DejaVu: Delivering Charlie, Part IV

Coming home with Charlie had its shadows of worry.  He was perfectly fine, and I was recovering well.  But the events that surrounded Oliver's birth caused us to be on the cautious side.  When we came home with Oliver as a family of three, we were home for four hours before I woke up from a nap ridden with the worst chills I had ever experienced.  My fever climbed to 104, and we turned around to get re-admitted to the hospital for treatment for three infections, one of them in my bloodstream.  I was in the hospital for nearly two weeks total, and went home giving myself IV antibiotics. 

"It's 2 o'clock," Michael said, looking at his watch as we walked in the door, this time with baby #2.  "We'll celebrate at 6."  He was half-joking...the chance of getting sick with infection after a C-section is less than 1%.  Which means the chance of this happening twice was, like, not in the picture.  I truly wasn't worried.  Even so, I avoided sitting in the chair I had been in when I woke up with those chills in 2007.  Superstitious, maybe, but not worried.

6 pm rolled around.  We were fine!  We made it through that Saturday and Sunday, happy to be home with the only chaos being managing a toddler and and infant.  Sunday night, I walked out of the bathroom and told Michael that I thought I had a urinary tract infection.  Not a big deal, pretty common.  We decided to follow-up on it the next day, Jan 2nd.  When the next day came, we realized that the clinic was closed for the day after New Year's.  "That's fine," I said again.  "It's not that bad, I can wait until tomorrow."

Later that night, exhausted and in pain, I gingerly climbed upstairs to change into pajamas.  Just as I stood outside my closet with my pajama bottoms in hand, chills raced down my body.  I crumpled up, unable to move, shivering, and screaming in my head, No, no, no, no, this is impossible, please tell me this isn't happening...

Shuddering, I limped down the stairs, crying with teeth chattering, and ransacked a closet to find my thermometer.  I stood in our mudroom and cried, not wanting Michael to see a repeat scene from two years ago.  When he walked over to me, he simply and gently told me that I was being ridiculous by hiding, covered me with winter hats and blankets, and ushered me back to the couch.  I watched my temperature creep up 3 degrees in 45 minutes, just as it had before.  We called the OB on-call, and headed back to the hospital. 

It was like a weird date, I told Michael as we camped out in a hospital room.  My sister had already arranged to stay with us for the month to help out, so Michael and I were able to leave the boys at home.  We watched HGTV and criticized real estate while my blood was drawn and I was given medications.  After six hours, the OB came in to tell me that my bloodwork and urine specimen were all normal.  He couldn't explain the fever, and had no idea about why every time I peed I had stabbing pain in my bladder that left me gripping the wall.  My surgical pain was worse, too, and he had no answer for that either.  With hesitation and a gentle lecture about the difference between pain from surgery and the pain from being constipated (which I was not, thank you very much) he wrote me a prescription to refill my Percocet.  He also mentioned that most women at this point after a C-section were not needing Percocet for pain control.  Um, okay...was I to change my mind?  Oh, okay then, I guess I don't have pain, never mind...  Wouldn't the better question have been, "then let's see if we can find why you're having so much more pain"?   A little discouraged, we were sent home, with the assurance that the labs they drew would continue to be monitored to see if anything came up to indicate an infection.  This was Sunday night.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were days full of pain and fevers that lasted 4-12 hours long.  I spent my time trying to help care for Charlie, trying to stay awake to play with Oliver when he got home from daycare, and taking showers after my fevers broke leaving puddles of sweat everywhere.  Oh, and I cried.  Like, for half of each day.  I called the clinic several times to let them know I was still sick, and they let me know that they were still watching the labs to see if anything came up.  But nothing did. 

On Friday, we took Charlie in to the pediatrician for a routine check.  My fever had spiked just before leaving the house, and I showed up with my shirt and hair soaked with sweat.  Charlie's pediatrician, who knows us well from Oliver's care, took one look at me and told me I looked terrible.  After asking me questions about my symptoms, she told me she thought I had a uterine infection, and please, make sure I see someone today.  I called my clinic from Charlie's clinic; they called back and told me to  come back to the hospital, I was being admitted for IV antibiotics.

With Charlie in tow, we left the pediatrician's office, grabbed shamefully bad-for-you comfort food at Arby's and went to the hospital.  They started an IV.  They did an assessment where they found a lonely little staple in my incision that had been neglected to be removed the week before; and they removed it then, out from under the skin growing over it.  But stragely, my incision was fine and not the source of my symptoms.  They drew labs.  They drew more labs.  They did a CT scan with contrast. They did an, ahem, internal exam.  A few hours later, I was tucked in to my hospital room.  Michael and my parents were at my bedside, no doubt exhausted themselves.  I asked for chapstick and then sent them home. I would worry about toothpaste and my own bathrobe and slippers tomorrow.  Tonight, I would rest.

I found myself strangely glad to be there.  Well, maybe not glad; but relieved, yes, I was relieved.  I just couldn't be at home while being this sick any longer, even if the labs showed no evidence of infection.  At 11pm, while I was watching more HGTV in a tired stupor, my nurse walked in with a smile on her face and sat down beside me. 

"I just checked on your CT scan results," she said, with a tinge of excitement.  "They found infection in your uterus."  I smiled along with her.  It's odd to be happy over bad test results, but I was joyful, even: I had answers.  My miserable week at home was explained.  I was right to push for an explanation for the pain and fevers.  I knew something was wrong, and now we could see what it was.  I texted the "good" news to my family, then slowly climbed into a bed that I would call my own for the next week.