Hospital Stay Number 2

I’m writing from a hospital bed…again.  And I am NOT happy about it!

I had been doing so well the last few days…not vomiting and finally eating food again.  I was feeling great until yesterday, when I got incredibly tired at work.  Pregnancy has made me tired in general, but yesterday’s fatigue was beyond anything I had experienced before.  I literally just slept at my desk for an hour.  Then I went home, slept for three hours, got up to eat dinner, and went right back to bed.  When my alarm went off this morning, I just let it ring while I continued to sleep.  After a couple of hours, my husband came in to try to wake me up.  I asked for juice and crackers, thinking that maybe I had low blood sugar and just needed a pick-me-up.  After eating and drinking, I stood up and started towards the bedroom door.  I took two steps and knew I was going down.  But by the time I knew what exactly was happening, it was too late for me to stop it.  I fainted.  I landed on my knee and side, not my stomach (thank God).  It still sucked.

I’ve been missing so much work because of the first trimester vomiting, I decided that, even though I had fainted, I needed to go to work and was okay to drive myself to work.   I felt good driving with my air conditioning on.  But as soon as I got out of the car, the blackness started closing in again and it was all I could do to walk to my office building.  I sat at my desk, crying because I couldn’t make the spinning stop.  Finally, at 9:00 a.m., I called Dr. B’s office.  They told me to go home immediately and call them in an hour with an update.  On the way home, I started to go off the road three times, snapping-to only after hitting the bumps they put on the shoulders of the highways.  When I called Dr. B with an update, she told me to come into the office…but NOT to drive myself.

I called The Prince to tell him I needed a ride to and from the doctor’s office.  He acted very inconvenienced and actually said that he wanted to take me and drop me off at Dr. B’s office, leaving me to take a cab home, because he had personal training and didn’t want to cancel on his trainer.  I flipped out on him and we ended up hanging up on each other.  So…I called his mother and asked her to give me a ride.  She is a teacher and has the summer off, but she also lives 45 minutes away.  Still, I knew I couldn’t take a cab and she was the only person I could think of who wasn’t at work.  She was more than happy to help, but I guess she was as angry with The Prince as I was.  I got a call from him 10 minutes after my call to his Mom, and he said that he was canceling his gym appointment and would take me.  He mentioned that his Mom had called him and expressed her opinion that the baby and I were more important than his personal trainer (Go Mother-In-Law).  When she speaks, he listens.

At the doctor’s office, I was informed that I have high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high ketone levels, and urine that indicated severe dehydration.  It is unclear what is causing all of this, especially given that I am finally keeping food and liquids down.  But something is seriously wrong, so I have been admitted to the hospital again.  I’ve had oodles of blood work done already, and was told they will be doing follow-up blood work every three to four hours.  I am getting IV fluids at a fast pace and a medication to lower my blood sugar.  Perhaps the most aggravating thing is that I am being treated as if I am vomiting.  I’m only allowed to have clear liquids…and I had to beg for those.  I have to call a nurse every time I want to get up to go to the bathroom or to have something to drink.  I’m frustrated and tired and I really hope that the doctor figures out what is wrong and fixes it quickly.  I am trying not to be a baby about this, but really…enough is enough.

The one saving grace in all of this is that the doctor easily found my baby’s heart beat with a Doppler in her office.  The heart beat is strong and steady.  The doctor said that babies take what they need as far as nutrients and blood, regardless of the effect it has on the Mom.  Accordingly, my baby is likely unaware that I am in any distress and is just having a ball in my belly.  That thought makes me smile and is going to keep me going throughout this (hopefully brief) hospital stay.  I’ll post an update tomorrow, when I know more.