A Rocky Start to March

My sweet mother-in-law called me last night to check up on everybody, and said she hadn’t been getting as much information from my Facebook updates, so she wanted to make sure she knew what was going on, and to let us know she loves us. (I love you, Mom.) I figured I’d just post another blog entry, so I don’t have to keep repeating myself. Ha!

As I said in my last post: Tuesday, around 1:30 am I woke up to go to the bathroom and had some pain in my right “flank.” It wasn’t awful, so I thought maybe I had just slept funny. I stretched a bit and went back to bed. Between 1:30 am and 4:00 am it got worse and worse. I threw up; got the shakes and was in worse pain than I think I’d ever felt before. I woke Hubs up and he took me to the local hospital’s ER. They gave me low doses of Dilaudid (I can’t have Toradol because I’m pregnant) but it only helped for maybe twenty minutes and then the pain came back in force. I’ve never felt anything like it. Anyway, they admitted me at some point earlyish on Tuesday morning after doing an ultrasound on my kidneys.

The nurses found some crystalline sort of sediment in the samples they took, and sent it off to the lab. The doctor came back a little later that day and told me that the sediment was part of a kidney stone. At that point, I was still begging for Dilaudid on the hour, as prescribed. One of the night nurses on Tuesday night decided to get clearance from the doctor to give me Percocet every four hours, and Dilaudid on the hour as needed. This helped immensely. The Dilaudid didn’t completely kill the pain on its own; it just dulled it some. Combined with the Percocet, I was sleepy and pain-free.  By Wednesday afternoon, things seemed to be over, so I was sent home.

Except that Wednesday night my kidney started feeling tender again. By the middle of the day on Thursday I had to leave work because it was just that uncomfortable. I got an appointment at my primary care physician (PCP)’s office for that afternoon and told them that it felt like I had a kidney infection; as the pain was no longer sharp, but felt a lot like the pain I had when I was pregnant with Pooka and got… You guessed it… A kidney infection. They took another sample and tested it for blood, which they said was still present, gave me prescriptions for Percocet and Amoxicillin just in case, and had me deliver the rest of the sample to the local hospital after my appointment.

Friday I wasn’t feeling much better, so I stayed home from work. My PCP told me to call my obstetrician (OB) up at the Big Hospital and update them. She also told me to find out whether or not they wanted me to go up there if things got worse, or go back to the local ER. So I called the obstetrician. The nurses and Dr. Badass wanted me to go up to be checked out, but I was reticent because I was still waiting for the preliminary results from my UA culture. When I finally did hear from the local OB who treated me on Wednesday, I told him that I had passed a stone (about the size of a Nerd – you know, the candy) on Thursday night, and he immediately proceeded to tell me that the crystalline sediment they found was not in fact part of the stone, and so I either hadn’t passed it yet, or we had missed it. I reiterated that I had passed a stone and caught it the night before and was summarily ignored.

Once that was over, I called my OB at the Big Hospital and they told me to come in. Except that Pooka had made arrangements for a friend to come over from more than half an hour away, in the opposite direction from the Big Hospital. Fortunately, the friend’s mom was on her way back through from a business meeting, and she agreed to take the munchkins for the night.

We made our way up to the Big Hospital where some more very nice nurses showed us into what I can only assume was the “stress test” room (where they give the mother/carrier a ton of sugary liquid and then monitor the baby for half an hour; except it always takes longer than that because when you get a fetus all sugared up, it isn’t going to stay in one place for any length of time, and therefore it’s hard to get any consistent readings on heart rate.) They monitored Tempest’s heart rate for a couple minutes and declared it good. Then the doctor came in and grilled me, since the records from the local OB’s weren’t quite complete I guess. He and the nurses took a look at the stone I passed and declared it “HUGE.” I had no basis for comparison, so I took their word for it.

Not much information was gathered on Friday, but they did take a UA sample and sent me home with orders to keep taking the Amoxicillin, and not to be afraid to take the Percocets if I’m in pain.

Good thing the Big Hospital took a sample, because the local one only tested far enough for the doctors to be able to say, “Yes; you have an infection. But we don’t know where it is or how bad it is.” Dr. Badass called me on Saturday to tell me this, and let me know that the sample being cultured up in the Queen City would be ready on Sunday (yesterday) and that she’d call me if she thought I needed anything more drastic than the ten-day course of antibiotics I’m on now.

I’m on the mend; the pain is growing progressively less and less, and my friends and my little family have been extremely thoughtful and patient with me. My Uncle up in the Queen City and his lovely bride were kind enough to take my weekend with Grammie and Grampy, and another Uncle who stayed in his hometown and his youngest son showed up on Sunday to take on the not-inconsiderable task of shoveling snow off the roof of Gram & Gramp’s house for them. So to them especially I say: Thank you!

I.F. has been very sweet and attentive throughout this; checking up on me daily. In the meantime, his little Tempest is as wiggly as its sister, so we know it’s still growing. And we’ll find out the sex on Thursday morning.

Here’s to March being better than February, ladies and gents! Cheers!