Sunday, September 21, 2014

Well, that was fun


This week I may have become the only pregnant woman praying to go to/past her due date, although feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

I'd like the record to show that I officially retract my previous blog post about natural remedies for illness, and am 150% back on the REAL MEDICINE THE KIND DOCTORS DISPENSE train. Local honey, you are BS.

Warning - I'm really whiny when I'm sick, so this will be a really whiny post.

So I left off Wednesday just at the brink of coming down with something and trying to avoid medication. Well, after a night where I could only "sleep" sitting up, I was ready to see what marvels modern medicine would allow me. I was pretty sure I had a sinus infection, and the fun part about that is the infection generally teams up with my asthma to pretty much prevent me from breathing.

I called both my regular doctor as they opened on Thursday. Since my regular doctor has always been the one to deal with my asthma, I thought she could maybe continue to do so. I mean, I get that I'm pregnant, but it's not like that's some obscure medical marvel that no doctor has ever dealt with - in fact, she herself was pregnant, quite recently in fact.

I explained the situation (about to pop out a baby any minute now, sinus infection, asthma, can't breathe) and was told they could see me for an appointment on October 30th. Clearly they weren't quite picking up what I was laying down. Why would that even be given as an option - it's a sinus infection, I'll either be healed or dead by that point. I told the secretary my doctor usually gets me in for anything respiratory and they promised to call back.

In the meantime, on the other end of the spectrum, my OB had already called in a prescription for antibiotics, and I wanted to kiss her. Unfortunately, I was at work and had a good ten more hours before I could leave and go pick them up.

From there, things just continued to decline and I felt worse by the hour. My boss took one look at me and told me not to come in the next day. Thank god for that because I'd been considering it, but I woke up Friday gasping like I was at the 3 mile mark of a 5k. One that I was attempting to PR, not like one I was running with friends for charity. My inhaler did nothing (turns out, it was expired) so I took a hot shower, which still didn't really help.

My doctor was still ignoring me, even though I called back again when they opened. Obviously the antibiotics were awesome, but those take awhile to work and I needed something to help me breathe like, immediately. I started getting really freaked out because the baby was barely moving, and usually he's active 24/7. I was afraid that I wasn't getting enough oxygen and therefore he wasn't, or the meds were affecting him, or something terrible was happening.

Once again my OB came through and sent me to the hospital for a non-stress test. They hooked me up to a fetal heart monitor for about 40 minutes, then did a sonogram to check the amniotic fluid levels. Everything was fine, which was a huge relief, clearly. Now I just had to worry about going in to labor in this pathetic state.

My doctor's office finally called me back around 2pm (remember, I originally called at 9am the previous day) to tell me they were prescribing a medicine that I had been on before, which helped manage asthma in the long term. They had just called my name for the sonogram, so I was just like "ok fine whatever, refill my regular inhaler too while you're at it". I went to the pharmacy to pick it up, but it had never been called in. I had 25 minutes on hold with the doctor's office to check (during which they told me prescriptions sometimes take 24-48 hours to get to the pharmacy? Um, no, not how prescriptions work), so I started to think it through. When I finally got to talk to someone, I questioned them on why I would take a medicine only designed to manage long term problems when I was in "crisis" mode now. They agreed that wouldn't be helpful, and also that neither prescription had actually been called in (NO KIDDING I'm at the pharmacy right now and they've never heard of me).

I was kind of panicking at this point because it was past 3pm on a Friday, and I really needed at least my regular inhaler to manage my breathing for the weekend. The prospect of feeling like you are breathing through a coffee stirrer for the next 72+ hours while potentially delivering a baby in that time will do that to a person. I called the pharmacy back at 4, and they STILL hadn't received anything from the doctor. I finally got them to put in the prescription about 10 minutes before they closed and they were saved from plan B, which was Eric called and going "angry black man" on them.

Long story short: It took my doctor two full business days to call me back just to prescribe a useless medication that even I could figure out wouldn't work, except they didn't even bother to actually call in the prescription.

The inhaler was a big relief, because even on it, I spent Friday night coughing so hard that I was gagging and in extreme instances, vomiting. Sorry, gross, but without all the facts you won't properly appreciate my story and pity me. We had originally planned one "last" date night, but obviously I was disgusting and couldn't be in public. We tried to at least watch the Biggest Loser to somewhat salvage things. Unfortunately, we had to turn it off because my coughing was too loud. Good times.

Luckily on Saturday I downgraded my state from "pure unadulterated hell" to "regular sick". The baby was back to moving like normal. I spent most of the day sleeping (laying down sleeping!) and hoped the extreme exhaustion was due to my body fighting off the infection. 

Today, I'm feeling even more improved, so let's all hope the trend continues, or at least those of us who managed to read an entire whiny, tale of woe to the bottom. The only picture I have is from when I woke up Saturday morning to the trash can next to my bed completely filled with tissues, and the majority of the floor. If I were a real blogger, I probably should have had Eric take a picture of me looking pathetic on the couch, or maybe me checking in to the hospital. Sorry!

