pregasaurus
22-08-2005, 15:05
Ok, so here's what I've been up to for the last week.
I'd been feeling off colour for a while, but when you're 28 weeks pregnant, that's to be expected. I woke up on Wednesday with the flu, and decided to take the day off (DS was in day care anyway) and lie on the couch watching videos. I had all the symptoms of the flu, clogged nose, fever, achy, and I was finding it really hard to breathe. I rubbed Vicks on my chest and had my Atrovent inhaler next to me, which I took a couple of puffs of every hour or so.
About midday, I became aware that it was getting REALLY hard to breathe. I rang my doctor's surgery and made an appointment for 2pm that afternoon. By 1pm, my chest was heaving, and my husband said I was turning a funny colour, so he drove me into Emergency. They took me straight in and put me on a nebuliser, which helped a little, but not very much. They put an pulse oxometer on and even with an oxygen mask on I was varying between 89-93% (it's supposed to be 99-100%). They gave me a second dose of nebuliser, which again made a bit of difference, but not much. The doctor said he was puzzled as to why I was still breathless, and started asking me about general health, etc. He took blood to go and test to see if I had an infection, but by this time I was hungry and fed up, so as we only live 2 minutes down the road I asked if I could go home and if they could ring me when the results came through? I can home still feeling breathless, but just decided it was part of being pregnant and having a chest infection.
I got the phone call from the doctor at 5:30pm that evening.
"You need to come straight back in, you have a blood clot on your lung".
I was in such shock I just said "oh, ok, I'm not really all that surprised."! (I don't know WHY I said that because i couldn't have been more surprised if I tried!).
I rang my sister who's an emergency nurse and told her not to panic, I was ok, but I'm going into hospital. She wished me well and promised to keep in touch.
I turned up at the hospital with a couple of magazines and insisted that my husband just drop me off and go back home with the kids, as they needed dinner and a bath, I'll be fine, don't worry. I was taken straight in to have an MRI scan done, where they injected a 10th of the usual dose of radioactive contrast dye into my vein to show up all the blood vessels in my lungs. The usual time for each picture takes between 1-1.5 minutes, but because I had so little dye in my system, each picture took 12-15 minutes. I was in the machine flat on my back for 2.5 hours, having to take regular breaks to sit up and cough and get some air, even though I had an oxygen mask. By the end of the scan my chest was heaving, and I felt like someone was sitting on my chest holding a pillow over my face, despite having 10L of oxygen pumping through the mask on my face.
They took me back down to emergency at about 9:30pm, and put me in the resuscitation room. A doctor came and told me that my right lung was 20% full of blood clots, and my left was 60% full, that they were going to admit me and put me on blood thinning drugs.
I'm needle phobic and have terrible veins, so for the next hour I endured 2 failed IV attempts and 2 failed arterial taps. When they tried to get blood out of my artery to test my blood gasses, the blood clotted in the needle immediately and blocked it. I over heard the doctor say my blood was like porridge. I was starting to get very tired and distressed, I wasn't passing any air and felt light headed and sick. The nurse came and told me she had to give me and injection in the stomach and I lost it, telling her I couldn't take anymore, I'd had enough. I was gasping for air with tears streaming down my face. She looked me right in the eye and said "If I don't give you this injection, you're going to die, and I'm completely serious". That shocked me a fair bit, I knew it was serious, but this was the first indication someone had given me that I might die.
I was getting sicker by the minute, and nothing seemed to be helping. I sort of vagued out and drifted in and out of consciousness for a while, so everything I know now is from my sister, who being a nurse knew how much trouble I was in and was ringing every half and hour for an update. By 2:30am they were ready to intubate (put a tube down my throat) and put me on life support. I was in a critical condition, and had the head registrars for respiritory and obstetrics in the room, as well as the crash team, anaesthatists, paediatricians ans a dozen nurses.
My body was so sick it could only keep one of us alive, and decided to abort the baby. I began having strong regular contractions 5 minutes apart, so the hospitals helicopter was called in to fly me to a larger hospital as the one I was in didn't have the facilities to cope with such a premature baby.
Thank God, at 3am, they finally found a drug that seemed to help my breathing, the drugs they gave to stop the labour worked, and the contractions stopped. I was still listed as critical, but I was at least getting enough air in by myself to keep us both alive. We both came very, very close to losing our lives.
I spent the next 48 hours hooked up to oxygen in a critical condition. I was taught to inject myself twice a day in the stomach with Clexane, a blood thinning drug. I've been told I will need to continue doing this until my baby is born, in 11 weeks time. The baby is fine, and I will now go through the high risk pregnancy clinic to keep a close eye on him. I was discharged last night as none of the drugs they are giving me are helping anymore, as it's now it's up to nature to slowly repair. I have about 60% lung function, and will probably end up with scars on my lungs. I can never have any more children. They think the cause was flying from Launceston to Mackay 2 weeks ago to help my elderly mother who had an accident. There was no evidence of deep vein thrombosis in my legs, so the clot must have been in my pelvis. I will need to inject myself beforef I ever fly again.
