january

we had an exciting january...and not a good "exciting."

and just a heads up...i'm going to go into a lot of detail - mainly for my journaling purposes, so i'll apologize in advance if you don't make it through all of it.

at the beginning of the month, b woke up on a monday morning with a 103 temperature, but she wasn't showing any other signs of being sick.

no cough, no runny nose, no throw up.

nothing.

we took her to the doctor, with whom this would be the 3rd visit in 3 weeks

yep, 1 visit a week

who said sometimes kids her age get this virus that gives them a really high fever with no other symptoms.

he sent us on our way with a prescription in hand with the instructions that if she stayed the same, to start the antibiotic on wednesday.

as we were leaving, we joked with the doctor that we'd see him next week to continue our streak of one visit a week.

our sweet sick little girl....this must be AFTER tylenol kicked in

zonked out on the couch

fast forward to tuesday night.

my left side is killing me, it hurts to breathe, and i can't sleep.
i was up pretty much every hour because i couldn't sleep very well.

we get up wednesday morning and i tell the mr. that i'm going to go to town to fill b's prescription because she was still running the fever and that i was going to go see the doctor because of how much pain i was in.
he says, "you probably just pulled a muscle from moving those boxes yesterday.  wait and see if you start feeling better."
so i decided to wait it out for two reasons:
he was probably right.  i was moving some pretty heavy boxes the day before.
i really didn't want to go back to the doctor because that would've made 4 visits in 3 weeks and pretty embarassing if it was really just a pulled muscle.

so i wait it out.
at this point, i STILL hurt.
i can't reach my mom, who i call for any medical advice i need.
no, she's not a nurse, she's just my ever knowledgeable mother.
 so i tell the mr. to call his mom and find out if she has any ideas.
she gives her ideas to the mr. and i try a couple out but nothing is working to relieve the pain.

so i make the trek in to the doctor.
i get to the doctor's office and there is only one other person in the waiting room.
he'll see me when he has a break in between appointments.
so i'm thinking, "great.  i'll be in and out in no time."
aaand then the waiting room starts filling up.
after about an hour of waiting and i still haven't even been taken back to a room, i almost got up to leave and come back in the morning (it was about 4:00) and then reminded myself that i was not going to get ANY sleep if i left, so i stayed.

the nurse gets me into a room and the doctor comes in.
i'm embarassed at first while i tell him what's going on.
remember it's my little family's 4th visit in 3 weeks.
he then tells me that there probably could be 1 of 2 things wrong.
i could have pleurisy from all the coughing that i had been doing.
basically there are 2 linings on the lungs and if they get irritated (like from coughing) they rub together and can cause chest pain.
or, i could have a pulmonary embolism, which is a blood clot in the lung.
based on my oxygen levels, it was probably just pleurisy, so the doctor was going to get me scheduled for a chest x-ray the next day (because it's quarter to five at this point) at holy rosary.
if the chest x-ray didn't show anything, then he would have them do a ct scan on friday.

my doctor leaves the room and comes back in a couple minutes.
he then says, "you know what?  we're going to skip the x-ray and just do the ct scan.  i'll have my nurse call and schedule it for tomorrow.  she'll be back in a few minutes to let you know what time to go in."

then our conversation went like this:

dr.:  are you worried?

me:  should I be?

dr.:  i wouldn't worry too much.

he gives me a prescription for vicoden in the meantime.

he leaves and the nurse comes in.

nurse:  They want you to come in right now.  is that possible?

me: (not thinking/worrying about the fact that they want to see me now and it's almost 5:00)
yeah, it should be no problem.  i just need to call and make sure my girls will be okay.
(the mr. was at home with the girls and the baby was going to be hungry soon)

i leave to walk next door to get b's and my prescriptions filled.
i call the mr., tell him what's going on and ask if he wants to go with me to get the ct scan done.
he says of course, so he called and got my lovely sister-in-law michelle to come babysit for a couple hours while we got this thing done.
i drive home to pick him up and off to the hospital we go.

we went in the regular doors to the hospital and followed the signs to the room they do the ct scans in.
we get there, tell the lady who we are, and she replies:  "oh, they want you in the emergency room." 

i wasn't worried before but now i am worrying.
so we walk to the er, they get my basic information and take me back to sit on a bed and torture me.
okay, it wasn't really torture, but perhaps it could be classified as that.
seriously, making me take deep breaths and lie down?
that was when it hurt the most!
the er doctors were right on a shift change, so i had to wait until the new doctor came on to see him.
but first, i had to see a medical student.
no offense to those of you who are/have been a medical student, but when you're in as much pain as i was, you don't really want to mess around with the extra time it takes for them to look at you first.

when i finally got to see the doctor, he says:  "i don't really think you need a ct scan, but since your doctor ordered one, we'll do it.  (Imagine him being really smug like he knows everything in the universe while he said that.)
but first, i'm going to run a couple other tests."
so they get me hooked up to do an EKG.
which my doctor totally could have already done at his office already.
the ekg was part of the torture - you have to lay down and be still for one of those things.
to give an example of how hard that was for me, for those women who have had an epidural, it's like trying to sit still during a contraction while the anesthesiologist is poking you in the spine.
hard, right?!
nothing wrong on the ekg, so then they finally get someone there to take me for the ct scan.
again, more torture.

when they got the results back, guess what?
yeah, there was a small blood clot in my left lung.
i really wanted to say to the er doctor, "ha.  take that.  my doctor is a better doctor than you are."
but i didn't.
perhaps if i had already been drugged.

so i got to spend the next 3 days of my life in the hospital getting poked, prodded, loaded up with painkillers, draining my right arm of blood (not literally, they just drew my blood WAY too many times than should be allowed), getting shots in the belly and the next 7 days after that driving to the hospital everyday to get more shots in the belly and for them to do protime time tests.

the first 24 hours i was in the hospital, i was on an iv pumping heparin into my body.
they then took me off of that and started fragmin (shots in my belly) and also started an oral pill called coumadin.
all of those drugs are anti-coagulants that make your blood clot at a slower rate than a normal person.
the protime test tests how long it takes for your blood to clot.
normal clotting times (based on the international normalized ratio (INR) system) are between 1.0 - 1.4.
they want my blood to clot between 2.0 - 3.0.
coumadin doesn't start working right away in your body - it has to build up to the level that they need it at, which was why i had to drive back to the hospital every day for a week to get the shot in my belly.  (The heparin and the fragmin immediately take effect in your system)

so now i get to go to the doctor once a month for the next 5 months for a protime test to make sure i'm still falling between the 2.0 - 3.0 levels.
then sometime this summer, they'll take me off of the coumadin and do more blood work to determine if  have increased risk factors and if i have to go back on coumadin for the rest of my life.

i am so grateful for a doctor who listens to the promptings of the Spirit.
(My doctor happens to be the Elders Quorom President in our ward)
had he not listened to the prompting to do the ct scan then instead of waiting for results of other tests to come back, who knows what would have happened?
i am also grateful to have a wonderful husband and father-in-law that are worthy to hold the priesthood and give priesthood blessings.

so that was my january.
february has been pretty quiet so far.

i think id like to keep it that way.