A trial run

Always trust your instincts.  If I learned anything over the last weekend, it's to trust your instincts!  While I knew something was wrong, it took a phone call to my mom (a nurse) and then a call to my OB's after hours emergency line before I was convinced that I wasn't just being a weenie and that something was really wrong.

After my OB appointment last week, I started having pretty bad back pain on my right side.  I've obviously been plagued by back and hip pain throughout this pregnancy but this was different.  It woke me from a dead sleep.  I walked it off, googled some symptoms (not something I usually do and not something I'll ever do again) and went to work.  The pain got better.  But then I had another incident 2 days later and thought it was weird.  I sort of suspected a kidney infection.  But I didn't want to be a hypocondriac, first time prego lady so I brushed it off.

Until the symptoms came back on Saturday morning.  It was like a switch was flipped.  The pain went from 0 to 10 in about an hour.  I was in severe pain by the time I called my mom in tears.  She told me to call the doctor's after hours line.  My doctor knows I'm not exactly a wimp when it comes to pain but I think she could hear it in my voice that this was different.  She told me it was time to make a trial run to the hospital.

I am more thankful than I have EVER been to have had The Pilot home that day.  He got me to the hospital and kept calm as I winced over every bump in the road.  I also made a comment that we might need to find a different route to get to the hospital because I just knew that if I was in labor, I would NOT have the tolerance for that particular road!

We went up to the labor and delivery floor where they put me a triage room.  Right away they realized my blood pressure was elevated but the baby was doing just fine.  Again, maybe it was instinct but I really wasn't too worried about the baby.  He was moving around the entire time I was in pain and that was reassuring to me that while I was miserable, he was doing just fine.  When they monitored him at the hospital, they just confirmed that all was ok with him.  Then the real fun started.
First they started this:

And gave me some pain medication (orally).  It was slow to work but it did finally start to help while we waited for them to find an ultrasound technician to do an ultrasound of my kidneys.  It was late on a Saturday afternoon so I figured this might take awhile.  I did not however think it would take so long that the pain meds would wear off, leaving me to sit in agony for an hour and a half while The Pilot tried to comfort me.   The nurse was nice and mentioned that he was trying to find a doctor to give the ok to give IV pain meds.  Once that happened, it was a longer wait for the pharmacy to send up the drugs.  At that point, I was ready to walk to the pharmacy myself and hook up my own IV.  I kept trying to think of times I've been in pain before.  Certainly I had been in that much pain before, right?  I channeled how I felt during the Goofy Challenge.  Not even close.  Burst ear drum?  Nope.  Second degree burn on my foot (that's a long story).  That seemed like a splinter compared to the pain I was in. Getting a tattoo?  That was like stubbing my toe compared to this pain.  It felt like ALL of those painful events combined.  Once the drugs finally came though, I got relief.  Not in the sense that I couldn't still feel the pain but  more that I just didn't care.  I was pretty loopy.  I was also getting IV fluids.  While I was slightly incapacitated, I was still able to tell The Pilot to start documenting for blog purposes. ;)  In reality, it was  just really boring once the pain meds kicked in.

I'm going to skip some of the overnight details because they were mostly boring and to preserve some of the modesty I have.  It was bad enough that my backside was hanging out of my hospital gown most of the time I was there.  (Seriously, there has GOT to be something better than those gowns!)

By morning I was able to go for a fairly long stretch without pain meds.  So while the physical pain was subsiding, the waiting around was awful.  To make things worse, I was quickly going on 24 hours without any food.  I'm a cranky B without food on a normal day.  While pregnant?  That's dangerous.  I basically complained to anyone who would listen.  And nearly choked a nurse who told me that the baby was a little "sleepy" during the last time the monitored him.  Of course he's sleepy, he hasn't eaten in a day!  Mama bear instincts kicked in and told me that baby boy was fine for now but if they didn't feed me soon, there was going to be some drama coming from my room.  Luckily my OB stopped by and ordered they feed me.  An hour and a half later (I wish I was kidding), I got a big plate of...

Fish.  Seriously?  I don't even eat fish.  I was too emotionally and physically exhausted at this point to ask for anything else.  The green beans, potatoes and apple were enough to wake baby boy up during the next time they monitored him.  Then The Pilot made me a happy woman by bringing me a cookie from the cafeteria. 

Blah blah blah...more waiting.  Some crying (I was THAT hungry).  A residence urologist came to see me (about 22 hours after arriving with symptoms) who treated me like a talking exam...just running down a list of questions but then didn't really listen to my answers.  I wanted to punch him in the face.  I held back.

Blah blah blah, more waiting.  More crying...the other person in my semi-private room was Susie Sunshine.  While I give her credit for being optimistic despite her situation (bed rest at 24 weeks prego), she was grating on the last nerve I had.  The nerve I was trying to save so I would be cordial to not only The Pilot but also the nurses.

Finally, with no additional information from any of the doctors, a nurse came in with discharge papers.  They were letting me go.  While I asked about the doctor and the additional tests they ran (the nurse didn't really know), I wasn't about to question the discharge.  I felt better and wanted to get home.  Other than some "evidence" that I won't get into and a hunch from my OB, we are pretty such it was in fact a kidney stone and not just the baby pushing down on all my parts (while that certainly wasn't helping matters).  And I suspect that I passed that kidney stone while sitting in the triage area before they even did the ultrasound.

The Pilot and I tend to find humor in just about everything.  Even if its not a funny situation, humor is a defense mechanism for both of us.  There was basically one funny moment of the entire situation.  It came in the last 30 minutes when the nurse was listening to the baby's heat beat one last time before discharging me.  She was using a dopler and rather than just picking up the heartbeat, we could also hear a radio station.  I'm not kidding, it sounded like she was picking up a radio station through my belly.  The Pilot and I couldn't stop laughing.  I'm fairly certain the nurse wasn't able to get an accurate heartbeat on the baby that last time but she must have gotten something good enough because she laughed and moved on.

So that was my weekend adventure.  I will add one last thought.  I certainly hope that the couple women who shared with me that kidney stones are more painful than childbirth are right.  That pain was no joke.  I told The Pilot that if that was anything like childbirth, then I wanted the epidural right then.  A difference with childbirth I suppose are that there are short breaks in the pain.  This pain was non-stop for hours on end.  We'll see what happens!