Sunday, June 5, 2011

Memorial Day and Kidney Stones

We decided to make a last minute trip to Utah for the Memorial Day weekend.  Being 31 weeks pregnant, I debated whether or not it was worth driving the 9 long hours but felt like it would be a while before would get back once our little man gets here.  I'm so glad we were able to be there  to decorate Kate's grave site. It was also so nice to see our families.  Those were some of the highlights of our trip.  Now here's the low light:

On Saturday night I started having some low back pain. No big deal, right?  I decided to take it easy the rest of the night and see if the pain would subside.  Well, it didn't.  In fact, it got progressively worse.  My first thought was that I was going into labor.  The only thing was that the pain was constant and not like contractions..  The pain became so intense that I started vomiting.  At this point my mom was on the phone with the ER while Bryan was trying to do what he could to console me.  I've had kidney stones in the past, but never during pregnancy so the thought never crossed my mind that it could possibly be that.  I was in so much pain that we rushed to the ER.  When I got there we had to wait for the on-call doctor to get there before they could give me any pain medication and let me just say that it seemed like FOREVER before he got there.  All symptoms pointed to kidney stones and a urinalysis confirmed that there was a high probability I could have them.  So, they pumped me full of fluids and some Morphine to knock out the pain (which I was so grateful for).  After being in the ER for about 4 hours, the pain was under control so they sent me home with some Percocet and wished me good luck as I would have to pass them on my own.

Sunday I felt much better and thought that the stones were gone.  Only in my dreams.  About 2:00 am I woke up in excruciating pain and the Percocet wasn't helping at all.  Same scenario as the night before, but much more intense.  Now, I have a high tolerance for pain, but this was like nothing I have ever experienced before in my whole life.  So back to the ER I go.  It was like deja vu.  Luckily since I had been admitted the night before they were able to treat me as "out patient" and were able to immediately start me on the Morphine again.  The only problem was that the pain was so bad that the Morphine wasn't even touching it.  They were worried that the stone was too big to pass on my own, but the Fillmore Hospital didn't have an ultrasound to find out how big it was.  They were worried that the pain was going to cause me to go into premature labor and felt like I needed to get up to Utah Valley.  And to top it off, I had to be transported by ambulance because of the risk of respiratory distress.  So, on Monday morning (Memorial Day) I took the very long, very expensive ride to Provo.  I felt so ridiculous, but at that point I didn't care.....I just wanted to be put out of my misery.   So to make a long story short, after x-rays, ultrasounds and an overnight hospital stay they couldn't see  a stone large enough to have to be surgically removed (thank goodness).  So, I was sent home knowing that I had no other choice than to just pass them on my own.  The Percocet was helping to dull the pain and we made it back to Fillmore at about 2:00 pm.  The worst part was knowing that we had that long 9 hour drive ahead of us.  I debated whether or not Mia and I should stay for a couple of days until I knew I was out of the woods, but with the high risk of me going into labor I wanted to be close to my doctor in California.  So we hit the road and happy to say I survived.  Over the next week I passed at least 3 stones and hope that is the last of them!!!  All I can say is that I would never wish kidney stones upon my worst enemy!!!

1 comment:

Nick Scott Family said...

Poor girl! Kidney stones are the worst. I'd rather have 10 kids over kidney stones. I didn't have them while pregnant but got them a few days after giving birth to Easton and ... PAINFUL! So sorry!