A pain by any other name…

The week I don’t want to relive!

 

The week of the 12th beginning on Tuesday was a very stressful week for me.  My dad had to go in for emergency surgery for a type A dissected aorta…a very complicated surgery to say the least.  Jared and I were the first to hear that he was going in for surgery and so I felt like I needed to get to my mom as soon as possible since at the time she was alone.  We waited the hours from 9pm until 3 am for him to get out of surgery and then waited to see him until 4:30 am when they brought him into the ICU.  For the next few days it was still pretty scary with all the the various levels and things that needed to be a certain way.  The most interesting thing about his condition was that from the moment I knew about it I felt incredible since of peace…not “everything is fine” but “this is tough now but everything will be okay”.  Since then I’ve still been filled with a lot of comfort which has been nice to say the least.  He’s now at home recovering and I hope it goes swiftly because I miss my dad the way he was.

Sunday morning the 19th at around 3 am I woke up thinking I had the worse gas in the world (I know gorgeous huh?) I hurt all over from my diaphragm down and all around my back.  If you’ve ever felt distended it is a horrible feeling.  I asked Jared in his half asleep state to rub my back and then sleep back to back with me which helped with the pain a little and I stuffed a pillow into my stomach to try to ward off the pain.  When I woke up at around 7 am I was in even more pain and it had seemed to be at a higher concentration on my right side which is worrisome since I knew that most of your vital organs are on that side including your appendix so asked Jared if he thought I should call the on-call doctor.  He was like “are you sure it can’t wait?” because he was hoping to get more sleep before our 9 am church.  I called the doctor and he suggested that because I am pregnant that I should at least go to the insta-care and see what my white-blood count level was at.  Then Jared called my aunt Kathy to ask her what the symptoms for appendicitis are since her son and husband have both had it.  When he got off the phone I was pretty sure I had appendicitis.

Well our insta-care didn’t open until nine so we decided to ask my sweet friend Brooke to take Christian with her to our ward and then run to the insta-care and be the first there when it opened and maybe we could make it back in time for church.  When we got there, the guy at the counter was annoyed that we walked in one minute before it opened (the door was opened, we just didn’t want to stand outside in the heat) but we were allowed back first which was my hope for being first in line.  The doctor there took down my history and that I am 15 weeks pregnant and then was she said “I really think that your just experiencing round ligament pain”.  I don’t know if I looked at her incredulously but I should have.  I am not a hypochondriac.  I have had two back surgeries, and given birth naturally.  I really do know what pain feels like.  I promise.  I’ve also had ligament pain which, by the way, comes nowhere close to what I was feeling.  She acted kind of annoyed, listened to my heart and lungs and then said she was going to feel my stomach.  At first it was just uncomfortable as she pushed on my left side but once she got to my right side I spontaneously screamed and started crying from the pain it hurt so horribly.  Then she announced that if I was in that much pain I should go to the ER and she’d call ahead.

As soon as we got to the ER and told them that I was 15 weeks pregnant with terrible pain on my right side with no bleeding, they rushed me right in and started taking my vitals.  Then I was sent into a room where they hooked me up to an IV gave me fetinal (sp?) and took blood from me.  The doctor came in and very gently, I might add, pushed around my abdominal area to see what he thought.  He said it could be a really bad UTI, a kidney infection, kidney stones, gall stones, my ovaries or appendicitis and that they would check my organs by ultrasound because I am pregnant because that is the most safe way though not the most reliable.  He even mentioned that sometimes they can’t even find the appendix through ultrasound when someone is pregnant and in that case they may just give me an appendectomy just in case. Then I had to wait while the on-call ultra-sound tech drove from bountiful.  Right before I was wheeled into the ultrasound room, the nurse came in and gave me a straight-caff to take my urine sample which I remember from my back surgery to be one of the most painful things ever but I didn’t even realize it was painful my stomach hurt so much.

