Thursday, June 21, 2007

Calm...

Tuesday night I finally caved in to the excruciating abdominal pain I'd been telling myself was "gas" for the previous 2 days. When I didn't feel Grace move all day on Tuesday, I finally panicked at about 10 pm Tuesday night and called St. Luke's again. Of course, they said to come in through the ER and get checked out.

That was a different experience... instead of waiting in the room with all the other sad people, I was whisked by wheelchair straight to "Labor & Delivery" which didn't do much for my level of calmness.

I quickly stripped, not even caring if the curtain was pulled, and begged them to get her heartbeat on screen right away. In the olden days I just would have begged for the IV of morphine.

Of course, the young RN couldn't find the heartbeat.

Jamie, my roommate, and I looked at each other with panicked faces as she squirted more and more jelly on my stomach and kept searching around for the heartbeat. In addition, I was hurting like I had a common butterknife stuck right up under my sternum, and this pain was radiating to my back, leaving me convinced that my trip to Biggs BBQ on Sunday had instigated another attack of pancreatitis and then what????

After just a few moments, the young RN called for help. A lovely older woman came into my curtained area... wearing a scrub top that was black with red chinese characters on it, and written all over it in english were the words "Calm" "Relax" "Tranquility" and whatever.
I like the fact that many nurses choose fun and funky scrubs, it's far less boring to look at than the plain ones when you're a frequent flier there. But the "Calm" scrubs were by far the most appropriate ones I'd seen.

She immediately found Grace's heartbeat. Yayyy!!! So, no morphine for me... I concentrated on the sound of Grace's heart and tried to breathe and relax. They did the usual bloodwork to make sure pancreatic enzymes and liver were ok, and they determined that it was most likely a muscle spasm, or possibly some scar tissue adhesions tearing as I stretch. I knew that was a possibility, although not one I've liked thinking about since this adventure started. The next couple of months will certainly be telling.

Regardless, they gave me a muscle relaxer, w/ a follow up scrip, and after about 2 days it's so much better. I've been eating light and bland, taking the meds, and sleeping. Hopefully it's just a small blip and things will be smooth from here on out.

And if this ever happens again, I want the nurse with the "Calm" scrubs to come take care of things right away.



2 comments:

Meg Moran said...

Ok, start future posts like this with "I'm ok in the FIRST paragraph".... Bless your heart, now go lay down dammit.

gb said...

OMG. I'm so glad everything is okay. My first one wasn't much of a mover and shaker and I used to constantly panic when I didn't think I'd counted enough kicks in an hour, or hear her heartbeat the second they put the thing on my belly.

Glad to hear all is well. Hang in there!

"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time . Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult." --E.B. White