Trip To The ER

Last night Patty and Joe came over with their kids and we had dinner. Dylan met Joe for the first time and they talked computers for quite some time. A while after dinner I started getting pain in my stomach and heartburn feelings and a pain that shoots down my right shoulder to my elbow. It became really painful, similar to a pain I got on Wednesday the 8th at the craft club meeting at Patty's house. I couldn't get the pain go away and Dylan took me to the St Lukes ER in Meridian. I was writhing and crying the whole way there.

We got to the ER and they took my blood pressure - 166/99 - and sent me up to the labor and delivery floor. I was admitted there and put on monitors. The baby was fine, and they took a urine and blood sample. They did a general exam and saw that I had bad swelling, high blood pressure, and epigastric pain. The nurses called the on-call OB and he said if none of my blood or urine levels were out of normal range, then to send me home with an Ambien and tell me to sleep it off. I asked them to call my doctor - Dr. Hodges - but they said they couldn't. Dr. Hodges told me to call him anytime I went to the hospital.

Long story short... I went home to sleep it off and called The Woman's Clinic in the morning. Dr. Hodges doesn't work on Mondays - so I talked to Dr. Lowder - who told me to go take my blood pressure and call back and spend the day on bed rest to make sure that my bp didn't increase. My blood pressure was 142/94. I made an appt with Dr. Hodges for Tuesday morning. At the appointment he asked me to explain what was going on. I replayed the whole story and told him about the pain in my arm. He told me he hoped it was just high blood pressure and reflux, and gave me some reflux meds - but told me we needed to do tests to make sure it wasn't preeclampsia. He told Dylan and I what the best and worst case scenarios were - best being high bp and reflux - worst being HELLP Syndrome and giving birth in a few days. I took home stuff to do a 24 hour urine collection and was scheduled to see him on Thursday anyhow so I am going to take my urine in to St Lukes in Meridian tomorrow and have blood drawn. Until then I am on the couch with Willow.

More to come...