Los Angeles. Day 2. Welcome to the Shitshow.
Hallie slept pretty well (we gave her some melatonin), but I was up for the day around 545. Tzvi was up to, since he was supposed to be working and needed to be on early morning calls NY time. Around 6:15 Tzvi went downstairs to breakfast so he could have coffee and take calls.
I started feeling a little weird around 6 AM, and by 7 AM I was in excruciating pain. Hallie woke up around 6:45, and by 7:30 or so I was in an Uber heading to Cedars Sinai hospital. I went to the ER and they took me straight up to Labor and Delivery. They immediately put me in a private room, and after some time they decided I have kidney stones. This is the worst pain of my life (worse than labor), and there’s really nothing they can do for it for pregnant women, so it’s just a lot of fluids and trying to manage to pain. Special thanks to the Brunelle family who put me in touch with their family friend Dr. Platt who is a well-known OB in LA and used to be head of OB at Cedars (and also happened to be the doctor who did Tzvi’s mother’s ultrasound and told her she was having a boy). He was very helpful while I was at the hospital.
Tzvi: I stayed at the hotel to figure out what to do with Hallie. We started with breakfast in the hotel. It’s included with our stay, so we couldn’t miss that no matter how much pain Steph was in. Of course Hallie wanted pancakes, which wasn’t included in the buffet, so I still had to pay for that. After breakfast we Ubered over to my parents’ apartment and I left Hallie with them for the morning, and then Ubered to the hospital. Steph was in a lot of pain, but I think the worst part of her day was when they took her down to radiology and then made her wait in a general triage area where they were bringing in other patients that were all old and in rough shape; at one point a woman started suctioning and Steph almost vomited.
I went back and forth a few times during the day. Hallie did pretty well with my parents. Around 6 PM my mother made latkas, we lit Chanukah candles and then we Ubered back to the hotel. Steph spent the night at Cedars, so I bathed Hallie and got her to bed.
What a day.
