In which Melly gets hit by a car...
If you're on my FB then you know that I had a little accident yesterday but everything is totally fine.
Here are the deets if you want them:
I was walking home from a couple of errands a little before noon and was crossing our street when I suddenly found myself in pain and on the ground. It took a moment before it sank in that I'd been hit by a car. The impact happened mostly at the back of my right hip but I remember feeling the baby slamming sideways. The guy got out right away but I was in shock and pain and just wanted to go home. I remember telling him that I was ok and him thanking me but that's about it.
I *know* better than to cross that street -- even on a green -- without looking. There are so many accidents on our street that we barely even register them. I also know better than to leave the scene of an accident like that but I was in shock and pain and my house was right there.
I hobbled home, called Sultry and freaked her out by bursting into tears and asking her to come home right away. Then I eased my shoe off expecting blood everywhere (it felt like the nail on my big toe had ripped) and was suprised by the HUGE black bruise on the top of my foot and the lack of blood. Once I had assessed the damage I called TBBE to let her know I couldn't work and emailed a couple of the other section Leaders to let them know I wouldn't be able to come in and could they please let my co-Leader know because she was on her way back from out of town and I couldn't find her number. There were a lot of tears on my part and some amount of panic about the baby at first. I went and drank some juice and lay down hoping she'd move but it hurt too much so I had to get up and go to the couch. At some point I also called the hospital to make sure I should come in (duh).
I think I was a little calmer by the time Sultry got home but I was in a lot of pain by then. My foot and knee didn't want to bear weight but I'd felt a couple of little kicks so I knew that the baby was ok at least.
Sultry and I have been talking about a plan for the birth and we had decided that if anything went wrong before I was due I'd go to the Jewish General Hospital because it has the best NICU in the city. Of course this decision had gone completely out of my head and I'd called our regular hospital instead. It turns out to have been the one really *good* choice I made yesterday.
In retrospect we should have taken a moment to gather a few things together in case I needed to stay but we ended up just running to the hospital. It's a half hour drive at the best of times and we just wanted to get there. By this point there had been a couple more kicks and I knew things were probably ok but after weeks and weeks of watching ER I was still thinking of worst case senarios.
There's a couple of sets of stairs to get into the birthing centre (really, who does that!?!) but I managed to get up, check in and make it to a room all on my own. The nurse was nice enough to make sure I peed before I got into my gown and was hooked up to the monitors. I was given a little clicker and told to push the button every time the baby moved. Average is 10 an hour -- she was bopping around like a maniac and it was more like ten every five minutes. She also had a little game after a while -- she'd move so that the monitor wasn't picking up her heartbeat anymore and an alarm would go off. The nurse would come in and have to search around for a minute until she found it again. This happened at least six or seven times.
It wasn't all fun and games. I started having contractions (although, at least in the beginning, I didn't feel them much) and that was a bit of a concern. I was given an IV of fluids to try and stop them and my cervix was checked to make sure it was still closed. My leg was checked to make sure it wasn't seriously injured but there was no way I'd be sent to Emergency until the contractions were less than ten minutes apart they also wanted to do an ultrasound to rule out any damage to the placenta.
So, we settled in. A few calls were made to reassure people that I was ok. I was given Tylenol and ice for my foot and a pillow for my knee. I wasn't allowed out of bed so a bedpan made an appearance. We met my roommate and spent a lot of time chatting. Time sort of crawled by. It didn't help that we were never sure what was going to happen when. The ward got slammed with cases (one of my nurses compared it to a bus pulling in) and everyone was pretty busy but never so busy that I felt neglected. Eventually they gave me supper, my first time having hospital food and boy was it awful! We had money in our account but there was no bank machine anymore and the cafeteria was cash only. Sultry didn't want to leave me at this point so the lousy food was better than no food.
I was still contracting so they gave me medication to stop it. The contractions were still painless and irregular so I wasn't particularly worried but the Dr. wasn't too happy about them. Baby J was still moving well -- every once in awhile she'd kick the monitor itself or move so close that her heartbeat would sound *really* loud and much like the galloping horses in a Monty Python sketch. I guess hearing her and knowing she was absolutely fine is what kept me so calm about the whole thing.
We hadn't been able to get hold of Th'Boy all afternoon -- he had a rehearsal at school (he's doing poi in the school fashion show) and was planning to go straight to Cubs from there. We were really worried that he'd hear about the accident before we had a chance to tell him I was ok (by this point DivaDaddy had mentioned it on FB) so I called one of the Scout Leaders to tell him I was all right and that Th'Boy didn't know yet. At about 7pm Sultry decided she might as well run home and get some stuff we needed (like my CPAP so I could sleep) since the contractions were slowing down and it looked like I'd be going to the ER before they did the ultrasound. It's at least a half an hour to get to the hospital from our place which is why she hadn't wanted to leave. As it turns out she didn't miss a thing.
It was a long night. Sultry came back at about 9pm after finding Th'Boy at Cubs and dropping him at home. She tried to lie down for a bit but couldn't really sleep. I was taken off the monitors and snuck out of bed to use a real toilet (moving my knee and hip to use the bed pan was actually more painful than getting up). The ultrasound was done at about midnight and was totally clear -- no sign of any sort of trauma to the baby or placenta. Two Goddesses brought us stuff from Timmies when we needed it the most -- by this point I was really uncomfortable and irritable from being in the same position for so long, it was aggravating my old tailbone injury and starting to hurt.
Somewhere around 2:30 I was *finally* released to the ER for x-rays and treatment. I was wheeled to triage by an orderly who must spend his free time on the racetrack and sent off for x-rays. The tech was asleep and it was at least ten minutes from the time I rang the bell to when he stumbled out. I'll assume that's why he didn't see the place on the form where it said I was pregnant. He asked me if there was any chance I was pregnant and was surprised when I said I was 28 weeks. Moving my leg around to get the pictures really hurt but at least I got a copy of the DVD.
At about 3am I was seen by the ER doc and told, shockingly, that nothing was broken. I was released at about 4am with an ace bandage on my knee, a set of crutches I can make do without, an appointment to be check next Monday and a prescription for Dilaudid (that I don't really need but filled anyways). A nice, anticlimactic end to a miserable day. Sultry got us home without incident and fell into bed for an hour before dragging herself to work. I got a little more sleep than that and got Th'Boy off to school.
Two days later I'm doing ok. My foot is still really swollen and bruised but as long as I don't move my knee too much there's very little pain and I can totally get around without the crutches. I've had a couple of contractions but they're the false kind I was having before the accident.
I was incredibly lucky. If he'd been going much faster the baby and I could have been seriously hurt. I'm really grateful for all the sympathy and good wishes and for the wonderful care I got from the staff at Lasalle. They even called to check up on me yesterday. we're filing a report on the accident and will be lobbying the bourough for changes to the timing of the lights on our corner -- I'm the second pedestrian to be struck in the last couple of months.
All's well that ends well.
M.