Day 16: A Hospital Stay, A Grateful Heart, Home Again

Some moments stay with you forever, and this episode begins with one of them.

I'm sharing a memory of my dear friend Rebecca taking me to the home where she grew up and introducing me to her parents. It was such a simple afternoon, but one I'll always treasure because she invited me into a very special part of her story.

Then we catch up on where I've disappeared to for the last few days.

I've been spending my time at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center with my pregnant daughter after a frightening hospital stay. While the doctors still don't have all the answers about what caused her bleeding, they were able to rule out the most serious possibilities, and for that, our family is incredibly grateful.

I also wanted to take a few minutes to recognize the amazing physicians, nurses, and staff at OSU Wexner. Their compassion, professionalism, and exceptional care turned a very scary experience into one where we felt informed, supported, and genuinely cared for every step of the way.

Now that we're finally home, it's time to dust off the to-do list that's been patiently waiting for three days and get life moving again.

Sometimes life puts everything on pause, and all you can do is be present, trust the people caring for the ones you love, and count your blessings.

I hope you'll join me for another unedited ten minutes of life, gratitude, and whatever happens to be on my mind today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning everyone. Welcome to another edition of 10 Unedited Minutes with Marlena. It is Saturday, July 11th. It has been, I don't know how many days since I have recorded a podcast. It feels like it's been months. But let's get into it today. Today, and we're gonna tell you why too, by the way. Today's uh podcast is sponsored by my dear friend Rebecca Conklin Kleibomer. Uh, Rebecca and I have been friends for a very long time, and Rebecca has graciously um stepped up to sponsor my podcast because she loves this work that I'm doing. She believes in me and she supports me. So she has sponsored two months worth of my um episodes, and to honor that, we are going to do 60 days of Rebecca, which means we'll start out every episode with either a memory of Rebecca and I's friendship or just spending a few seconds slash minutes loving on my dear friend Rebecca. And today I uh just want to uh bring up the memory of when Rebecca took me to her farm where she grew up, to her homestead where she grew up. And it it sticks out to me particularly because um when we pulled up to that farm, it instantly brought me back to my childhood. Her and I grew up very similar, and it was just beautiful. It was just out in the country, her mom and dad's home that they have lived in their whole marriage, and I had the absolute pleasure of going inside and sitting and visiting with her mom and dad, who are obviously they're amazing people because they raised an amazing daughter. And her dad is amazing. He he's he's just a really fun guy to talk to. He talks about, you know, his farming days and Rebecca and following Rebecca on social media present day, you know, you can just see how much he loves his grandchildren. Uh both of Rebecca's sons go over there and help him on the farm. And it that part of their lives has played a very instrumental role in who they are today. And I just thought it was really cool. So, Rebecca, thank you for that day. It was beautiful. I loved it. I'm really glad that you got to show me that little corner of your life, and I will forever remember that. Let's get into where I've been the last it feels like five years. And so the last podcast, I spoke a little bit about um how my daughter is having a very high-risk pregnancy. And we ended up on an ambulance at OSU hospital in Columbus. I believe it was Thursday night. Thursday, I don't, uh you guys, I honestly do not remember like even what day it is. It's been a crazy three days. So anyway, we came home from that visit at OSU, and Hannah went home and went to bed, and at 3 o'clock the next morning, she woke me up and said, Mom, I'm bleeding again. Okay. She calls her doctor. We called down to OSU. They said, Come on back. So we take off for uh the Wexner Medical Center in downtown Columbus at 3 a.m. in the morning. And we get there, and I mean, within an hour, we knew that we were getting admitted. They um ran all the same tests, and really, we really am not sure why she's bleeding at this point, but um they observed her for 24 hours and they said that they've ruled out all the scary stuff. And the scary stuff can be um early term labor, it can be a placental abruption, it could be where the placenta has formed over the cervix. Um, and those two things are the biggest, are the scariest because if either of those um happen, then you gotta you gotta get that baby out of there because it's now a lethal threat to both mom and baby. So we had the pleasure of spending the night at OSU Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, and it was stressful, it was hard, but there was no way in hell I was leaving my daughter down there by herself. And you may ask, where is um the dad in all this? Well, he is busting his ass, working a full-time job, and somebody has to watch their my uh my other granddaughter, the other light of my life. And he did just that, and he did amazing. Um, it was hard for Hannah to be away from my granddaughter for you know that amount of time, but we trudged through it. And let me just talk a little bit about this OSU Wexner Medical Center. I'm telling you right now, that is the absolute best hospital I've ever been to in my entire life. It is a teaching hospital, yes, and some people have their opinions about that, but I have never had a negative opinion about that. We went to University of Toledo for my husband, and somebody's got to teach, you know, these this next generation of doctors, and they have to learn by real life experiences, and I'm a hundred percent advocate for that. So we we saw a lot of resident doctors, excuse me, I do not know what's going on with my throat, but you all are gonna have to deal with that. And at one time, there were eight people in the room. Six of them were, I'm sorry, five of them were um resident