Share a time you were sick and pathetic. Especially if, like me, you aren't really one to man up and deal with it, and more of a "lay in bed and cry and complain" type.
 

9 comments:

  1. That is ridiculous! And would probably drive me to look for another doctor/practice if not about to go into labor. Or I'd at least file a complaint with the practice. I prefer to man up and dealwhen sick but my husband is more of the lay in bed and complain type. I got terribly sick both of the last 2 times I was in rochester for Christmas (2011, 2013). It actually ruined any plans for new years. 2011 resulted in such a terrible cough that I was coughing up blood and this past year was some kind of flu but I was most bummed about not being able to do my running group's "hangover run" on new years day on some of my favorite trails..

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  2. While on a semester of study abroad in college I got altitude sickness and food poisoning in the same 24 hour period and had to get an anti-emetic shot at a clinic in a small village in the Andes. My parents will never forgive me for the email I sent when I got back to Buenos Aires: "Dear Mom and Dad, I don't want to worry you but...".

    And then the next month I got walking pneumonia and we went through the same thing again!

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  3. It sounds like it might be time for you to find a new GP. That is ridiculous especially since you're 9 months pregnant.

    When I was in labor, my doc called in an rx for pain meds for me and when the pharm took forever to fill it, mike went nuts on them.

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  4. Echoing the other commenters and saying yeah, that's some BS about your doctor. Glad you're feeling better and didn't go into labor. Breathing is sort of important for that.

    The winter Kenzie turned one, I had the flu (or some other kind of vomit-inducing bug. Probably the sickest I've ever been. It only lasted about 24 hours but I was up all night barfing every 45 minutes and then so weak and feverish I could barely walk, and still had to take care of the baby all day. It was a nightmare. I infected the husband but by some miracle the baby never got sick.

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  5. Um. Right now! I have the same mysterious illness I got this past January and it's demolishing me. Went for a run yesterday and felt really achy afterwards. Came home, and have had a 102 fever ever since. Oh, and my throat is like neon red with a white rash all over; how's that for awesome?!

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    1. Red with a white rash sounds like it might be strep....may want to have that looked at??

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  6. Hmmm....I'm more of the 'denial' type, and thankfully not a very illness-prone person. But shortly after Kmn and I started dating (we lived 3,000 miles apart), he was scheduled to fly in to visit me. I woke up the Friday of his arrival with the honest-to-goodness flu - I was so sick that day that all I remember is standing in front of a class of undergrads, lecturing on *something*, praying I wouldn't pass out. I have no idea what I actually said.

    Kmn arrived, tucked me in bed, and I spent our whole weekend 'together' being pathetically sick, asking him to make me cold mandarin oranges (which is all I want to eat when sick), and getting mad when he insisted instead on bringing me hot tea and Chinese porridge. It was our first culture clash. Mushy rice is supposedly good for illness but made my fever more fevery and my sore throat more sore.

    But when he stuck by me through this fiasco, I was pretty sure he was a keeper....

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  7. Oh man, a few months ago we went to dinner with a friend, then went to meet other friends for drinks and to meet my husband's ex-girlfriend from high school. She got sloshed and I got food poisoning from dinner!! It was awful. We had to leave because I was getting sick outside the bar, then I made him stop on the side of Rt 50 for me to get sick again. I was so sick all night and then was a gigantic baby about it hte next day, refusing to even get off the couch. Miserable.

    I also got heat stroke in Athens last week - but I rallied through that because, well, VACATION.

    I hope you're feeling better! That sounds terrible, especially with labor imminent!

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  8. I hope you're feeling all the way better soon...my old doctor's office used to give me crap like that when I'd call to make an appointment. Um, no, sorry, seeing you in six weeks is not going to work if I do actually have an ear infection.

    I went to Russia on an exchange trip in high school, and caught what I thought was a mere bad cold while I was there. They took me to the local clinic/hospital (tiny Siberian town, so our options were limited), and I was given about six different pills of varying sizes and strengths, two of which were chocolate flavored, each one fighting one individual symptom. My host mother made me mustard plasters for my feet, which burned the soles of my feet (or at least felt as though they were burning), and lots of hot tea. When all of those failed to improve me, our trip leader started slipping me Nyquil, which served to just make me continually groggy, but didn't actually help.

    Fast forward two days and we're flying back to Oklahoma from Moscow. I had the middle-middle seat on the Moscow-JFK flight, still felt like crap, wasn't able to sleep, and my ears were starting to hurt. We land in JFK and my ears didn't pop until we were boarding our next flight (so, 3 hours later?) By the time we landed in Tulsa, my ears felt like they were 20 feet underwater, my head hurt, I couldn't hear, and I felt like death. My mom took me to the doctor the next day to learn that I had a bad double ear infection and I spent a week taking 2" long horse pills.

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Thanks for commenting! Comments make me probably more happy than they should.