't know what that is, look it up.


My *lovely* bed. Maybe I am silly for expecting so, but I thought we would have at least had beds that prop up. Oh, no. I felt like I was in some make-shift battleground infirmary.


My poor hand. ;~;


Concerned Appa-to-be. Although by the end, he was having a blast taking funny pictures of me. Jerk.


Oh, yeah.

So by the end of four hours, I was going crazy with cabin fever. The rooms were simply divided by curtains, and I had heard so many people come and go. The most annoying people came last. One woman across the way from me kept moaning. I thought maybe she was the woman we heard come in who had somehow managed to break her arm and a rib, so I simply said, "Well, don't break your bones, then!" I did have sympathy on her, though. I was jealous, though, because they let her listen to her baby's heartbeat twice. Her husband, however, I wanted to smack. HE CAN'T CONTROL THE VOLUME OF HIS VOICE. That, and he likes letting his phone ring 20 times before answering it. Um, hello? Silent mode, please? Jerk.

Here, I'll show you an unfinished video I made to recount the festivities towards the end. Hee Suk was out of the room and suddenly came back in, so it ends with an unflattering shot of my face. You've been warned.



So I had mixed up who was in the room before with who was in the party room now. The old lady was being seen, and it must have been one of her children, his/her spouse and their child. Hee Suk and I were CRACKING UP listening to them. He informed me that older people here think IVs are bags of magic since they were introduced around the time of the Korean War, so she wouldn't listen to the doctor or answer her questions. She just *knew* she needed a bag of magic and was quite enthusiastic about it. I was very ready and willing to donate the last bit of mine to her. The doctor asked her to cough, since that seemed to be the problem, to which she let out this pathetic fake cough, trying to mimick the sort of sound the doctor was looking for. The doctor ask, "Was that a real cough?" "Yes. Yes it was! It was real!" This lady was so overly dramatic. We just could not stop laughing. Hee Suk said she sounded like she was from the country side, so I asked him if he had seen any cows parked out front while he had been out there.

Soon before we were ready to get out of there, Hee Suk asked what would be okay to eat. She mentioned that soup wasn't okay, but that juk was. I guess in English, it would be translated close to porridge? Thick soup, basically. No spicy stuff, no this, blah blah blah. So with getting fluids in me, I started getting really hungry. I asked Hee Suk to hand me my bag so I could eat a granola bar in there. He advised against it, and I was like, "I know my body! Give me my granola bar!" (All joking, of course.) Thank goodness I had that sucker in there.

Anyway, I was being all sarcastic and weird that last hour, but when we were ready to go home, I started crying. I don't even really know why. I just wanted to be home. We left and spent the rest of the day in bed watching different movies on TV. Even though I was exhausted at the hospital, I could not sleep for the life of me. I don't know what it was, but I didn't sleep for even a minute. Some time after we got home, though, I started drifting off every now-and-again, and that was nice. I just wanted to sleep it all away, knowing that I would feel better in the morning.

So all is well now. I had a bowl of cereal and am still taking in some Powerade. I will still be taking it easy both activity-wise and food-wise today to be safe. I just cannot wait for our appointment on Wednesday to get here already!

So big thanks go out to Mom and Hee Suk. Mom was a huge source of comfort when the doctors were giving me wrong information and for everything else in-between, and it was amazing to see how Hee Suk just really stepped up to help me out in every way possible, even though he had had an important appointment scheduled that day. Sesame and I are so blessed to be surrounded by so much love!

Thank You, my God, for holding us in Your mighty hands and for sending us so many who care about and love us. You are so amazing, my Lord!