Too late…

I went to sleep on Sunday night, really it was Monday morning between midnight and about 1:30 am, March 11, 2013. This had become normal for me to not be able to fall asleep until very late. I woke up around 2:30 or so from pain in the chest and back. It wasn’t typical pain but it was something I hadn’t experienced before. I got up, went to the restroom and walked about the living room for a couple of minutes. I went back to bed and tossed a while. It took about 1 hour before I was comfortable again to fall back asleep.

I woke up again around 5 or 5:30 with the same discomfort and pain in my chest and back and tossed and turned  again trying to find a comfortable position. This time though, I was also nauseous. So I got up, went to the restroom where I used the toilet. It seemed I had diarrhea. Still feeling like vomiting, I stayed in the bathroom. I laid on the bathroom floor hoping I would get relief by finally vomiting. Nothing happened for about the next hour so, I went back to bed. As I was trying to fall asleep, it was now close 7 am, I had to run to the bathroom to vomit. The discomfort in my chest did not subside and I was still very nauseous. Around 9 am I decided we should head to the doctor’s office as I already had an appointment with the OB for Monday morning.

As soon as we reached the doctor’s office, I told one of the ladies at the front desk that I wasn’t feeling well and would like to use the bathroom. I went to use the bathroom and left a urine sample (which I left at every visit during my pregnancy). When I came back to the waiting area I did not wait too long before a nurse came and called me to b seen by the OB. She asked how I was and I said “not well.” She then took my blood pressure and announced that it was 140(+?)/75(+?) and then said it was good.

The doctor came in a few minutes after the nurse left and asked me how I was, again I said,  “not well.” I explained to her that although, I had an appointment already this morning, I had concerns based on what/how I was feeling at the moment. I told the doctor that I had been feeling sick with chest pains and had been having a hard time breathing. The pain was both in my upper chest and in the back in the same location (rib cage area) it seemed. I told her that I had been vomiting as of about 7 in the morning and that I had gone to the bathroom and it appeared to be diarrhea. I told her that I had a headache over the last couple of days. All of this I said to her while I was lying on my back because it was too uncomfortable for me to sit up even for a short amount of time. Not that lying down made me feel any better.

The doctor quickly offered me the diagnosis of a stomach bug and asked me if I had felt the baby move. I replied that I did feel the baby move but did not feel him kick since Sunday evening. She asked again and I told her the same thing. She then checked for my baby’s heartbeat very quickly and then proceeded to measure my stomach and said that everything looked good. For the stomach bug she recommended I drink Gatorade or lots of water. She also prescribed anti-nausea medication. When my husband and I pressed further, she offered to hook me up on IVs but made sure to let me know that drinking Gatorade would achieve the same results. Frustrated, I opted to do as she said. Before she could dismiss us, I brought up the fact that I had also been having severe back pain separate from the pain in my chest and back that had developed over night. I said that because I am mostly sitting at work, I get unbearable back pain by 2 or 3 pm and wondered if I should be working from home. The doctor didn’t seem to have a response, perhaps, we had taken up too much of her time with our concerns for the life growing inside of me; so my husband reiterated what I had just said and explicitly asked if she could write a note saying that I should work from home as needed. She obliged and said she would prepare the note.

We went back into the waiting room and waited for the note and prescription. We waited a while, maybe 15 minutes and because I couldn’t stand sitting up, I asked my husband to take me to the car so I could sit reclined in the car. I went to the car and my husband went back up to the doctor’s office to pick up the prescription and also purchase Gatorade from the store in the same building as the doctor had recommended.

When my husband came back to the car, he gave me the Gatorade. I drank some. We drove toward home and he picked up my anti-nausea prescription which I immediately took once home and proceeded to lie on the couch and fell asleep shortly there after. When I woke up that afternoon, I was no longer nauseous and had just managed to eat a banana.

Between the last time I heard my boy’s heartbeat at at the doctor’s office on Monday, March 11th and Wednesday, March 13th, my baby had died. Tuesday, March 10th night, I could not go to sleep at all. My husband and I tried to fall asleep around 12:30 am Wednesday finally getting into bed and trying to find a comfortable position. I was having chest pains and back pains again, and having a hard time breathing. This time it was more pronounced. As soon as I seemed to close my eyes, I was running to the bathroom to vomit. It was now 2am and I left the bathroom to wake my husband. We sat in the living room for some minutes and decided to call the OB’s office. The doctor who called back seemed upset that she was woken up in the middle of the night. I explained my symptoms and told her these were the same exact symptoms I came into the office on Monday complaining of. She the asked where I live and told me to go to the nearest ER. My husband then helped me get ready and we headed to the ER. As soon as I was checked in, the nurse looked for my baby’s heartbeat, she could not find anything. Another nurse came to help and she too could not find a heartbeat. Then the doctor in charge came in and he too could not find it. He then told me, my baby was gone. It was too late.

At this same time my blood pressure had risen to levels which could cause a stroke (225/100s)? and were a huge concern to the doctors. I was too in shock, disbelief, and too hopeless to understand the threat to my own life.

On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 9:11 am I delivered my stillborn baby boy via C-section.

Tags: back pain, chest pain, Nausea, Pain, preeclampsia, Vomiting