Rose was in the hospital for about a week due to her newly found kidney stones.
I stayed with her most of the time, only going home to shower and do laundry.
Days spent in the hospital are trying, but the nights are torture.
I had to sleep in a malfunctioning recliner beside Rose’s bed.
It would barely remain stretched out if you kept your back straight and applied force against it. If you shifted the wrong way during the night, it shot into the sitting position, giving one quite a rude awakening.
Another issue that prevented a good night’s sleep was the nurse parade that came in at random times to check the IV machine. If Rose moved to pinch the line an alarm would sound.
None of these irritations compared with Mary and her Damn Lamb.
Across the hall was a patient who was not supposed to get out of bed, so the bed alarm was turned on. Every time he got up, the bed played the tune of the children’s nursery rhyme “Mary had a Little Lamb.” This loud music alerted the nurses that the patient was being non-compliant.
Rose’s room was on the pediatric floor of the hospital. This story might make you smile, but there is a sinister twist to this tale.
While trapped in the hospital for days, I would silently slither out of Rose’s room while she slept to see different scenery and search for snacks. During one of my sneaky forays, I heard the nurses discussing this patient across the hall.
He was not a child. The hospital had no room for him in the Psych ward. Until a space opened up for him upstairs, he was across the hall from my Rose.
So every time I would hear “Mary had a Little Lamb”, I would wake up and watch Rose’s door; prepared to catapult myself from my dysfunctional recliner to protect my baby from some psycho.
Sleepless SEIZURE MAMA
Seizure Mama and Rose 