Dec
12

Apologies in Advance.

Well! It has been an eventful few days. “Eventful,” you will understand, being a euphemism for “Godawful.” Let’s begin!

Monday morning I got a phone call from my peri’s office. While my urine culture came back negative, my, er, vaginal culture came back positive for an infection. I was to start treatment right away, as this infection can cause cervical changes and preterm labor. Google was discomfiting, largely because the search results all seemed to say things about preterm birth, neonatal sepsis, and death! destruction! despair!

That afternoon I took my one-hour glucose tolerance test. My peri wanted me to have it earlier than the usual 24-28 weeks to see whether I needed to remain on the Metformin (I went off the Met for the day before the test). An hour after I returned home the clinic called: my level was 174 (they wanted it below 135). I was instructed to come in the next morning for the three-hour test, which must be done after fasting.

I had no sooner hung up the phone when it rang again—another call from my peri’s office, this time informing me that my hemoglobin was low and I need to start taking iron supplements. And, presumably, kiss goodbye any hope of ever again having a normal bowel movement.

At this point I considered turning the ringer off the phone simply to avoid getting more bad news.

The next morning I woke up for my three-hour test and immediately threw up. Fasting doesn’t agree with me under the best of circumstances, and these days even eating in the middle of the night doesn’t always stave off the morning retching, so I wasn’t particularly surprised. I took a Zofran and then wobbled my way to the clinic to drink the Glucola, willing it to stay down. I was sitting in a cozy little room in the back of the clinic when fire alarms started going off and a voice droned “CODE RED” over an intercom. I heard a few nurses talking and divined that this was probably a drill, so when someone came by and shut my door, not noticing the room was occupied, I stayed put and stayed quiet, listening to the other patients trooping down the halls to the exits. I’ll be damned if I was going to drag my sick, shaky, pregnant ass outside in subzero weather for a practice fire. I curled up on the couch and promised myself that if I smelled smoke or heard sirens I would exit post-haste. Eventually the beeping and flashing lights and “CODE RED” stopped and everyone tromped back through the hall. A nurse opened my door and started when she saw me there.
“We…You’re…We just had a fire drill, you know,” she said, wrinkling her forehead, “Didn’t you hear the alarms?” I was saved from answering by another nurse who bustled in to tell me they needed the room, and I would have to while away the remaining hours in the lobby.
The lobby was full of women who were much more pregnant than I, and I felt unpleasantly like an imposter. Perhaps that explains my upcoming stupidity: a few minutes after settling in—about half an hour after drinking the Glucola—I realized I was going to faint. I have fainted many times in the past, and am all too familiar with the sudden strange brightening of the lights and the sick clamminess that overtakes you. I was determined not to pass out in front of the other pregnants, so instead of staying safely in my chair with my head between my legs, I decided to walk to the nurses’ station and ask to lie down. The nurses’ station is located down a long hallway, a hallway that seemed even longer than I remembered when I started down it, one woozy step at a time.

When I reached the end, I couldn’t seem to talk properly to tell the nurse I was feeling faint, but I managed to mumble something while I held onto the wall, and then I was whisked onto a bed and everyone was flapping around cooing at me sympathetically (I love the nurses at my peri’s office) and bringing me cold washcloths, which was good because I was burning up and stripped down to a tank top. I did not move one muscle for the next half hour until my blood draw, because I was fairly certain that any movement would kill me. Instead I lay very still and tried to concentrate on not puking, as I was equally certain I would be unable to raise my head towards the emesis basin if I did. I was a pitiful sight, I tell you. And no wonder: my one hour glucose, which ought to be under 190, came back at 233. The next two hours were better, as I could feel my blood sugar gradually returning to normal, but in the end I failed the three hour test and have now been diagnosed with gestational diabetes.

Despite being on my highest dose of Zofran, I am throwing up more than I did during the first trimester, and now I will be faced with the additional challenge of cutting carbs, when carbs are among the few things I can always eat. The antibiotics I am on for the infection are not helping the nausea. And being on increased Zofran is not helping the other end of things, if you know what I mean (and I think you do). I am spending a lot of time worrying about missing work, and dragged myself into the office this morning after being up at four a.m. to vomit bile. Worst of all, my anxiety disorder, which has been remarkably well-controlled all pregnancy, seems to be resurging, probably as a result of feeling so ill, and I am finding myself weepy and overwhelmed and then ashamed of myself for being weepy and overwhelmed. I worry that feeling this way means that I am not cut out for motherhood, and my mood is fragile, to say the least. Probably I am mildly dehydrated, which can addle a girl’s brain, and hormones surely play a role. I am even wondering whether yesterday’s blood sugar antics could still be affecting me, because I am just a hot mess today, what with the crying and the panic and the persistent nausea.
I am hoping this squall will blow over soon; after all, five days ago I was on top of the world. I think just one vomit-free day would do wonders for my morale. Still, I am tired of things going wrong, and being diagnosed with an infection that can lead to preterm labor and gestational diabetes—a condition that causes delayed lung maturity and requires the babies to stay in as long as possible—in the same 24 hour period seems like a bit much, don’t you think?

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |