"this is your brain on magnesium"
Mike and I relaxed and lazed about for the past few days which was very enjoyable and we recovered from our parties and Christmas adventures. It has been very nice for me to have company every day and to have Mike at home with me. It was good that we did take the time to relax and recharge because Thursday, yesterday, I started having intermittent back pain and cramping in my stomach. I laid down on my left side and drank lots of water and it just kept happening every 8-10 minutes or so and it was very uncomfortable. It was something that I haven't felt before, I thought that maybe it was just the babies moving or taking up some new space that was hurting my back. All week my hips had been hurting so much because they are stretching and making room for the babies and I had a weird sensation like my stomach got all lumpy and tight and I thought that the babies were flipping or moving up under my ribs, it was a very odd slidey or squishy tight feeling, not painful just uncomfortable. Well that feeling was happening too along with the back pain and cramping and I got to thinking...this isn't like my other contractions but what if now that the babies are getting so big I am having real contractions...but I didn't really want to call the doctor just to have them tell me it was nothing so I decided that maybe I was just sore because my belly is getting so big and maybe the back pain was just a new pain I was going to have to deal with.
I went to bed but at 6am today I woke up and my back pain was pretty bad and it was radiating around to the front of my belly near my belly button. As the morning went on, it just kept getting worse, so I decided to call the doctor's office and of course they told me to come right away to triage to get monitored. I was anxious and worried and I kept saying to Mike "what if I am imagining this, what if the contractions don't pick up on the monitor they will think I am a crazy pregnant lady". He said "better safe than sorry" and we went in to triage. We didn't really pack a bag or anything because we kind of just rushed out and didn't think we would be staying. We got into triage and they strapped me to the monitors and holy crap I was having full blown contractions every 4-6 minutes non stop. And once I calmed down from the excitement and started paying attention to my body and my contractions, I realized that the squishy/slidey/lumpy feeling was definitely the contractions and that I must have been having them here and there all week. When they told me how close together they were, I got worried, I definitely did not want to have the babies at 26 weeks. They kept me on the monitors constantly and the doctors came in and checked my cervix which was 2.5cm but closed still so this meant that the babies weren't coming right now which was a relief. They said that even though my cervix wasn't changing a lot yet they did not want me laboring or continually contracting so often because my water could break or if the contraction kept up then my cervix would eventually make a change. So they decided to admit me and try some medicines to stop the contractions.
They gave me an IV and some IV fluids and then they gave me a shot of terbutaline, it is a fast acting, short action medicine that works right away and lasts only 30 minutes or so. I could feel this drug work almost immediately, it make my heart rate jump up and I got all shaky in my hands and feet and my teeth chattered. My contractions slowed down within 5 minutes from every 4-6 minutes to every 10 minutes and the doctors hoped that they might stall out after that which sometimes happens with the first dose and then the problem is fixed. But after 20 minutes my contractions came back with a bang and cranked right back up again to every 3-4 minutes. Since the terbutaline didn't work, the doctors said that it was time to bring out the "big guns". They decided to give me magnesium sulfate.
They transferred me to a room and gave me a urinary catheter (ugh) and then strapped me in to the contraction monitor, blood pressure cuff, heart rate monitor, added more IV tubing and more bags of fluid and then they started the magnesium. They said that I could not get out of bed as long as I was on magnesium and then they warned me about the side effects but man oh man...They gave me a high dose for 30 minutes to start, and then they would turn it down to a lower dose for 24-48 hours. The first thing I felt was a hot flash so complete that every inch of my body felt like it was radiating heat, not sweaty heat or I am a little warm heat, but I have been in the sauna for an hour, crazy I want to get naked and then jump in the lake in January heat. It was extremely uncomfortable and with all of the equipment attached to me a I felt a little suffocated. Then they turned down the medicine to the lower rate and I began to get increasingly dizzy and sluggish and started to feel like the world was behind layers or something. My eyes felt fuzzy and my vision blurred, my mouth was dry and I was having trouble understanding people and making conversation because things were trickling in so slowly through my foggy head. Now all I had to do was stay like that for 24-48 hours. I was really, really out of it and the catheter was uncomfortable because with every contraction, which were still 3 minutes apart, I felt like I had to pee so bad but of course I could not get up and the catheter was doing that for me but you could not convince my bladder of that. the babies were kicking me and not sure what the heck was going on.