Despite all this I fell so very, very lucky. With Deep Vein Thrombosis, the clots will end up in either the lungs, heart or brain. I could have dropped dead infront of my kids from a massive stroke or heart attack at any minute, so the fact that they're in my lungs is a godsend. My baby is fine, I'm alive. I can't ask for anymore than that. :)
I'd been feeling off colour for a while, but when you're 28 weeks pregnant, that's to be expected. I woke up on Wednesday with the flu, and decided to take the day off (DS was in day care anyway) and lie on the couch watching videos. I had all the symptoms of the flu, clogged nose, fever, achy, and I was finding it really hard to breathe. I rubbed Vicks on my chest and had my Atrovent inhaler next to me, which I took a couple of puffs of every hour or so.
About midday, I became aware that it was getting REALLY hard to breathe. I rang my doctor's surgery and made an appointment for 2pm that afternoon. By 1pm, my chest was heaving, and my husband said I was turning a funny colour, so he drove me into Emergency. They took me straight in and put me on a nebuliser, which helped a little, but not very much. They put an pulse oxometer on and even with an oxygen mask on I was varying between 89-93% (it's supposed to be 99-100%). They gave me a second dose of nebuliser, which again made a bit of difference, but not much. The doctor said he was puzzled as to why I was still breathless, and started asking me about general health, etc. He took blood to go and test to see if I had an infection, but by this time I was hungry and fed up, so as we only live 2 minutes down the road I asked if I could go home and if they could ring me when the results came through? I can home still feeling breathless, but just decided it was part of being pregnant and having a chest infection.
I got the phone call from the doctor at 5:30pm that evening.
"You need to come straight back in, you have a blood clot on your lung".
I was in such shock I just said "oh, ok, I'm not really all that surprised."! (I don't know WHY I said that because i couldn't have been more surprised if I tried!).
I rang my sister who's an emergency nurse and told her not to panic, I was ok, but I'm going into hospital. She wished me well and promised to keep in touch.
I turned up at the hospital with a couple of magazines and insisted that my husband just drop me off and go back home with the kids, as they needed dinner and a bath, I'll be fine, don't worry. I was taken straight in to have an MRI scan done, where they injected a 10th of the usual dose of radioactive contrast dye into my vein to show up all the blood vessels in my lungs. The usual time for each picture takes between 1-1.5 minutes, but because I had so little dye in my system, each picture took 12-15 minutes. I was in the machine flat on my back for 2.5 hours, having to take regular breaks to sit up and cough and get some air, even though I had an oxygen mask. By the end of the scan my chest was heaving, and I felt like someone was sitting on my chest holding a pillow over my face, despite having 10L of oxygen pumping through the mask on my face.
They took me back down to emergency at about 9:30pm, and put me in the resuscitation room. A doctor came and told me that my right lung was 20% full of blood clots, and my left was 60% full, that they were going to admit me and put me on blood thinning drugs.
I'm needle phobic and have terrible veins, so for the next hour I endured 2 failed IV attempts and 2 failed arterial taps. When they tried to get blood out of my artery to test my blood gasses, the blood clotted in the needle immediately and blocked it. I over heard the doctor say my blood was like porridge. I was starting to get very tired and distressed, I wasn't passing any air and felt light headed and sick. The nurse came and told me she had to give me and injection in the stomach and I lost it, telling her I couldn't take anymore, I'd had enough. I was gasping for air with tears streaming down my face. She looked me right in the eye and said "If I don't give you this injection, you're going to die, and I'm completely serious". That shocked me a fair bit, I knew it was serious, but this was the first indication someone had given me that I might die.
I was getting sicker by the minute, and nothing seemed to be helping. I sort of vagued out and drifted in and out of consciousness for a while, so everything I know now is from my sister, who being a nurse knew how much trouble I was in and was ringing every half and hour for an update. By 2:30am they were ready to intubate (put a tube down my throat) and put me on life support. I was in a critical condition, and had the head registrars for respiritory and obstetrics in the room, as well as the crash team, anaesthatists, paediatricians ans a dozen nurses.
My body was so sick it could only keep one of us alive, and decided to abort the baby. I began having strong regular contractions 5 minutes apart, so the hospitals helicopter was called in to fly me to a larger hospital as the one I was in didn't have the facilities to cope with such a premature baby.
Thank God, at 3am, they finally found a drug that seemed to help my breathing, the drugs they gave to stop the labour worked, and the contractions stopped. I was still listed as critical, but I was at least getting enough air in by myself to keep us both alive. We both came very, very close to losing our lives.
I spent the next 48 hours hooked up to oxygen in a critical condition. I was taught to inject myself twice a day in the stomach with Clexane, a blood thinning drug. I've been told I will need to continue doing this until my baby is born, in 11 weeks time. The baby is fine, and I will now go through the high risk pregnancy clinic to keep a close eye on him. I was discharged last night as none of the drugs they are giving me are helping anymore, as it's now it's up to nature to slowly repair. I have about 60% lung function, and will probably end up with scars on my lungs. I can never have any more children. They think the cause was flying from Launceston to Mackay 2 weeks ago to help my elderly mother who had an accident. There was no evidence of deep vein thrombosis in my legs, so the clot must have been in my pelvis. I will need to inject myself beforef I ever fly again.
Despite all this I fell so very, very lucky. With Deep Vein Thrombosis, the clots will end up in either the lungs, heart or brain. I could have dropped dead infront of my kids from a massive stroke or heart attack at any minute, so the fact that they're in my lungs is a godsend. My baby is fine, I'm alive. I can't ask for anymore than that. :)