Alrighty, time to continue where I left off. If you haven’t read part one, you can read the
beginning of the story by clicking on PART ONE, because I am just going to
continue on from where I left off.
A couple thoughts I didn’t
mention in part one was how all of this was affecting the baby. I probably
sound like such an egocentric person, but the whole time I kept asking them. I
was really concerned about having a fever, especially when it spiked to 103. I
know they warn pregnant women about putting your body at high temperatures, to
avoid saunas or hot jacuzzis because bringing your body to a certain hot
temperature is not good. Having a fever you can’t really control made me very,
very nervous! This was one of the reasons I would take Tylenol immediately after
feeling a fever coming, even if it was as low as 100 degrees. They assured me
everything was fine, and in addition to checking up on me every 4 hours and
giving me Tylenol, checking my blood pressure and such. They were also checking
on baby’s heart rate every 4 hours. That was very soothing to hear and despite
everything it would always calm me down that baby is doing okay. I requested an
ultrasound on baby but they said it was unnecessary; only an ultrasound on my
kidneys and bladder was done, other than that they were just checking the
heartbeat.
Back to the story…
Friday
Friday was basically the same, I didn’t get much sleep that night- oh
this reminds me. Dr. Deaver! He was on the night shift again- the same doctor
that said it is not big deal when I called at night. I asked the nurse if there
is something they can give me for sleep that doesn’t interact with everything
else I am taking. She told me doctor was busy but would be free in an hour.
After an hour passes I call them and she said he is with a patient and will ask
again once he is done. About 30 minutes later I stumble to the front desk down
the hall and ask the nurse again and she apologizes tell me she has asked the
doctor many times already and he hasn’t given her an answer yet. I ask if I can
speak to him and she motions to me he is sitting diagonal from her. I call him
about 5 times before he responds. When I ask him about the medication he is
quiet for like a minute before he responds. Asks my name about 5 more times and
then there is a long awkward silence. Nurse comes back and asks me if I asked
him and I said I think so, and we both look at him awaiting some sort of
response. He finally speaks up and says he told my nurse she can give it to me.
She is standing behind his back motioning her head to a no and mouthing the
words “ No you didn’t,” then he calls her over and says he put in an order for
it and she can go ahead and give it to me. So I got my sleeping pill finally,
but in the end he’s a jerk and I did not like him. And from what I saw nurses
there don’t like him as much either. The next night I asked the nurse if he was
on shift again, and she responded that he wasn’t, I said “ Yay!!” and she says “
yeah, we kind of all said that, but you
didn’t hear that from me!” So, I wasn’t the only person with a not so kind
impression of him!
They ended up increasing my Tylenol amount. Instead of giving me 2
pills of 325 mg (which was less than what I was taking at home, made sense to
why they weren’t kicking in as fast) they started giving me 2 pills of 500 mg (
which was the dose I was taking at home.) But--- stronger dose meant that they
don’t give it to me every 4 hours; they give it to me every 6 hours, which
sucked. Because for some apparent reason no matter the dose my body starting
brewing up a fever on a schedule- every 3-4 hours. The first few times they
gave me the stronger dose every 4 hours, and since they have they had to technically
skip a dose so I don’t go over the amount I am supposed to take in a day. They
obviously didn’t do that but decided to give me something else. This was all
decided at night. That night my fever peaked and my nurse must have been busy
with another patient and the other nurses did not know the schedule I was on. I
was already waiting for my time to get my Tylenol and was probably annoying,
buzzing them every 15 minutes, but they finally brought me something – but it
was an ibuprofen. I was concerned because I was told by everyone and read
everywhere to avoid ibuprofen during pregnancy. So I reconfirmed with the nurse
and she said yes, they advise to avoid it but they are giving this to me as a onetime
thing because they can’t give me Tylenol so I don’t overdose the daily amount.
I probably got only 45 minutes of sleep during the night and fell
asleep around 6 am. At this point I was very tired and a few times nurses came
in to check on me like they usually do,
and then shifts changed so the new doctors and new nurses came to introduce
themselves, but I was just so out of it and sleepy I heard their voices and saw
their faces very vaguely.
I woke up around 11am maybe and breakfast has been waiting for me
already since 7 am. I was not feverish for the first time, although the 4 hour
mark was definitely passed, but I still had pains so when they brought my Tylenol,
I did not refuse it. I also began feeling a new pain. Aside from my back and
side pain, my stomach right under my chest was feeling uncomfortable. Aside
from it all, I had an appetite throughout all of this. But right under my chest
it felt like my stomach, itself, was in pain and pressure and bloated. Like
someone took an air pump and blew me up. And every time I ate it would make it
worse. As if everything I was eating was just staying right there in my
tummy. Here comes some TMI stuff… at
this point I haven’t gone #2 in 2 days for sure, but it did not feel like regular
constipation. Usually the pressure would
be much lower in my digestive system and I would have the urge to go just
nothing would come out. In this case it was just this painful bloated feeling,
ugh not any fun adding on to everything else. They started giving me 2
different kinds of stool softeners and milk of magnesia, stuff that is safe to
take and apparently supposed to make me go. It didn’t work for me that day,
that’s for sure.
