Monday, March 27, 2006

Hospital Visit

Well, For those who mom emailed, and I'm sure that's most of you who read this, you probably know that I had a short hospital visit this weekend. Saturday night (or Sunday morning, depending on how you look at it) around 3 am I woke up with pains in my abdomen. At first I thought it was pretty severe "bathroom" pains, if you know what I mean, but that wasn't it. I tried sitting up for a while, thinking that it was the laying down position that was hurting so bad, but they never went away and just kept getting worse.

I got Jason to call mom to come over to watch Olivia for the night and we ended up heading to the hospital, me in the Ambulance (just in case) and Jason following close behind. The pains were REALLY bad, and I wasn't sure if they were contractions or pains related to my ovarian cysts. They felt like contractions in how they came on strong and slacked off every few minutes, but they only occured on the right side of my abdomen, which isn't likely with contractions, but is how they felt when I had them back in November and found out about my cysts.

Of course, just like any time I have anything wrong, the pains quit about 10 minutes before we got to the Hospital, so when we arrived, they couldn't really tell what HAD been going on, but could only see what was happening at the time. They were quickly pretty sure that it wasn't labour since I wasn't having any contractions, and had it been labour, it wouldn't have stopped cold like that. So we waited around, me strapped to the fetal monitor from around 5 am untill 7 am before I saw a doctor. She was delivering a baby when I came in and since my pains had stopped and I wasn't in labour, I was considered lower profile, so the nurses waited till she was done before they brought her in.

Anyway, she seemed to think that it might be related to the cysts, but of course they can't be 100% sure on that, becasue they can't do any of the normal tests to check because of the pregancy. (X-rays etc) Anyway, she was poking around near the top of my uterus, where my ovaries are, which btw is pretty high right now, and whenever she poked them it caused severe pain in my lower right abdomen. Which, if you remember, is where all my pain had been earlier. This, of course, agrivated it again and the pains started coming back worse than ever. This kind of confirmed the idea that it was 'referred pain' from the cysts, since an apendix pain or other pains wouldn't normally be aggrivated by poking anywhere in that region.

So she figured that most likely they'd just keep me around for observation for a while and see if there were any changes, and if the pains continued getting worse, they would possibly operate to remove the cysts now, but if the pains went away and didn't come back for a while, they'd just let me be until after the baby is born. The operation is not VERY risky to either me or the baby, but it can cause pre-term labour so they didn't want to do it if they didn't HAVE to...

I ended up calling for some help around 8:30 am because the pains had become so bad and the new doctor (shift change was at 8) had the nurse give me some "new morphine" for the pain... It's the same drug they gave me when I was in labour with Olivia, at least before I asked for the Epidural. *lol* So I spent the next hour and a half stoned outta my tree while Jason sat in a chair trying not to fall asleep.

Around 10:30 or so they said that they were going to admit me for the night for observation and moved me to my room. I was lucky that they were feeling nice, because they even let me have a semi-private room at no cost since our crappy Irving medical plan only covers a ward and the cost is $65/day to upgrade to a semi-private. Being in a ward with 3 other mothers and their babies when you don't have one of your own to occupy you would have REALLY sucked. Luckily for me the new mother I was with was pretty nice and we talked half the night once Jason and her family left for the evening.

Anyway, I eneded up getting a few more shots to manage the pain during the day, but after my shot at 7 pm, I was done with them... By this morning the pains had completely gone. There wasn't even a twinge from time to time like there had been through the night. So, this morning when the doctor made his rounds he discharged me, and basically said the same as the earlier doctors said. Because of the chances of preterm labour, they don't want to do anything at this time unless they absolutely have to... basically if the pains come back, I should come back to the hospital immediately and they'll re-evaluate the situation again, but if they don't then they'll look at removing the cysts after the baby is born when there is less risk to her.

So, that's my story for today... How was your weekend? Hopefuly better than mine!

1 comment:

Cuidado said...

You have to stop scaring me like that, Christine. I'm sure you, moreso even than I, can't wait till the baby is safely born and this cyst problem is taken care of. Beth's sister-in-law recently had a large cyst removed from her ovary....the size of a grapefruit and completely benign.

I hope you don't have another pain attack and can relax about it without worry.

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