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Posts Tagged ‘sick’

Last week had the potential to be a really shitty week. A really shitty Christmas week.

Julie’s 24hr urine test showed a “higher than the doctor expected” amount of protein (526mg) in her urine and after a few more higher than normal blood pressure readings at our respective doctor’s offices our High Risk OB group was a ginger’s pubic hair away from admitting Julie into the hospital with preeclampsia. She would stay in the hospital until our family increases from 3 to 5.

We’ve gone through tears and crying about the thought of her actually missing Christmas morning with our son.

We’ve run over the logistics of having a wife in the hospital 50 minutes away where our son isn’t welcome because of the bullshit swine flu. Also factoring in that he’s doing really really well in his new bed.

We’ve realized that there is nothing more painful than not being able to see your kid.

We understand the need for hospitalization,  but we also understand that 32 weeks isn’t our perfect scenario to meet our children for the first time.

We wanted to avoid it until it was absolutely necessary.

So we took some precautions with Dr. Losure’s help at High Risk OB at Delnor Hospital.

Julie has been taking her blood pressure readings at home with a recommended wrist cuff (we got it at walgreens for about 40 bucks). She has been given the list of symptoms of preeclampsia to watch out for and has taken it down from about a 5 on scale of 1-10, to about a 2.

Meaning I allow her to wipe her own ass and feed herself.

On Christmas Eve we met with our other doctor group and our doctor there was happy with the bp readings Julie has been having, as well as the lack of any significant protein in her urine using the chincy little dipsticks they use.

He understood the strain a Christmas in the hospital would put on Julie if it wasn’t completely needed, so he scheduled another 24hr urine collection/blood test, and tomorrow we will find out the results of those tests.

We’re hoping we can add a few more weeks to our little baby farm up in Julie’s magic vag of enlightenment.

We will find out tomorrow. Until then…

I’ve started to kick Julie out of the house. There is no way a woman can expect a miracle to be performed on a room full of instruments, computers and a 1974 Wurlitzer Funmaker during nap times and weeknights alone. Two out of the five weeknights I teach guitar lessons out of our house, and it seems every weekend is packed full of weddings, shopping trips and more and more fucking trips to Babies R’ Rippin’ Us Off than I care to admit.

So rather than dealing with the time crunch and having an excuse to not get my son’s new room done, I kicked the wifey out on Sunday so I could get my entire old office evacuated in preparation of paint and a race car bed. I did pretty well. The room is completely empty. But at about 8pm on Sunday through about 7am Monday morning, I was wondering if my request might end up hurting my wife and unborn twins.

Ya’ see, Julie accompanied her mother and sister and her kids, along with my son to St. Charles, Illinois’s Annual Scarecrow Festival. Fun was had by all, including a delicious cup of luke warm hot chocolate. Julie had a cup, her sister had a cup, mmmmm yummy.

As soon as Julie started heading back home to Yorkville, she started feeling queasy. She got home, cooked dinner, ate dinner and then headed up to bed around 7:30pm. Around 8pm I heard “Joel?” So I went upstairs to investigate. 11 hours later Julie was still ralphing her guts out in the bathroom while I laid awake hoping to comfort her if she returned to bed.

She came back to bed a few times, and I fetched her some crushed ice and some saltines, yet every few minutes I was jarred awake by the sounds of her spleen wanting to make contact with our toilet water and a rabid WREEEEETCH was heard throughout the entire neighborhood.

By 6:30am, as I got into the shower delirious and drunk on no sleep, Julie had just barely fallen asleep, and by the time I finished my traditional sinus rinse, she was back in the bathroom puking again. 11 hours, dozens of ralph wiggums, no fun. She wasn’t going to work today.

I headed in to work, knowing I would be called to take her to the doctor at some point, and about an hour into my day I took a call from her where she told me the OB group wanted her to get to the hospital to take in some fluids. I raced home, scooped her in my arms, threw her into the back of my pickup and raced north to Delnor’s Labor & Delivery Center.

We checked in and they immediatley tried to get her an IV running, but of course, that would’ve been what should’ve happened. Instead, my usually veiny wife was poked 4 times before the fourth nurse found a fitting vein. The not-so-successful pokers before that last nurse all called my wife ‘valvular.’ I didn’t know whether to be turned on or offended so I shut my mouth.

Two bags of Lactated Ringer’s in and we received a personal visit from our High Risk OB doctor, Dr. Losure, who came with a fresh set of wheels ready to wisk my wife away to get her cervix checked. Her cervix looks great and we got the chance to see our twins faces again, and a few print outs for the refrigerator too. Dr. Losure wheeled us back and instructed the nurse to give Julie one more bag, since she still hadn’t peed since we had first arrived at the hospital.

A few hours, and horrible soap operas later one of the doctors from the Focus on Women PB group that we se came by and cleared Julie to head home to take it easy. She’s been eating oatmeal in bird nibbles and drinking water in wussy sips ever since.

On the way home she called her sister, who, oddly enough was up all night and had taken off work that day just to pee out of her butt!

