My non pregnancy hospital visit

Side note I forgot to add: Jeni texted me to see if I was ok somewhere in the middle of the mess, all I could think of to text back was "Bot." I never actually sent the text because I was so conflicted on if that made sense or not.

I just need to jot this nutty little story down before all the wacky details fade away.

Wednesday I had a 1 year photo session and toward the end I started seeing spots in the corners of my eyes and I started feeling really weird. I finished the session out and knew I had to go upstairs and call Dr. Z right away. By the time the clients left and I got on the phone my vision was getting worse, my hands were getting numb and sort of tingly. I assumed this was probably something related to high blood pressure. The nurse told me to go to the hospital and get evaluated right away. I threw on my flip flops and we were out the door.

After making about 7 u turns looking for the l&d entrance, we decided I could just jump out, go get evaluated in the ER and Zach would go get Blake from school and meet me up there later if I had to stay. Turns out l&d is in the exact same spot as the er, just one floor up. That was the least of my concerns though.

I got out of the car and started wandering in to the ER alone. I passed a police officer who offered me a wheel chair and I declined. This is where my memory starts getting foggy and I became very disoriented and confused. I somehow made it to the front desk area (let's just ignore the fact that I was on the wrong side of the counter) and they had me take a seat. I could sort of remember why I was there and I was telling the people that worked there that I was seeing spots and had numb hands. After one of the employees called me up and got some information from me, I went back and sat down and that is when Allison texted. She was asking a question about Neiman's and I texted her back something about how I was in the hospital. Surely she is just assuming I'm in labor, but as soon as she called me I started crying and sobbing about how I didn't know why I was there and I was alone. I told her I had been there a really long time. Allison freaked out and called Zach and in reality I had only been there like 1o minutes. I was just in my own little fantasy world of confusion.

Another nurse moved me into this little office when I was hysterically crying and she was asking me if I was scared and telling me I would be ok. She was so sweet and it's so weird because I have no idea what she looked like. I remember the nurses trying to figure out if I should go to l&d or just stay there and they went ahead and put me in a wheel chair and wheeled me to my room in the er since my symptoms weren't really related to my pregnancy. I thought so so so hard to try and remember what a wheel chair was called, I was just so out of it.

When I got to my room, (still alone), nurses and doctors were asking me all sorts of stuff and I probably humiliated myself with answering in ridiculous ways. I know they asked me to change into a gown and one nurse guy was like, "take off everything but your undies" and I just thought, "no I will not" and laid down on the table fully clothed when he left the room. The doctor asked me if I could walk and I got up, took his hand and walked around him in a circle, probably shuffling all the way. Eventually, Emily, my kind sweet caretaker for the day got me to change and somehow coerced me into an IV. I remember asking her, "what's that?", "what does it do?", "will it hurt me?", like a zillion questions a child would be asking about an IV. I told her I had never heard of an IV and I was dead serious. I know I was resistant at first, but she put it in. I think she put it in the strangest spot, it was like mid way up my forearm.

I think it was shortly after the IV that Zach made it up there. He said they were drawing blood and were about to take me for a CT scan. Zach said I was asking what the color blue was and was just so out of it. It wasn't from meds either, but it kind of felt the same way, like when you get a high dose of meds in the hospital and you can't really make sense of much. Thank God Zach was there with me after that, I was just in no position to be there by myself, answering questions and doing whatever else I was doing.

I guess after my CT scan, they cleared my brain of anything major like tumors or a stroke or something (Zach was convinced I had some kind of brain cancer or had just had a big stroke), my blood and pee looked normal, so what do you check next? Ears! A nurse came in and flooded out my ears with water. She found the hugest piece of wax she said she had ever seen in my left ear. It was at least 2 and a half inches long and just disgusting. But after that big waxy thing came out I was still mental. When they had ruled out everything but a migraine, they shot my IV up with morphine and sent me on my way. What a long 6 or 7 hours.

Migraines can start with an "aura" which is a warning sign and what was happening during the photo shoot and early on at the hospital. During and aura you see spots, wavy lines or flashing lights and have a numbness or pins and needles feeling in your hands arms in face. In my case it was just my hands.

The actual headache part didn't start until hours later. During that period before the headache started I was having, nausea, problems speaking, trouble walking and general confusion. The ER doctor pretty much nailed it right away and told us he had seen a lot of women with these symptoms and it's usually a migraine. Once the headache finally did hit, it was excruciating. The nurse told me that the morphine would work really fast and before she even finished that sentence the headache was gone and all that was left was the postdrome, which for me was mostly cognitive impairment and fatigue. I still really haven't stopped sleeping off and on since I came back from the hospital. I haven't been able to work because editing photos takes so much concentration and I just can't do that kind of work yet. My eyes still feel weak and I don't feel like myself. I'm really hoping it will all be over tomorrow, it's not going to be long before I'm right back in the hospital having a baby.

I'm not going to proofread this because that is too much right now, so if it's full of typos and other errors hopefully you can still get the gist of my lovely day at the ER.