Hospital Stay

Here goes my scary and sucky hospital stay story.

Before I left from the hospital I had stopped peeing as much as I needed to, I had shortness of breath, and I was huge puffy, like my eyeballs were swimming with tears when I wasn't crying, I was so filled with fluid. Looking at all these symptoms now, I realize that I should never have left the hospital in the first place, but no one dr put them all together to point toward a problem. Plus, I wanted to go home, so I probably did not push for them to listen to me as much as I should have. So I headed home on that Saturday the 28th.

When I went to bed, I was the puffiest I had been so far. I really wish Gary had gotten a picture of me then, because it was so bad. My earlobes were even puffy!! When I got up the next morning, I noticed I was having trouble catching my breath. My wonderful Gary had been up all night along with my mom with the girls. They were super fussy. I got my little Olivia, who just would not calm down, and put her inside my nightgown and laid down with her. She went right to sleep and I started to doze. This is where it got scary. I wasn't able to breathe with her so close to my chest. I would nod off to sleep and jerk awake not breathing. I finally woke Gary up to watch my go to sleep to make sure I would still breathe after I fell asleep. Yes, I actually said these words to him. Well, of course, he said we are going to the hospital. All I could think of was, but Olivia wants me. I called the on-call doctor and of course, he also said go to the ER immediately. The more upset I got the harder it got to breath. I would actually have to work at inhaling. So off we went.

After numerous tests, 7 hours in the ER and Lasix, which made me pee out 3 liters of fluid (!), they said I had congested heart failure. Which sounds scarier than it is. Before Gary and I got the full picture of what happened, we were terrified. All we heard was heart failure!! And because of his lack of sleep the night before, let's just say he was more...well, you know how it is when you need sleep. Everything is so much worse than it really is. But really, we were both really scared for me. Only old people have this, right???

Ok, I have to stop and do some back story here. For weeks before I had the girls I could not shake the fact that something would happen to me and I would not live through my c-section. I even went as far as to compose a letter to Zachary in my head and tell Gary what to say to him if anything happened to me. I know that if I had not woke Gary up and told him to watch me breathe that something would have happened to me. I would have stopped breathing. I think that since we talked about it previously that we didn't fool around with it, we just got in the car and went to the ER. Had we waited, it might not have been ok with me.

So as we were sitting there in the ER just looking at each other, we realized that quite possibly, he could have lost me. We just held each other and cried, so thankful that we acted fast and listened to our instinct.

We found out it is actually where there is so much fluid around the heart and lungs that your heart has to work overtime. And boy did I have fluid! They admitted me and I pretty much gave up the hope of breast feeding at that point. They wheeled me down to my hospital room, in the oldest part of the hospital, the cardiac floor, aka - the nursing home floor. Take into mind that I just came from the newest part of the hospital, the women's building aka - the hotel. As they wheeled me into my room, this is what I saw.


Well, I didn't see myself laying there, but you know. The nurses settled me in, all the while I am looking around fighting tears that I am even here instead of home with my babies. The one of the nurses asked if was still going to breast feed and I totally lost it. She got down and looked me in the eye and told me that she would help me, she would get me a pump, that I could breast feed even without the girls' stimulation, she would help me through this, etc. Let me just say that the whole nursing staff up there totally rocked. They made my stay there bearable. I was a bit different from their usual patient let's just put it that way.

So they gave me more Lasix and and here is my weight loss schedule:

June 25th - girls' b-day up 54 pounds
June 29th (morning I checked into ER) - down 12 pounds
(even though I had 12 pounds of just baby! I gained more fluid after they came)
June 29th (evening I got to cardiac floor) - down 9 more pounds
June 30th - down 11 more pounds
July 1st - down 9 more pounds
For a total weight loss of...30 pounds in 3 days!!! Can you freakin' believe that??
And a loss of almost 3 and a half gallons of fluid after it was all said and done.

So after an idiotic Dr had me stay an extra day for nothing (!!!) I got to come home on Wednesday. They finally ruled out the congestive heart failure. I was just so overloaded with fluid from pregnancy that it didn't have anywhere else to go but to my heart and lungs.

So that's my scary heart story. All is well. I have to stay on a low sodium diet so I don't retain the rest of the fluid I need to lose. Oh yes, there is more, just not as much. I have feet and toes!! And I kinda have an ankle. I am down 4 pounds since Wednesday and I am hoping it will just continue to go. :-)

And I leave you with two pictures. The before and the after. Even if you don't see the 30 pounds difference, please say you do to make me feel good.