After taking the ibuprofen, I was fever free all day. Although, I still
had bad pains, I was getting excited the antibiotics were kicking in and doing
the job. On another bright note I got some visitors Friday too! Our friends
Arseniy and Emelia surprised us and came in for a visit. Here’s another famous
shot of my hubby’s that I will share with you (I look somewhat decent here as
opposed to the other picture when I’m burning up from a fever, friends always
make everything better anyway!)
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So, at this point it is looking like I am starting to feel better…. Until
6pm hits. There come the wonderful chills again. It was a slowly rising fever,
I think I hit about 101, and they gave me my Tylenol at 6:45, which brought it
down. I guess the ibuprofen may have worked stronger and better than Tylenol keeping
me fever free for 12 hours, I don’t know why else I was fever free when
obviously it hit me again.
At 10pm I started burning up like crazy again, the bad news was I wasn’t
due for my next Tylenol until 12:30! At this point there was a new doctor on
shift- Dr. Grahm. I asked the nurse if there was something she could do, like
give me a smaller dose of Tylenol or something. She measured my fever and it
was 103.5, the highest it ever was so far. After a few minutes Dr. Grahm comes
into my room and introduces himself. He asks me to tell him myself what the
heck is going on with me. So I tell him everything, and with more questioning I
ended up sharing my whole health history with him really, starting from my stomach
issues and inflammatory bowel stuff ( if you haven’t read my old post
thoroughly discussing my health you can do it HERE) to all my deficiencies,
anemia and thyroid stuff- everything basically. He started thinking that this
may not be a kidney infection after all. He thinks that with taking antibiotics
for a few days already I should be feeling better by now, and yet I am still
laying here with pains and a high fever. He said he wants another blood sample
and urine sample and wants to further examine me, and possibly look into the
pain below my chest, that could be a pancreas or gallbladder issue. At this
point he offered to give me stronger meds- Percocets, which he told me, are
safe to take, and if I need to I will be able to take them every 4 hours and
they would help much more with the pain.
The moment Dr. Grahm left the room, Zhenya and I both exchange looks
and say “Wow!” at the same time. The way he took his time to listen, asked
questions, double checked everything and isn’t close-minded about thinking it
is only a kidney infection and that’s it, was amazing. You can tell he
obviously cared compared to Dr. Deaver the night before. We were very happy how
he approached the situation, and honestly took time to talk to me. He was
amazing!
Saturday
I probably got my first Percocet around 1 am, my fever was just
horrible. Surprisingly within 20 minutes of taking I go through an amazing change. It instantly
brings the fever down and I slowly start feeling the pain go away. Once it
completely kicked in, for the first time I actually felt NO PAIN at all! With
the Tylenol, it would bring my fever down and ease the pain, but not take it
all away, pain would still be there it would just make it more tolerable.
Zhenya was passed out, and I was just feeling wonderful for the first
time ever. They also came in and gave me a Benadryl to help me sleep, the night
before they gave me some pill but it did not work for me. While waiting for that to kick in I suddenly
got an appetite, devoured a bagel with cream cheese and skyped with my dad who
was online at the time updating him about everything.
Dr. Grahm came into my room at some point before I passed out telling
me my urine came out clean, and is showing the UTI is gone. He also said that
he is thinking it is not a kidney infection anymore because the thing that
indicated that was the high white blood cell count that they mentioned which
was 14,800 and he told me that is high for a regular person, but for a pregnant
woman anything 15,000 or under is normal, so that could be an either/or
situation. His offers at this point were as following : 1. I do have a kidney
infection antibiotics are working it’s just my symptoms are lagging and a bit
behind, 2. The pain below my chest,
could indicate something wrong with my
pancreas or gallbladder ( blood results would be ready in the morning), 3. It’s
just a really bad cold/ virus (which sounds absurd to me because of the high
fevers and severe pains!) Basically I had me a case of mystery diagnosis, and
they were starting from square one to figure out what’s up.
I passed out at 2:30, and woke up at 5 because the nurse came in to do
her regular check on me. I was fever free, but was feeling the strong pains
again. I was able to fall back asleep and in the morning, a new doctor and
nurse came in at one point, I am not sure of the time because everything was a
blur. She said my urine and blood came back clean. There is nothing wrong with
my pancreas or gallbladder. So it brings us down to 2 choices, kidney infection
just longer or a virus. She told me they want to keep me until tomorrow
morning, see how I am feeling for the rest of the day and take it from there.
