Tuesday, April 3, 2012

I'm Back!

Well it's been almost a year since I last blogged and a lot has happened. I will do the readers digest version to catch you up. (If you are new to my blog or just haven't been by in a while please read the disclaimer on the right side of my blog before you begin :-D)

So since April of last year a lot has changed......

April 2011 Josh and I decided we wanted to have another baby. So I had my IUD removed and began "trying"

July 2011 We found out some exciting news and devastating news in the same week. The week of July 17th we found out my Dad had stage 4 colon cancer. He immediately went in to have surgery, and on July 20th two days after his surgery I found out I was pregnant. Over the next 6 months I watched my Dad battle cancer. He fought hard and even with everything he went through he never stopped worrying about me and the effect the stress could be having on me and the baby. Unfortunately even with how hard he fought on January 10th he lost his battle with cancer. I miss him terribly but have joy knowing he is now completely healed and in heaven.

March 2012 On the 9th Eli makes his arrival. It was a long labor (just a few minutes short of 12 hours) but totally worth it.

By the afternoon of the 10th Eli and I were discharged from the hospital. The morning of the 14th I woke up around 4:00am with excruciating pain on my right side and 102.9 fever. I went back to sleep I guess hoping that it would get better only to wake up a couple hours later with the pain worse. I called the on-call nurse at my OBGYN and she said I needed to get to labor and delivery. So I woke Josh up, we got the kids up and over to my Aunts. We kept Eli with us because I was breast feeding and because they were sending me to labor and delivery I thought it'd be safe for Eli to be with us.
We get to labor and delivery only for them to send me to the ER due to the fever. So we called my Aunt to come get Eli. They took me to triage and began all the test. After blood work, urine samples, and a CT the doctor came in to tell me "you have kidney stones, but thats not the worst of it. You have numerous stones, one that is very large. And they are blocking part of your kidney which it keeping your kidney from emptying completely and that has caused an infection."
They put me on a broad spectrum antibiotic to try to start killing the infection while they waited on blood cultures to come back and find out exactly what bacteria I had so they could treat in more specifically. They also told me they would be doing a procedure to empty my kidney. They would insert a tube in my back that went into my kidney and would drain the trapped urine into a bag outside my body (Yup, I was just told I'd have a Pee bag!) They wheeled me away to get the nephrostomy. The procedure was done with local anesthesia so I was awake the entire time. It wasn't too painful but definitely uncomfortable. I believe the procedure took about 15-20 minutes. After they finished they wheeled me up to my room where Josh was waiting. I was only in the room for a couple of minutes before I started to shiver. Josh went to tell the nurse, she insisted it was normal but came to check on me anyway. By the time Josh and the nurse made it back I was shaking uncontrollably. The nurse said "oh, that's not normal". What happened next is a blur . My fever got up to 109. My heart rate was 190. My body was completely numb. I was unable to speak. And I was very scared. There were 3 different doctors, and 4 nurses in room. During the chaos one of the nurses ripped the iv out of my arm (lucky for her i was unable to speak).
Apparently when the nephrostomy was inserted it sent the infection into my bloodstream and that caused my body to react the way it did. They rushed me to the ICU and upped my antibiotics. It seemed like forever and I honestly can't tell you how long it took but my body finally responded to the antibiotics and my heart rate and fever started to go down. I stayed in ICU for a while longer for them to monitor my heart rate and oxygen. I finally got in a room and they got the cultures back and found out the bacteria was e-coli and staph infection. So they changed my antibiotics to fight the infection more directly. I was released from the hospital on Saturday with a few prescriptions and my pee bag, who I had named Frosty, and an appointment for the next Monday to have the stones removed. So I spent the next 8 days hiding out at the house with Frosty. Monday the 26th I went in to have the stones and hopefully Frosty removed. The stones were removed successfully and so was Frosty. But Frosty was replaced with "Clint the Stint". I think Clint was worse than Frosty, because unlike Frosty who was just annoying Clint actually was painful and I had to deal with him for a week. The stint was put in to help drain the kidney while everything was healing from the surgery. Monday the 2nd I went in and had Clint removed and just like i had been told I felt immediate relief. Now all that's left to do is a 24 hour urine collection (sounds like fun huh?) so they can hopefully determine why I got the stones. I'll be doing that in two weeks.

So that brings us up to today......


This is my weigh in this morning.

And thats pretty awesome considering I went into the hospital to have Eli just 3 1/2 weeks ago weighing in at an amazing 191lbs!! Whoa. The weight loss so far is only due to the wonderful ICU/hospital diet. It's amazing what a severe infection and hospital stay will do to your weight.

So now my goals are to get to 125-130lbs in my size 5 jeans again. Today I started the C25K again and plan to do some weight training as well. I will post about all of that at a later time. So that's what has been going on with me the past year (the readers digest version) I hope to do a better job of keeping up with my blog this go around and I hope to have success with my weight loss and running goals.

2 comments:

  1. What a cute baby :) And dang... that's a lot of weight to lose in 3 weeks :)

    Just want you to know that I always loved your dad! He was always an encouragement to my mom at Bellevue, and he was always so sweet to my family. So sweet to see this new little life and the legacy he gets to pass on.

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    1. Annie, Thank you so much for the kind words about my Dad. I don't think I'll ever get tired of hearing about the impact he had on peoples lives. :)

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