About 2 hours into this whole thing I started getting a touch hysterical and cried and told Mike that I wanted to go home and that I didn't want to be there anymore and hooked up to all the stuff and of course all he could do was tell me that it was going to be okay and that I would get through it. I calmed down once I gave in to the panic for a few minutes and I just decided that I could get through it and that might as well try to be a good sport about the whole thing because really it could be worse. The contractions stayed every 3 minutes for hours and finally the doctors came and added another medication called Indosen in addition to the magnesium sulfate. This medicine seemed to be complimentary and the contractions slowed down after a couple of hours to every 6-10 minutes apart and that is pretty much where they stayed but the doctors told me that there was nothing more that they could give me or do to stop the contractions so we would just have to watch and wait.
On Saturday, the doctors ordered a terbutaline pump for me that I could take home with me so that I could get medication at home 24/7. A nurse came to teach me and Mike how to put the needle and catheter into my leg and hook up the tubing and change the medication cartridges. We had to do everything by ourselves, even in the hospital, because the pump was ordered from an outside company and the hospital nurses weren't allowed to help us or change the medicine or work the pump. I was so drugged on magnesium and my brain was so slow that I retained absolutely nothing, I could barely follow the lady's conversation, but Mike was there and Aunt Mary was visiting and so she wrote things down as the lady talked. Then she left quick as she came and I had another thing sticking into me and out of me to deal with. Over the next hour, the terbutaline pump worked wonders and my contractions went from every 6-10 minutes to every 20-30 minutes and sometimes none at all. This was the result that the doctor was hoping for so they turned off the magnesium sulfate and stopped the indosen and waited to see if the contractions would stay down.
In the middle of the night the terbutaline pump ran out of medication for the first time and Mike and I had to fumble through changing it. Of course everything that could go wrong did go wrong and we ended up pulling out the tubing form my leg and exploding a medicine cartridge all over the table, but we finally got me re-hooked up a new needle and tubing in place and the medicine going once again. By Sunday afternoon, I was off the IV fluids, many of the side effects from the magnesium had worn off and the terbutaline pump was still working well by itself.The terbutaline had its own side effects and I felt like I had about 2 gallons of coffee. My hands and feet were shaking really badly, to the point where I could hardly write or hold silverware and my teeth were chattering and I felt WIRED. Plus, I was still really dizzy and my heart rate was really high from the terbutaline, like in the 130's high. My iron and B-12 were really low so that was not helping either. I could hardly get up by myself because the room would spin so bad and I could not look to the right either without getting dizzy. The doctors ordered a cardiologist consultation and I had to get an EKG and echocardiogram. Everything looked okay with my heart and the doctors decided that I was just going to have to deal with the dizziness and the speeding heart rate but that I was okay to go home the next day. Mike went out and had to buy me a walker so that I could go to the bathroom and get up by myself at home without falling from the dizziness. I had a bunch of labs drawn overnight and a few more tests and then midday on Monday the doctors came to say that we could go home. At home I would have to monitor my contractions with a machine twice per day, morning and night, and send the data to a company that would watch for too many contractions and call me with the results. Then if I had to many contractions they would call me and give me more medicine through my terbutaline pump or call my doctor or tell me to do whatever else I needed to do to make the contractions stop.
We got home in the evening on Monday. Mike and I are so relieved to be home finally and we have gotten all of my new medicines, tubing, and equipment organized. We hooked up all of my machinery for contraction monitoring and Mike bought me a pill organizer for all of my pills and we have all of my terbutaline cartridge refills stacked in the fridge and waiting to be used. We are a regular little clinic and pharmacy for the pregnant lady over here. I still feel pretty jittery from the medicine and it is weird to have something attached to me all of the time because I have to try not to sleep on it or sit on it or get it tangled on anything and remember to take it with me everywhere or else I could accidently leave it laying somewhere and then pull out the tubing, ouch. But other than having this new little pump and medicines and having to monitor myself, things are getting back to normal around here. I just hope we can make it until 32 weeks, 6 weeks from now. Come on babies, stay inside! We have a doctor's appointment in one week and we will see how things are looking then.
No comments:
Post a Comment