Going back to the Hospital

On Monday, November 6, 2017, one week after Fisher was born, I was nursing Fisher between 2:00-3:00 pm in my recliner.  I started to feel this sharp pain in my left side about mid-way down my back.  I asked Bryant to get Ethan and I told him that it hurt to breathe.  We talked about what it could be for a little bit, but then kids got home and life had to go on.

My pain continued and I brought it up during dinner.  It seemed to feel a little better when I was more upright.  During family prayer I noticed it felt even better when I was kneeling and leaning over the ottoman.  

That night Fisher actually slept for about 4 hours at a time... the trouble was I was awake several times without him because I was in so much pain.  It was definitely worse when I laid down, I couldn't lay on my left side or my back at all.  Every time I tried to take a deep breath it was like I was being stabbed in my left side/back and radiated up into my shoulder. 

The next morning I asked Ethan if he thought I should ask my doctor about these pains and the pains I'd had a few times that were so bad in my uterus.  I wasn't sure if the two were possibly related.  Ethan, who is typically not one to encourage me to go to the doctor for anything, told me immediately that he thought I needed to ask.  So I texted my doctor and told him my symptoms.  He told me the uterus pains were probably just after pains like I suspected but that the chest pain needed to be evaluated in the clinic.  

That was the day we had Fisher's appointment for pictures, so we went to that appointment and then headed to the UCC.  Thankfully someone was able to spare Abe from the ordeal of going with us!  

When we got to the UCC (Urgent Care Center) they seemed to know I was coming.  They got me right back and checked my vitals.  Then they wanted to do an EKG... the problem with that was they wanted me to lay down to hook me up... when they laid me back I felt like I was going to die.  I seriously felt like I couldn't breathe!  They let me sit up and reclined me as far back as I would tolerate and hooked me up to the sensors.  

Fisher was not a happy boy during this time.  He screamed a good deal of the time we were in the UCC.  

The next thing they wanted to do was a chest X-Ray.  When the tech came in to get me for that, Fisher was screaming like crazy and she just kept looking at him like, "What is your problem?" I thought it was pretty funny, like she'd never been around a baby before.  The UCC tech had to follow me around everywhere because the doctor didn't want me to be off the monitor at all, so he had to hook up the sensors to a battery pack and walk along side me with about 8 chords tying us together.

After the X-Ray, the doctor came in to talk to us.  The EKG showed my heart is fine.  Whew!   She explained that the things they are concerned about are: "first, a blood clot in your lung... let's just start with the one that can kill you," also a heart attack (which they had ruled out with the EKG), and pneumonia.  She said that she isn't a radiologist, but there was one little spot on the X-Ray that could indicate pneumonia.  They had also drawn my blood and were screening it for something that indicates if you have blood clots anywhere in your body.  The problem with this is that post partum women almost always have blood clots in their body, so it would more than likely come back positive.  If it did come back positive they would do a CT scan of the lungs with contrast that would show if there was a clot in the lungs and would also show pneumonia more clearly.  When I came in I told them my symptoms and had mentioned that I'd had the chills several times but had not had a fever at all... the joke was on my though, my temperature was at 100.4 now.  And an hour later it was up to 101.3 or something.

Ethan and I were both expecting them to tell me I had a muscle strain or something like that from delivery or from the after pains, so we were not expecting all this at all!

Ethan took Fisher out to the car and in desperation opened a pacifier for the first time in 14 years of parenthood.  But it did the trick for a little while and Fisher calmed down enough to fall asleep.  Aren't they cute?  Notice Ethan's facial hair... 

After I took Ethan's picture he took my phone and wanted to take my picture, I smiled and he said, "No, show me how you really feel."

Then I made the mistake of laughing at myself and he caught a glimpse of how I actually, really did feel.  I totally look like I'm having a contraction in labor. Ha!

Only after the pain did he take a picture of me smiling.  Oh, yeah, see all those chords?  I was so tangled up in them by the time we were done.

I went in to get the CT done and they had to have me lay on my back.  Thankfully, I had had some Tylenol at that point and the pain wasn't as bad as it would have been when we first came in.  They tried to get me up off the table on the left side and I still couldn't go onto my left side at all.  The tech doing the CT seemed pretty put out by my needs.

Once the results had been read by the radiologist the doctor came in again to tell us the news.  I had a blood clot in my lower left lung.  It was only a single clot and small, but it was there.  But they were perplexed as to why I had a fever because pulmonary emboli (PE) usually don't cause a fever.