doctors. I don't know what the terms are for coming up in the medical field. One of them wasn't was a full-fledged doctor and then two nurses. And this was when they came to analyze Hannah um the last morning we were there, I think. I don't know. And it I was so impressed by this because we were shooting questions back and forth, and every single one of those students slash doctors stepped in and answered the question. And it wasn't like they were trying to compete for, you know, the spotlight or whatever. They were genuinely bouncing off of each other. And one would answer a question, another would add to it, another would add to it. I was just so absolutely impressed by the staff down there and the care that that she received while we were there. And I just it it you definitely saw God's work. Let me just say that. But there was a moment where I um I don't know how to describe this emotion, but of course we had to have ultrasounds done. And the last ultrasound they did on Hannah and Baby, it was beautiful. It was uh it was a um anatomy scan, and they wanted to check over baby, and then they wanted to do a you know a really good hard look at the placenta. And so we were in there for a little bit of time, and their number one uh um ultrasound tech was our um person, and she was teaching another student. So we had the student for a while with the ultrasound tech behind her, and then um the ultrasound tech got on there to do a couple more, you know, in-depth scans, but at the end she pulled out this new wand, and Hannah apparently knew what it was. I didn't, and she puts it on my daughter's belly. I might get emotional about this, and it was as if that baby was born. You you it was as if you were looking at my granddaughter outside of the womb. I mean, it was so high definition, in depth. I could see every I could I could see her nose, her lips, her eyes, her hair. I all of it. She was sucking her little thumb. Oh my goodness. I wailed. Obviously, I'm crying just talking about it. I wailed and they're like, oh my gosh, we're making Grammy cry. Hell yes, you made Grammy cry. It was as if I just met my granddaughter right there. Oh, it was such a beautiful moment. And I I just always get in the big feels when they're doing these ultrasounds anyway, because it's just a miracle to me to watch the formation of life. It and it it's mind-blowing. It's mind-blowing, but that's that's God, right? That's why it's mind-blowing, because there's no explanation for a lot of the ways that we are formed, and it's because it's God's miracle, and that's what a miracle is when there's no explanation for something. And oh my goodness. So, yeah, so we came home yesterday afternoon. Um, Hannah is doing fine, she is stable, she's not bleeding anymore. Um, not sure this will be the last time we have to go down there, but let's just hope that uh baby tea cooks in my daughter as long as absolutely possible. She is 28 weeks right now, and our goal is at least 36 weeks. That's when Tasia was born, I believe. And um, you know, everything about baby tea checked out, she's healthy, she's about two and a half pounds, which is bigger than um Tiana, my second granddaughter, at 30 weeks. So uh, you know, baby tea's growing, she's got big old hand bones and the sweetest face, she looks just like Tasia. And I can't believe that I can even say that. She looks just like Tasia. She's definitely got that baby fetter spiel face. And yeah, so I am about three days behind on any work that I had to do, but uh this is maybe partially the reason why God is, you know, putting this season in my life so I can help my daughter through, you know, all these these this very, very high risk, tumultuous pregnancy. And it's stressful, but I'm working through it. I'm able to get some work done while I'm at the hospital. A little bit of work, a little bit of work. But I have a very understanding, um, a lot of very understanding people in my corner, and I'm very, very grateful for that. So that brings up the gratitude jar. There's only five pieces of paper in here because obviously we haven't been home, but I've gotta find a pen. For those of you that are new to this part of my podcast, I've started a gratitude jar, and the goal is to put a piece of paper inside of it that contains something that I am grateful for in the moment. And the end goal is to have a jar with 365 pieces of paper in it at the end of the year that you can go back and just read and look over and relive those grateful moments. So today, make sure I'm not putting it on something I wrote on. Today I am grateful for the staff at OSU Medical Center. And I also want to um kind of say this too, that we started this journey in Blanchard Valley, and I think it speaks volumes when you go into a smaller hospital like that, and they realize that they are in over their heads, and they transfer you to a facility that is more equipped to take care of the problem at hand. There are so many times when doctors, you know, their egos get in the way and they think that they can solve this on their own, and it ends up not turning out the best way it could. And kudos to them. Kudos to them. So thank you, Blanchard Valley, for you know, stabilizing my daughter, getting her the early care she needed, and then moving us on to somewhere that you know can more easily take care of and diagnose what's going on. So back to my gratitude paper. I'm grateful for I'm grateful for the staff at OSU Medical Center for the staff. I don't even know. My brain is fried right now. So we're gonna date this 7-Eleven. And if you're on my YouTube channel, you can see this friggin' light flickering. I'm about to throw it out the window that's sitting right there. But that drives me nuts. But anyway, thank you guys. Thank you for putting up with this train wreck of a podcast. Thank you for just being here and listening to me. Thank you, Rebecca, for being an absolutely beautiful, amazing friend. Um, I know if we were in Toledo these last couple days, you would have been right there by me, but we were south. So I love you guys. Pray for me, pray for my daughter. I pray for you every single day. And hopefully, we'll see you on Monday. I'm not gonna record tomorrow, it's Sunday. I'm going to church. But we will see you on Monday. Bye, guys.