I was in desperate need of a shower. The past 2 nights I sweated so
much post-fever, I had to change my robe 3-4 times. And let me just remind you,
we were not prepared to stay overnight. I had my outfit I came in and I brought
my pj’s with me just to be more comfortable. I kept changing my tank top/
undershirt with my pj t-shirt every time
I sweated through it and had it dry and then wear it again. Not to mention I’ve
had one pair of underwear the whole time and my hair was just nasty, ew- I know
(but I ended up washing my underwear that day!) I asked them if I can take a
shower. They disconnected me from my dear friend- the IV (that’s what the
nurses and I started calling it, because I would take that darn thing
everywhere with me if I were to go for a walk or go pee.) Water was chilly, so
it was a quick shower, but after I got out, we had issues with my IV. It somehow
got turned or something but it was really painful and the nurse ended up taking
it out and had to re-poke me. Not to mention at this point I have already been
poked 4 times! One time in the ER with an attempt to hook up an IV, one
succeeded IV, and 2 times with my blood being drawn.
Oh, boy… attempting to re-hook
the IV was not fun. She poked me 3
separate times, and all 3 times were extremely painful. Usually it only hurts
when the needle pokes through, afterwards it goes away and there is no pain…
not in this case. After the third time, it was painful to move my hand; she put
ice on it and asked me to wait it out maybe it will get better so she doesn’t
have to poke me again. After about 20 minutes it did get better, but was still
limited to moving it certain ways- I was willing to suck it up instead of
getting poked again!
The rest of the day was me being fever free, just having pains. Since
about 10 am I started refusing the Percocets to see if I have a fever brewing. They
seemed to be working fine, I felt the pain but it was tolerable like with the Tylenol.
Evening time came and I was still going fever free, although to be honest I was
very much anticipating it to happen.
They gave me another double dose of the stool softeners and more milk
of magnesia. After a couple of hours I still haven’t gone and this was day #3
already without going. She gave me some suppository basically this waxy thing
to put up there to help me go. It stung a little but within 15 minutes I was
running to the bathroom! Yay! Haha, it might sound strange but after not going
for 3 days this made me happy, although it did not ease any of the pressure or
pain in my upper tummy. Later that day I started having diarrhea. Don’t know if
it was something health related or maybe those stool softeners and milk of
magnesia just finally kicked in!
When Dr. Grahm came back on shift he came into my room and basically
said he thinks it’s a very bad virus, not a kidney infection. He says
technically they are supposed to keep me 24 hours fever free, and at this point
it was a few hours short so it’s “cheating”, but he says we can basically go
home. First, we thought about it and wanted to stay until the morning, just in
case a fever would come and I and the baby would be monitored. Then, we thought
about it more and it was already 10pm at this point and I didn’t feel a fever brewing,
and might get more rest at home. So we decided to go home since there wasn’t
really a reason to stay. He told me he was going to give me a prescription for Percocets
to go home, although I won’t be able to get them til the next day, they gave me
one dose right before I left to help me through the night. We left, and arrived
home about 12:30. Before the meds kicked in I was still in bad pain, walking
down the halls I had to take my time and take baby steps because everything was
in pain. In the car the meds kicked in and I was feeling wonderful again!
Sunday
Technically I am already home at
this point, but I will include it in my hospital story anyway to help sum
things up. Since I haven’t been sleeping at night, my sleep schedule was
screwed up. I didn’t fall asleep until 3:30, but for the first time that week,
I slept until 11:30 the next day, and it was wonderful. I woke up in udder pain
and took 2 extra strength Tylenols. Zhenya went to the pharmacy to fill my
prescription and they weren’t able to because Dr. Grahm accidentally wrote 2012
for the date and my birth year as 1981 not 1991
:( Long story short, I called the birthing center and the midwife there
not knowing my story or my history was telling me she is briefly looking at my
case and says I don’t need them at all and that pregnancy has a lot of pains to
begin with and that labor is going to be a lot worse. Even though she had the
authority to help and work with us to get it fixed, she refused to. So I have
been taking Tylenols all day and although they didn’t take ALL the pain away
they made things more tolerable.
Today, I can say I am feeling better. I woke up this morning after a
full night of sleep, with pains, but they were not as intense and as strong as
they were before. So I am definitely getting better!!!
Honestly, even though it is still in question whether or not it is a
cold/ virus gone bad or a kidney infection and the doctor thinks it’s a virus…
I still think it was a kidney infection. Why? Because I have never had such
intense pains and such high fevers with a cold. I think it was a kidney
infection that my body just did not respond to healing as fast and took a
little longer. Whatever it was, I am happy I am home, I am happy baby is okay
and I am happy I am getting better. I am
planning to feel completely restored in a day or two and get back to work this
week.
Thank you everyone who was thinking and praying for us during this
time, it was a very scary experience because I had baby on my mind the whole
time. I am glad everything worked out and so thankful for the quality care I received
at Bassett! Once again makes me happy I switched and I look forward to giving
birth there in June :)
The end. ;-)
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