Saturday, June 18, 2011

Nothing like a little meningitis scare, to stir things up!

So on Tuesday night (though it posted Wednesday) I blogged about my migraine. It was pretty bad Tuesday night. I woke up in pain several times and ended up taking a Percocet to help with the pain...it didn't help.

It was horrific on Wednesday. Now I know that I tend to over-dramatize and exaggerate a bit but I seriously wasn't sure I was going to make it. I cried, a lot. It felt like someone had bashed my head with a baseball bat. Like my head was 4 sizes bigger than what my neck could support. And it wasn't just the migraine...I was exhausted. My back and neck hurt, I was so nauseous and was vomiting up everything. Water, crackers, 7up...nothing would stay down.

I let the kids watch Scooby Doo at 7am and when they wanted popcorn for breakfast I rationalized that it was okay because I mixed in Crasins and I made them drink soy milk with it. By 7:50am I actually cracked down and called the doctor because I just knew something wasn't right. Yeah, we'd been up less than one hour. The earliest that the office could get me in was 3pm and I may have called B, begging, crying, pleading...to come home and just watch the boys for me. It wasn't that he didn't want to but he had missed part of Thursday last week, all day Friday, all day Monday and here it is Wednesday morning and I can't hack it. He felt horrible for me but also bad for his job, he was way behind. So we agreed that he would meet me at the office and watch the kids, rather than drive 20 minutes home so that I could hop in the van and drive 20 minutes (the opposite direction) to my appointment.

By the time 3pm rolled around, I was sure my head was going to explode. The doctors nurse took one look at me, then closed all the blinds, dimmed the lights and asked if I wanted to lay down. Seriously, I looked like $h!t. Doc comes in, asks me the ''when did it start, on a scale of one to ten, what have you tried/taken, etc" and I responded ''it's on day 3, i'd put it at a 11 on the pain scale and I have tried tylenol, 800mg ibuprofen and percocet left over from childbirth which I didn't use at the time of childbirth". I explained the severe nausea and vomiting. Seriously an un-medicated, natural childbirth was less painful than this migraine, no joke. I have a high pain tolerance but after three days, I couldn't take it anymore.

Well it turns out my vitals were all fine, my eyes passed whatever flashlight shining/tracking test they do, and it was decided to treat this migraine ''aggressively'' and they would be giving me 2 shots: one for my nausea (Zofran...I think) and then 5 minutes later, one for my migraine (Imitrex). He said that by the time I left his office, I'd be virtually pain free. Well long story short  shorter, I had a bad reaction to one of the drugs and started vomiting. So they watched me for another 10 minutes. Nurse came in, had me sit up slowly and I vomited again. Nurse told me to lay down, they brought me water and said that the doctor wanted to keep an eye on me. They took my blood pressure again (it was normal) and after another 20 minutes, I hadn't thrown up and my head felt a little better...not so sensitive to the light/sound but still a headache,  so I was sent home with strict instructions to call if I got worse.

I got home, ate 2 chunks of watermelon, fell asleep. Woke up, threw up aforementioned watermelon and fell back asleep. Woke up again at 8:30pm and felt like death. My head hurt much, much worse. B had taken all the boys to see Kung Fu Panda 2, Sissy was sleeping and I decided to call my mommy. She said I needed to go the ER. I didn't like that so I said I'd wait it out til B got home. B gets home...well, whenever he got home and I woke again at 10:30pm. Again, I vomit. I'm crying yet not really crying because it hurts to bad to cry. I have a fever of 101.8. Not only am I in pain but I'm worried about staying hydrated enough to keep nursing Maggie. In 5 hours, she had nursed 8 times. I know my supply was down. I had tried twice to supplement with formula and she wouldn't take it. So I call the doctor. He said that I had two options. Option 1: he would call in a different anti-nausea drug for me because it sounded like I was dehydrated and/or had meningitis. Option 2: I could go straight to the ER, get IV fluids and find out if I had meningitis. I chose option number 1. I really did think that I was dehydrated. I mean, I hadn't kept down hardly any fluids in close to 36 hours {the only thing that I had kept down were those Freezer Pops...3 of them} and I was still nursing Sissy. So at 11:30pm, B left for Walgreens and I fell back asleep. He woke me a little after midnight, I took the anti nausea and sipped some water.

I didn't wake up again until 6:30am on Thursday morning! I didn't vomit. My head felt better, but I still had a headache and was incredibly tired. I took another pill and some ibuprofen, then fell back asleep. I slept until 1:30pm, waking only when B brought me either medicine or Sissy, who wanted to nurse. {Obviously, B took the day off.} He was a Saint though all of it. I don't know what the kids did. I didn't hear them, I didn't see them, no clue what they ate, where they went...nothing. I was comatose. When I woke that afternoon, the only way I can describe feeling is hungover. Obviously, I wasn't but I had that kinda disorientated feeling, my head was kinda heavy and everything still seemed fuzzy. I showered and felt much better. So we got Rudy's to go (no way was I eating in a crowded restaurant) and after eating a few bites of turkey, I felt human. By the time we got to the peach cobbler, I was pretty sure the worse was behind me.

Today I still have a lingering headache and my appetite is down. But I've been keeping my fluids up (making a pitcher of limeade helped that!) and I feel better. We still don't really know what I "had". It was either a really bad migraine and dehydration, a stomach virus that lead to the migraine or it could have been some sort of viral meningitis. Who knows? Really...who cares? The important thing is I'm better and no one else go sick. I am so thankful for that, as well as for B who really did a stellar job with everything. Me, kids, laundry, meals...all while worried about work. Oh and did I mention that today is his birthday? Thanks hon, for everything that you do for us!

2 comments:

  1. Oh what a week!! It's good to hear everything is back to normal agin!! Sounds like B was amazing, you are very lucky!! Oh and Happy Birthday B!!
    Charlotte;)

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  2. Glad you are feeling better! That sounds awful. I can't imagine having a headache like that. Hope you don't ever have one like that again either!

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