Hospital visit

Sunday night as CP and I were headed to bed after watching Game of Thrones (yay! It's back!), I started to get a stabbing pain in my lower right belly. I tossed and turned for a few minutes but quickly realized that I was just going to keep CP up so I headed downstairs to see if I could get into a comfortable position on the couch. After two hours of considerable pain and no relief no matter what position I was in coupled with nausea, I called my doctor's office who told me to go to Labor & Delivery. 

CP was worried about me driving myself, but we didn't have anyone to watch Izzy as she was upstairs sleeping, so I drove myself. I arrived at 12:15am and started to feel a bit better but figured that because I was already there I would get checked out. Labor & Delivery checked me in and led me into the room where CP and I got ready before Izzy's delivery. Baby boy looked fine on the monitor and the cervix check went okay. My urine was a little cloudy, but tests on it and my blood showed elevated white blood cell count. At this point doctors were not concerned about the baby or anything going on in my uterus- they thought that it was something happening unrelated to the pregnancy.

No ultrasounds happen in the middle of the night until it is a true emergency, so I was moved to another floor and told to get some sleep before an ultrasound in the morning. According to my Fitbit, I dozed off around 3am and woke up at 5:45am. Another blood draw to see if my white blood cell count had changed and CP showed up after dropping Izzy off at daycare. He had been scheduled to fly out to NYC that morning, but with me in the hospital and with no idea what was going on, his trip was cancelled.

It took two different IV nurses to get an IV in my arm since I hadn't had any liquids since 7pm the night before. The first nurse hit a nerve and the pain in my thumb finally went away yesterday. From the four tries to get an IV (two on each arm) and the two blood draws, I ended up having 6 holes in my arms after this experience.

See the blood at the bottom of the lower gauze?
I thought that these nurses were supposed to know what they were doing???

The general surgeon came in to let us know that they were thinking possible appendicitis because of where the pain was located and the higher white blood cell count. My 10am ultrasound was inconclusive because it's hard to see your appendix normally- even harder when you are pregnant. The tech also checked out my gall bladder, which was normal.

Meanwhile, I was hungry and thirsty as they wouldn't let me eat anything because I may have to go into surgery. Finally around 2pm I was taken in for an MRI so that they could get a better image of what was going on. I have never had an MRI before, but it was pretty awful. The tech put on some Billy Joel and took about 5 minutes worth of shots but realized that baby boy was kicking so much, he was moving my appendix and that they would have to go over/above my uterus to get the right shots. 

I'm not a claustrophobic person but the worst part of the MRI was having to try to hold my breath as long as possible so that my belly would stay still while the machine made loud noises. Holding your breath for long periods of time when you are 26 weeks pregnant is not an easy task. Not to mention that at the beginning of the MRI I wanted to cry because baby boy was kicking so much and I kept thinking that the MRI was hurting him or something (I know that doesn't make any sense- if the MRI wasn't hurting me then he was also fine but I was running on less than 3 hours of sleep and worried about a potential surgery while pregnant). 

The final result? My appendix looked fine and because the doctors couldn't figure out what was causing the pain, they let me go around 6pm Monday night. I still had some pain that night but it was nowhere near the pain I had Sunday night and by Tuesday morning as I got up for work it was gone. So now of course I feel guilty that I subjected baby boy to an MRI for nothing (my Google research has shown that MRIs are okay when you are pregnant). I'm so thankful that I didn't have to go into surgery and that everything seems to be back to normal but I was really hoping to not have to visit Labor & Delivery prior to July 15th.