What did they ingest in common? A TEPID CUP OF HOT FUCKING CHOCOLATE. Yes, you can get food poisoning from a drink. I told my wife that she was drinking CARNY WATER and that was what made her puke puke all night.

Lesson of the day? If your hot chocolate is cool enough for you to drink it when you first get it, throw it the fuck away.

Love,

Dad.

So we’ve crossed the first trimester threshold. The morning sickness has retreated a little bit. The appetite has returned a fair amount. YET.

Wifey can still hurl with the best of em, but she isn’t as timid or fearful about things that could potentially make her sick as she was just a month ago. I still find humor in almost every aspect of her pregnancy because nothing is a small problem, everything is the end of the world, even if it’s right there on the page in front of me as being a normal part of a twin pregnancy.

Round ligament pain, mucus, sore back, nausea, headache, irritibility, you name it, she is still trudging uphill through 8 feet of snow barefoot through it all.

She still has hang ups on things that could potentially make her gag, and I’ve come to appreciate the newer ones and some of the classics.

Here is our first SECOND TRIMESTER list of WHAT WIFEY HATES PT. III!

1. ANYONE’s breath, still
2. Our garage. 
3. Fresh cut grass
4. Cheap motorcycle exhaust
5. MSG, Aspartame & High Fructose Corn Syrup, still. (Read about MSG here!!)
6. The smell of Pasta Pickups “these smell like dog food”
7. Dogfood – we dont have a dog, but if we did, its food would make Jules gag
8. Word combinations to be published later. (this is classic I assure you)

Never a dull moment. But at least when she’s popped she can look back and laugh (or hit me that I’ve documented it) and hopefully tell a few other freaky deeky preggo broads that it’s ok to be a complete freak as far as smells are concerned.

photo credit: Lord Jim

photo credit: Evil Erin

One of the things Julie has been suffering with consistently since week 4 is morning sickness. Morning, day and night sickness, that is.

In Julie’s case, the mornings and evenings are normally the worst, with the afternoon being generally acceptable, although mildly at best. We’ve been told that extra B6 (30mg minimum) is a great place to start to help treat the nausea, but what do you do when you can’t even bring yourself to LOOK at the water you would need to swallow the tablet?

When Julie left work the second time she called her doctor and he gave her a script (IMAGINE THAT!) for a drug called Zofran.
Of course, on the RX label it says “DO NOT TAKE IF YOU ARE PREGNANT.” Julie read that and was afraid of the potential side effects on the baby (we got the drug before we knew about the twins), but in the ER the nurse practitioner said that the FDA had categorized it as a Type B and that it was generally safe and no one would test the drug on pregnant ladies, but in those that HAD used it their weren’t any complications or negative effects on the fetus.

Julie has taken it twice since we found out about the two newbies, but only after prolonged periods of nausea and hunger did she break down to use it. It definitely helped, but any alternative to using drugs has to be better than taking something that isn’t documented as NOT hurting unborn children.

MORNING SICKNESS FREEDOM!

While looking for more information on the subject we came across Morning Sickness Freedom. In this book we read about a set of pressure points that work immediately, a method for avoiding chemicals in the foods you eat that can increase the chances of feeling sick to your stomach, breaking down the contents of the prenatal vitamins that pregnant women take that could be the source for some of the vomiting, and also some exercises that cut down on reflux and increase bloodflow.

A lot of the books we found on Amazon didn’t seem to focus on the specific 6-12 week period during the first trimester where things seem insusrmountable, but Mary Kinsey focuses JUST on the timeframe where morning sickness is most profound.

This summer she is selling the book for about 30 bucks, but I’m told it will go back up to 50 bucks sometime soon.

I’ve learned so much on a subject I was not at all comfortable researching for my wife initially, but when your partner in life is puking her guts out morning, noon and night, you gotta step up and find some stuff out as soon as possible. Three lives depend on it.

For the past few weeks Julie has been fighting naeusa, fatigue and hormonal swings way up and way down.

Now that we KNOW what is causing it it’s a little less scary because there isn’t some underlying reason why life just sucks right now.

Granted, there isn’t much that I can do as a husband besides cater to her needs and let her get her rest. It just blows ass with this being a holiday weekend and plans with family and friends already set up that she has to stay on the couch or in bed all weekend.

We all know “This too shall pass” but right now, I wish there was a hell of a lot more than gatorade and hugs I could offer.

I just wanted to jot down the things she hates right now:

1. ANYONE’s breath
2. The smell of our garage (lawnmower & gasoline)
3. Food she isn’t eating
4. The smell of our son after having spaghetti at daycare
5. The smell of me after work (I smell like a vitamin)
6. MSG, Aspartame & High Fructose Corn Syrup
7. Banana popsicles
8. Popsicles that aren’t Root Beer flavored
9. Water
10. Food
11. Her prenatal vitamin
12. Food Commercials on TV all day long
13. Poop

I’m sure this list will continue to grow, and I look foward to her reading it once she’s normal again.

photo credit: Mr.Thomas

SHE WILL BE NORMAL AGAIN WONT SHE?