My Trip to the Hospital

Many of the people who read this blog already know that I spent Friday, July 1 in the hospital. This may be redundant but I wanted to write down the story since I think it was quite the experience.
Thursday night I was having some back pain. Just muscle tightness, nothing crazy. I had Tyson rub the achy spot for a while and then went to bed.
Friday morning I work up at 7:15am and my back pain was still there. Same exact spot. I didn't think much of it, took some Tylenol, and finished getting ready to go to work. The pain wasn't going away at all so I got out a rice pack to apply some heat. Didn't work. I had Tyson get an ice pack. Also failed. Finally at about 8am I was in so much pain that I was lying on the floor in tears. Not good. We had tried calling my doctor but he was delivering a baby and wouldn't call us back. Tyson called my mother and she told me to just go to the hospital.
We got to the hospital shortly after 8:30am. Because I'm 33 weeks pregnant, I was wheeled right over to the Women's center. They took all my info and gave me some Percocet for the pain. Well, the Percocet did nothing. I was still in tears so after another hour they gave me a shot of Morphine and a shot of Phenergen (anti-nausea). Still didn't work. The doc wanted to ultrasound my kidneys and bladder to look for kidney stones but my bladder was totally empty. I was given a large mug and two cups of water. I got the two cups of water down but I was feeling pretty nauseated. You see, I hadn't eaten anything in hours. So I puked up all the water I had been drinking. Puking up pure water was really weird. There was no stomach acid so it didn't hurt but it was just weird.
At that point, the nurses decided to put me on an IV to get fluid and pain meds in me. Well, I was dehydrated so finding a vein was going to be interesting. Okay, my veins are tricky anyway but this no-water thing wasn't helping. The nurse who was assigned to place my IV tried twice in my right arm and once in my left before calling the anesthesiologist. The new nurse got the IV in my left wrist. You know those teeny-tiny veins in your wrist? That's where they put my IV. They put so much tape on my arm! Once the IV was in, the Morphine started really working. A while later the first nurse came back to draw some blood. She tried in my right arm again! She stuck me, missed, and then was fishing for the vein. That normally wouldn't bug me but she told me, "I'm sorry it hurts; I'm fishing." SERIOUSLY?!? Why would you say that to me?!? Tyson was livid. She finally gave that up and drew blood from a vein in the back of my right hand. By the time she was done I looked like a freakin' pin cushion: all taped and cotton-balled up. No good.

They kept me overnight and I went through four or five IV bags. That's a lot of fluid. They let me go the next morning at about 9am with a prescription for Percocet in case the pain came back.
The end.
Okay, not entirely. I do not like pain. Or needles. After this experience I discovered I am a whole lot more tough than I thought I was. Or maybe I was just desperate for pain relief. Either way, I am less scared of getting an epidural in a few weeks. This was a great trial run for Tyson. He had a really hard time coping with me being in pain. Now he knows what that feels like so when I go back to have the baby, hopefully he'll be a little bit calmer than he was this time. This was the same hospital where I'll be delivering and I appreciated how kind the nurses were to me. Even the one who sucked at placing my IV. This particular hospital is a little smaller so they are able to give more intimate attention. I have also heard that kidney stone pain is worse than labor pain. I guess we'll just have to see about that.