in sickness and in health

So my life is officially a crazy adventure.

Prepare to hear more about my inner workings than you ever wanted to know...

Last Thursday night I got Hadley settled down around 10:30 and headed to bed myself.  Being sleep deprived for the past 5 weeks means I fall asleep fast and hard these days, so when I woke up in pain at midnight I knew something was really wrong.  The crazy bad pain was shooting under my ribs and circling around my back squeezing almost like contractions do - but worse.  I'm not kidding, it hurt worse than labor.

I found Drew downstairs and told him between gasps for breath and tears that something was really wrong with me.  The pain kept ebbing from there-but-tolerable to excruciating, so I was hoping it was just indigestion from the Indian food we'd had for dinner {although I've never had heartburn in my life and this seemed a little extreme for that}.  I really, really didn't want to wake up the kids and drag them to the ER so I decided to try and sleep some.

The next morning the pain was still bad, but had migrated down to my lower abdomen.  At this point we worried that it was appendicitis so we called my Mom to come stay with Asher and Hadley while Drew took me to the hospital.  After talking to the ER doc he surprised me by saying that he thought it was my gallbladder causing the pain, not my appendix.  Apparently my symptoms fit a gall attack to a T, plus it's very common for pregnant and newly postpartum women to develop gall stones {I've never heard this before!}.

The doctor ran some blood work and discovered that my liver enzymes were elevated and I was jaundiced.  All signs pointed towards the gallbladder - that no good, waste of an organ...

Next up:  an ultrasound to look for gallstones!  Drew and I both said how weird it was to get an ultrasound that wasn't looking for a baby.  We both kept expecting to see a little head on the screen at any moment, but that would have been REALLY weird and would most definitely have landed me on the cover of National Enquirer - haha!

The ultrasound showed lots of floating stones, so I won myself a laproscopic cholecystectomy {that's doctor speak for not-so-invasive gallbladder extraction, y'all}.  Sweet.

The more concerning part of this whole deal were the elevated liver enzymes and bilirubin.  These indicate a blockage of the main bile duct and turn me into an emergency surgery situation.  To see if there was a blockage I got my first ever MRI and even got "STAT" status - pretty fancy, eh?  :-)

Luckily no blockage was seen {the stone that was blocking it passed on its own sometime earlier in the day} so my surgery could wait until the next day.  I'm not going to lie, I was pretty upset by this point.  I'd thought I would be back home that evening but instead I was spending my first night away from Hadley at 5 weeks old, trying to pump to keep my milk supply up, and determining what meds were safe for breastfeeding and which weren't.  It seemed like everyone I asked kept giving answers like, "well, we think it's probably safe, but it's really up to you."  Um, what??  How in the world am I supposed to know what's safe?  Should have sprung for that pharmacology degree back when I had the chance, I guess.

Since no one would guarantee that the pain meds wouldn't hurt Hadley I refused to take any and ended up miserable most of the day.  I had some milk pumped at home, but wasn't planning on being away from her for a few days so there wasn't enough and I wanted to send as much home with Drew as I could.  It worked out ok - she needed a little formula and that's not the end of the world {I guess}.

The guilt was the worst part of this whole ordeal...I felt guilty for leaving my children, guilty for putting their complete care on my parent's laps, guilty for running Drew ragged.  Absolutely no one gave me a hard time - in fact everyone has been amazing at helping me and caring for Asher and Hadley.  I think it's just natural for the mommy to feel like she needs to keep things running at home!

Saturday morning they took out the offending organ and I slept until noon.  After that I set my mind on going home and worked on feeling well enough.  Luckily the surgery went great and I was able to come home after dinner.

I'm still really sore and figuring out how to take care of A and H {even with Drew's help it's tough}.  It's so good to be here though - we all missed each other.  :-)

Hopefully I'll be back at 100% soon.  We have a very important 3rd birthday here next week to get ready for!  Despite this crazy wrench in our plans I'm so grateful for a few things...

* my parents live close and were willing and able to drop everything to take care of my kiddos

* Drew was able to take off work and ran back and forth between the kids and the hospital constantly {he's probably wishing he'd looked under the hood and kicked the tires a bit before signing up with me!}

* Hadley took both the bottle and formula with absolutely no issues despite not having had either before

* Asher took it all in stride - I don't think he missed me at all!

* my mother-in-law was already planning to visit us next Saturday.  I'm so glad she's coming - we need help! ha!

Although life throws us curve balls, God is good.  This all worked out as well as it possibly could have and I'm grateful.  What other trouble can I get into?  We'll see!