To be cautious, they wanted to do an ultrasound on my extremities to make sure I didn't have any more clots.  So back to radiology I went.  The tech for the ultrasound was the same guy who had done my ultrasounds during pregnancy and he's a really nice guy.  He took good care of us.  Unfortunately he was unable to verify that there was no clot in one of my arms, so the radiologist had to come in to try.  The radiologist is our bishop.  And as he walked in I was sitting on the bed in my hospital gown with my legs butterflied out and I was not expecting him to walk in.  I was pretty embarrassed.  He didn't care one bit, of course, about what I looked like, but still.  He worked on my arm as well, and thought it was pretty safe to say there was no clot, but because of the angle that had to be used with the ultrasound he wasn't 100%.  Not that it mattered because the treatment would be the same either way since I was going to be on blood thinners for the next 4-6 months.

After consulting with my doctor they decided that I more than likely was dealing with an infection of my uterus in addition to the PE.  Lucky me.  When my doctor came in, he explained it like this: When a woman is postpartum and has a fever they look for symptoms that could be causing the fever.  The first thought is mastitis, I've had that and I knew it wasn't that.  The next concern is pneumonia and/or virus like flu, for which I had no other symptoms.  And then the next consideration is endometritis, an infection of the uterus.  They decided that this was most likely based on my lack of other symptoms and the pain that I'd been having.

The treatment for endometritis is antibiotics given through an IV every 8 hours for 48 hours.  So... I was going to be admitted to the hospital.  Ugh.  Never in my wildest dreams did I think that the day was going to end up like this.

When I got to my room, I was surprised that I had to sit with these pumps on my legs.  Ethan called them "Darth Vader Legs" because they sounded an awful lot like Darth Vader breathing.  Before we left the hospital he had to give them a try.  He was afraid that the sound would disturb him while he tried to sleep but after waking up the first morning he was pleasantly surprised that he'd slept through it with no problem.  Lucky guy.

I really, really don't like hospital beds.  Being stuck in one is such a pain in the butt, quite literally.  Ethan doesn't look like he minds it too much.

Remember his facial hair from the UCC?  Well, when he came back from home the second morning he surprised me with this change.  Wasn't that nice of him to add to my discomfort?  Ha!

He stayed with me, so he could help with Fisher and I was so grateful to have him there!  I also was so grateful when a couple friends stopped by for a little while to visit one afternoon.  We had several other friends who took kids in for the two nights we were stuck in the hospital.  We are blessed to be surrounded by wonderful people.  I'm ready to start contributing to making their lives better now... they've done so much for us!

Fisher stayed pretty happy most of the time we were there, thankfully.  Though I did get sort of reprimanded that he was going to be sleep on the bed with me... but I was stuck in that bed and Ethan was asleep and I couldn't really move anyway because of my Darth Vader Legs, so he was fine.

Before I could leave the hospital I had to have an action plan for treatment, that care was being directed by the Internal Medicine doctor... our ward scoutmaster.  So, if you're keeping count, that's three docs from my ward that have a had a hand in my hospital stay.  Not to mention my primary care provider who is also in the ward and my next door neighbour.  Ha!

I left the hospital with this huge bag of medicine.  I have to give myself shots twice a day and take an oral blood thinner as well.  I get to go back to the hospital twice a week for blood draws to check how thin my blood is.  Then I get to go once a week to discuss the lab results and how we need to adjust my meds to get my blood to the right level.  I also have a little breathing apparatus that is a lot harder to use than I expected.  You can see the tube/mouthpiece for that sticking out the top of my bag.  Hopefully my blood will reach the goal level after another week or so and I won't have to go to the hospital quite so much.  

Its been a week since I came home now and my pain in my lung has not reached that level since last Tuesday, thankfully.  I still have had some pain.  Most often its a pretty general pain all over my left lung, but a few times I've felt a centralised pain.  From what I understand that's normal.  The injections I've been taking are just preventing the clot from getting bigger and the oral meds are what will thin my blood and allow the clot to get taken care of.  I don't fully understand it.

I did ask why/how I was at risk for a clot and apparently pregnancy and delivery make a woman a lot more susceptible to clots.  In fact PE are the number 1 cause of mortality in postpartum mothers.  A friend commented to me a few days ago that she wondered if I had the clot during my pregnancy.  There was a time where I was in so much pain/discomfort that I was unable to live my normal life.  It was pretty miserable.  So its possible... an interesting theory, but I don't think we'll ever know.  I'm just really grateful that we figured it out and that I'm being taken care of.

As we walked out of the hospital, Ethan said to the nurse, "Thanks for saving my wife's life."  Kind of crazy that he wasn't exaggerating too much.