My Story

The chronicle of the journey from infertility, to miscarriage, to finally raising twin girls born in June 2012.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

I'm fortunate to have family

The last 24 hours have once again reminded me how fortunate I am to be surrounded by the people I'm surrounded by.  Warning - this is a medical post so TMI ahead.  Also a couple of random kid pics.  Nothing to do with this post, but posts are better with kid pics.

I haven't been feeling well for a couple of weeks now.  I've had really bad gas and diarrhea, and I've been retaining water, waking up really puffy.  Part of me wondered if I was pregnant again (I tested, no), dealing with a major bout of PMS, or just my crappy diet and lack of exercise catching up to me.  I haven't been feeling bad enough to really complain a whole lot about it, but I've been running through my mind things I need to do to feel better, like drink more water, remember to eat in the morning so my body isn't running on coffee alone, that kind of thing.

Last night was our usual date night and my parents came over to watch the girls in the evening.  During dinner, I told K about some general crotch pain I've been having.  It's been feeling like when I was pregnant and some nerves were being pinched sending a weird, kind of funny bone pain through my vagina/labia.  We got home from dinner and a few walks, my parents went home, and we settled in for the night.  The pain started getting worse and began to spread into my hip and thigh.  I just could not get comfortable in bed.  Between midnight and 3am, I was up trying to find comfortable positions, trying to poo to relieve pressure, and my entire abdomen started feeling like it was trying to push itself inside out.  Probably from all the poo straining.  I was just writhing in pain.

K made the executive decision that it was ER time, and we had to figure out the logistics.  First, we had discovered earlier in the day that my van desperately needs oil and we had forgotten to pick some up on our way home.  So we weren't very comfortable driving with the girls knowing my car could break down if we did.  There's also the whole issue of not wanting to wake them up in the middle of the night and basically torturing them with hours of waiting around in a room where they couldn't do anything, and wouldn't be able to sleep.  He asked if I could drive myself.  It's only a 10 minute drive, but no, I was in too much pain and didn't feel safe driving myself.

So at 3am, I call my parents.  I felt soooo bad doing that.  But my parents have been very adamant that they will never turn off their phones on the off chance that one of their kids needs them.  Well, they were needed.  And at 3:15am, my dad was walking in my door followed a few minutes later by my mom.  I have no idea why they were in separate cars, probably my dad was ready to get out the door faster and they didn't want the delay of waiting for mom.

Off the ER we went.  They asked questions regarding possible appendicitis, maybe this, maybe that or the other thing.  They got me on some pain meds to help me get somewhat comfortable.

For a while, we were thinking that it was major constipation.  A big old giant blockage that would explain the nerve type of pain in my crotch as well as my constant need to expel.  Constipation would even explain the diarrhea - and I leave this info in case others experience something similar.  Apparently if you have a blockage, the more liquid fecal matter will escape around the blockage causing runny liquid stools like I had been experiencing for a while.  But after a quick, yet invasive exam, no blockage was detected.  So they gave me a cat scan to see if there was a blockage farther up in the bowel than *ahem* digitally accessible.

More pain meds, more waiting for the cat scan results, more trying to get comfortable and failing to achieve a 5 minute nap for either K or I.

They finally came back and found that I have a kidney stone!  A pathetic, 2mm, itty bitty kidney stone.  The good news is that I'm likely over the most painful part of it as it's already worked its way close to the bladder.  The bad news is that I still have to deal with pain meds because it's not completely over, and I have to strain all of my pee through a filter to try to catch this thing for testing when I finally pass it.

Shortly after the results came in, so did my nausea from all the pain meds.  I spent about an hour vomiting uncontrollably.  Even after discharge, I spent the drive home barfing up practically nothing into a little barf bag they gave me.

My parents had called at one point during the hospital ordeal to check and see what was going on.  I was able to tell them we weren't looking at anything life threatening and gave them the guesses we had at that point.  So they didn't get a whole lot of sleep either.  When we came home a little after 8am, they were each asleep on different couches and obviously very anxious to know what was happening.

I was so stoned and vomiting that I'm not entirely sure of what went down.  All I knew is that there were 4 very sleep deprived adults just wanting to crash and 2 toddlers due to wake up and start their day any minute.  I was sent to bed and calls went out to various family members to see who could come by and help out since K had to work at 3pm (though he called and told them he'd be late so he could get some sleep at some point before a long work shift).

When I woke up, the girls were in bed for their naps and my uncle D was in the living room.  I'm not particularly close to uncle D, I'm much closer to aunt D but she wasn't available at that time.  I gave him some general instructions on feeding the girls when they got up, how to determine whether or not Middie Biddie needed to get up (because she wasn't sleeping) or if it was ok to leave her to entertain herself in the crib.  Then I took some meds and tried to eat, and promptly barfed it all up in the sink because I couldn't make it to the toilet.  Had to call the nurse line to see if I could take more meds since I barfed them all up within minutes of taking them and I couldn't to be on the safe side.  So screw that, I went back to bed.  Uncle D, going above and beyond, cleaned up my vomit clogged sink.

When I woke up again, both aunt D and uncle D were there, the girls were up and fed and I was able to spend a little bit of time with them.  Then my dad showed up and uncle D headed out.  I was also told that cousin R was also on call if needed.  Aunt D had brought me some foods to try for dinner and fortunately I was able to keep it down, yay!!!  Aunt D informs me that uncle D has hardly ever babysat before so she was a little surprised it went so well and that he was very impressed with how well behaved the girls are.  After an hour or so, we put the girls to bed and the parade of family left with cell phones on in case I needed more assistance before K came home.  Fortunately, the girls crashed with zero drama and I haven't heard a peep from them all night.

A friend of mine is going to come over tomorrow shortly after K goes to work to help out and my mom will likely come over when the girls get up from their nap.  These are the people I'm surrounded by.  People that will show up at my door if I call and say I need them at 3am.  Relatives I don't even see very often rearranging their day to spend it watching the girls in my living room and cleaning up vomit in my bathroom.  Friends who are checking in to see what they can do to help.  All of this, and I haven't even exhausted the list of potential friends and relatives I could call if these people were unavailable.  All of this emergency going on and I'm pretty sure that to the girls, it was nothing more than a day of extra people to play with.  I'm very lucky to have been raised surrounded by these people because not only are they there, but they made awesome people my normal so as an adult, I choose awesome people to bring into my life.  I'm a very lucky person indeed.

1 comment:

  1. Hoping that you feel better soon. Never had a stone so I can't imagine what you are feeling.

    ReplyDelete

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