I did not sleep last night. The cold entered its snotty phase, and despite permission from my doctor to take psuephedrine (much to my surprise, really) I simply couldn’t breathe. And I was coughing. And I spilled water all over the bed at 3 am.
So this morning, my husband and I both called in to work sick, and called our doctor.
To recap:
*Frequent vomiting (twice a day for three days)
*Complete lack of appetite (only one of those fun-fun vomiting sessions did I actually have anything in my stomach to lose — I’ve come to prefer dry heaves anyway. Less painful on the nose.)
*Diarrhea (however you spell that)
*Congestion
*Stomach pain
*Coughing
*Weakness and lack of energy (gee, wonder why? Couldn’t be my fabulous 500 calorie a day diet plan?)
El Doctoro sent us to the emergency room.
Ugh. You know, I’ve never actually gone to the emergency room for anything more complicated than stitches. No car accidents, no broken bones, nothing. I’ve been crazy healthy nearly my whole life. We arrived at the waiting room and waited. And waited. And waited. I was very grateful that my condition WASN’T actually an emergency or this would’ve flipped me out. We ended up in the lobby, getting hungry, thirsty and tired for more than three hours before we were admitted.
They did some tests, blood pressure, pulse etc. They freaked my out by failing to find Alpha’s heartbeat and commenting on the fact I’m not showing as much as they thought I should be. Diagnosis: severly dehydrated. Then they hooked me up to a nice, cold bag of special saline solution. One liter. They pumped that baby into me and then hooked up another. Sheesh! Then we got bumped to the hall. I had the inexpressible joy of trying to give a urine sample while hooked up to an IV (actually, apparently the needle they inserted into my arm was FLEXIBLE, but I had no idea that this was the case so I was convinced I was going to send it straight through my elbow with the least miscue. But the flexible needle thing is way kewl!). I had a nurse draw my blood there in the middle of the hall. Then we went down to the ultrasound room to make sure that I did, indeed, still have a living healthy baby in my womb. That took like 20 minutes. By this time, of course, I’m really miserable. It’s like 50 degrees in the hospital and I’m wandering around in the famous cover-nothing shifts. I’ve had nearly two liters of room temperature water entered into my body, and I’ve been sitting around in said cold shift with said cold water for probably an hour and a half. Also, dehydration helped dry up my mucous production, which was coming back with a vengeance with the liberal application of fluids. But there was a heartbeat. Alpha is much bigger than he was at 6 weeks, which should come as no surprise.
Finally, six hours after we arrived at the hospital, we were release. I can’t imagine going through that alone. Going through it with my incredibly kind and solicitous husband was bad enough.
So my take-homes are to drink more fluids (Ha! I could’ve drunk THREE liters in six hours if I’d known that’s all there was to it — I swear half of the dehydration came from sitting in the waiting room!) I’m supposed to see my doctor on Monday. And that’s it.
Needless to say, our plans to go to New York this weekend got scrapped. I’m hoping that being (at least momentarily) properly hydrated helps put me on the road to recovery, because I don’t think I can handle too many more days like this.
My Truant Pen 