The ultrasound tech was a very cute lady who was very sweet though she was hurting me.  I was excited to at least look at my baby even though the rest of my ultrasound wasn’t very fun.  She went from my left kidney and then up to my liver on the right and down from there to check my right kidney, and gall bladder. When she got lower I was really excited to see my baby swimming around it gave us a gorgeous view of it’s self as it did a back flip and I looked at Jared with big eyes because it looked like a girl! I said “oh my, is that what I think it was?” and the tech was saying “I’m not saying anything because something could descend in the next few weeks and it can start showing itself as a boy”.  When she found the babies head I saw this round white blob next to it and asked “what is that white blob?” and the tech said “It’s your appendix.”  Then I said, “so what do you think?”  “It’s your appendix”.  Then she left the room for what seemed like forever to talk on the phone and ask if there was anything else they wanted her to look at.  I was hoping she would come sooner because I really wanted to empty my bladder.  Once she came back she took down the baby’s heart-beat and then looked for my ovaries which she couldn’t find because the baby was  in the way.  Then I was sent to relieve my bladder and then back upstairs with an orderly who must have had something interrupted to come get me and my gurney because she was going so fast I felt like I was going to my gurney sick.

Here’s a picture of what an appendix looks like.  Mine had a baby floating around next to it and looked a more like a white blob than this one does.

 

Once I got back up to my room, the surgeon came in and told me that I needed surgery to get my appendix out and that it’s the perfect time if you’re pregnant to have my appendix out because the baby is fully formed but not too big to work around yet.  Then he left and the nurse came in and “prepped” me for surgery by making me take out my contacts.  Jared called my aunt Lori about taking Christian for the night and then I remembered that we had just stood the home teachers up so he called Brooke to give her the news and then asked her to give our home teachers the message.  The I told Jared that he’d probably tell my mother what was going on, though I felt terrible about making her worry.  So he called her and miraculously, she was home because she said she just “felt” like she needed to get home.

They wheeled me up to my room and I had the cutest nurse who told me that it would be about another hour and a half before they took me into surgery and then she let me put my contacts back in which was great because I can’t see worth beans without help and it was making me a little nauseous not to see.  Then I asked Jared to call my brother Bill to ask for a priesthood blessing.  We interrupted their dinner (sorry about that) but Bill was really sweet and came up and brought Jared dinner too (thanks Megan and Bill).  After the blessing I felt a lot more peace about my baby and some questions that I wanted to ask the doctor that I was in too much pain before to think about formulated in my mind which also made me more curious than scared.  Bill left a little after that but I was very thankful that he came to help me even during his very busy Sunday.  The CNA came in and told us she thought it would be about another half-hour or so and that the person before me had been screaming really loud.  We waited some more while Jared ate…I never realized before how loud Jared eats when I can’t eat.  It was very irritating because I would have loved a taste though I am really glad that Jared could get something in his system since we had left in such a rush he hadn’t eaten anything all day.

My mom came about the same time the nurse walked in to tell us that the other surgery was over and someone would be coming to get me.  I was very pleased that she made it.  We talked a little but they gave me diloded (sp?) which makes my head feel loopy so I don’t really remember much about what we talked about.  I took out my contacts right before I was to be taken down to surgery.  My mom and Jared followed me in my chariot—I mean gurney—which was comforting to have them there.  Once I got down to the surgery the anesthesiologist talked to me about drugs and the effects on the baby and that they would try to give me just enough to get me through the surgery.  He also talked about how he gives most people this drug to make them forget everything but that he doesn’t give it to pregnant women because it’s not good for the baby…that’s the one thing I’ve always hated about surgery is feeling lost afterwards.  He left after a little more discussion and I could hear him telling everyone in the OR that I was such a sweet young lady. 

Then the doctor came over and I asked him how many pregnant women have to have this kind of surgery and he told me it’s surprising how many he’s done.  Then I asked him if he’d ever lost the baby and he said “no”.  We talked a while longer and he asked about my pain and said that I’d probably feel a lot better afterwards if I was in that much pain now.  I said that I’d like to just be put to sleep soon so I could be numb for at least a minute.  I was thinking right then about how Christ must have felt in the garden taking upon Himself all of our pains and sins and how much agony it was and that He had wished for just a moment of relief.  It always makes me wonder how that all worked with the pains and sins in the world and how they were differentiated and maybe He was in some kind of time-warp so He could understand chronic pain as well.  Even though I missed church that Sunday I did have a nice little sermon to myself.

They wheeled me into the operating room and had me get on a really narrow table and I asked them how they got bigger people not to fall off and they laughed and said that if that happened it was a good thing they were asleep.  I asked for the next size up table because this felt ridiculous.  They rolled my arms up close to my side with what seemed like a thin foam mattress that reminded me of girls camp and then they propped up my right side either to get a better view or so I wasn’t flat on my back or both.  I asked them for a neck roll because they had my head on two big pillows but nothing under my neck which irritated me.  Then the put an oxygen mask on me and asked me to breath. I heard the doctor tell them to start the antibiotics and then I asked them how I was supposed to breath with this mask over my face.

…Then I woke up in the recovery room.  I remember a nice sounding nurse mentioning that I was moving to Phoenix so I asked her for a referral which is funny to me because I really don’t think my eyes were open yet.  I asked the recovery room nurse a bunch of questions that she had no clue about and asked me if I could just please be quiet and rest.  A nurse from labor and delivery came and checked to hear the baby’s heartbeat which was great to hear and I said something to her about feeling bad about putting the baby through a surgery and she gave me an encouraging lecture on how if my appendix had burst I could have had died and the baby too.  It was a little jarring but it was also comforting for me to hear that because I felt terrible about the drugs and everything given to my baby through me.

Here’s a picture of my pregnant belly after surgery with the gorgeous steri strips.  I only had to have three tiny incisions and yes the scar on my left side is from my back surgery five years ago.

  

As things became more clear it was also nice to notice that though I was in a different kind of pain from the incisions I was experiencing tremendous relief from what I had experienced earlier.  I got to my room where my mom and Jared were there and they both told me how everything had worked out for Christian’s care which was a huge relief to my mind.  My mom stayed with me for a while so that Jared could get his things and she talked about my poor dad in the ICU and how she hoped he wouldn’t worry.  It was nice to have my mom there with me though I’m sure I was a crazy head most of the time she was there.  Jared came after a bit and my mom went back to Provo to be with my dad.

The drugs they had given me were horrible because I couldn’t keep anything down and so they wouldn’t give me anything to eat that night though I was on an IV and had to get up to use the bathroom almost every hour.  In the morning they changed my pain pill to Percocet so I could have some breakfast.  I didn’t sleep much in the hospital so I was happy to go home that afternoon after I had a lovely lunch of potato-crusted cod with a rice pilaf and some fruit (Yea for real food!).  As I was about to get into the car, my aunt Janean and uncle Paul showed up with some flowers and well-wishes.  I was kind of baffled as to how everyone knew what had happened to me since we didn’t really call anyone but those we really needed since it was so last minute.

Here is a picture of my beautiful toes by Brooke.

Once I got home my sweet friend Brooke came down and painted my toenails which was fun because I felt so gross (I couldn’t take a shower for 48 hours) and at least my feet looked pretty.  Then my former VT companion called and asked if she could bring me dinner that night and take Christian to play in the morning.  From that time on, I’ve gotten so much help with friends taking Christian for the afternoon and then bringing him back for his nap it’s been perfect (Thank you Megan, Sarah and Lindsey).  The RS also brought meals last week which helped so much.  I don’t know what I would do without the Church and the people in it.  I’ve felt such love and understanding it’s been wonderful.  I still can’t lift anything 20 lbs and over for about another week but I’m feeling more like my regular self everyday—maybe just a more tired version.  I’m so thankful that everything turned out alright for me and my baby.  One very amazing tender mercy that occurred is that although it was a crazy week for our family Christian is now officially potty-trained which is incredible to me since I couldn’t have chased him down and wrestled him to change his diaper this past week because I’m not supposed to lift.  I am so glad that even though it was a scary experience everything worked out like clock-work.  Every arrangement we needed to make worked out so that we could have Christian taken care of.  I’m so grateful to Heavenly Father for looking after me and my family.

 

Here’s Christian showing off his muscles in his big boy underwear.  He’s so proud!