The Reagin Family: Wondering Where I've Been?

Probably not, right? I'm sure you've gathered from Facebook that we had an interesting September. Wondering what happened then?

Here's the gist...

Back in my pregnancy, I had to go to the ER in the middle of the night once. I was having horrible pains in the top of my belly, and at some point, my stomach tightened and stayed contracted for about a hour. It finally released after I'd already been told to go into the hospital and was on my way there. The pain subsided with that as well. Without any presenting symptoms, the Labor and Delivery ward simply checked me out for a couple hours and confirmed that all was well, then released me, without any idea as to what had occurred.

Anyhow, fast forward to about 5 weeks postpartum, and that mysterious pain started coming back. It was very random, happening only in the middle of the night, and lasting until about noon the next day. The pain itself would be an intense stabbing pain directly below my right rib cage that would come and go. At first, it was only once a week or so. I kept trying to associate it with something I'd eaten, but I couldn't connect the dots.

Then in early September, it happened three nights in a row, and I simply couldn't stand to keep dealing with it. It is really painful to breastfeed a baby 2-3 times in the night, tired and groggy and in intense pain in your abdomen, with that same sweet baby sitting right on top of the pain. And in addition to that (which is bad enough), not being able to consume anything between dinner the night before and after noon the next day is no good for nursing and chasing after a two-year-old. So I went to the doctor on a Friday, had blood work done, and was set up for an ultrasound the following Monday morning, with the suspicion by now that it was my gall bladder.

Unfortunately, I had my worst attack ever on that Saturday night, and the pain was so bad that I should've gone to the ER then and there. But I didn't. I went to my ultrasound on Monday and called my doctor with the new symptoms. With that information, he wanted me to go to the ER. So off we went, dragging Avery and Owen in tow. (Grandma Mary and Auntie Melissa were wonderful enough to come pick up Avery for us a little while after we'd been waiting.)

Thus began the next part of our journey. The new blood work done there showed that my liver enzymes had elevated from just a hair outside of the normal range on Friday - think around the early 40s when they should be right at 40 - to nearly 2000 times outside of normal into the 700s. I also had bile in my urine, which coupled with the elevated levels, was why, as both my physician and my nurse informed us, I was yellow. YELLOW. And Ed and I hadn't even noticed. The doctor said that my ultrasound showed several small stones, but no blockage, which was strange when taken into consideration with my other symptoms.

Apparently it could've gone either way - they could've kept me and taken out my gall bladder that night, or they could send me to see a surgeon the next day. They released me. And after some struggle to get on the surgeon's schedule that they were sending me to, I managed to get an appointment that Tuesday afternoon, and he scheduled me for the surgery the next day. That night though, before we'd even gotten home from our third trek out to Northside Hospital (on the opposite side of Atlanta from us) in two days, my surgeon called with concerns that I might have hepatitis, too, and cancelled the surgery. We were sent to see a GI doctor the following day instead, and she set me up for a specialized scan to look at my gall bladder function on Thursday.

Mind you, I'm leaving out all the extra details about having to call new doctor's offices multiple times just to get on their schedules when I've been told to, or going back to the same lab to get more blood work done repeatedly, or dragging Avery and Owen to all these places (and if not, who met us where in order to care for Avery), or the fact that I still couldn't really eat or drink ALL week (either due to my stomach pain or to being told not to after midnight every day by my doctors "just in case"), or even the fact that I was told not to nurse at all after my scan since it used radioactive contrast when I had no supply stocked in the freezer. It was an awful and stressful week. BUT... Ed's parents offered to take off work and keep the kids if we needed them, and my mom happened to be coming through town on a layover Tuesday afternoon and just didn't take her connecting flight back out. So she watched Avery for us the rest of the week, and she kept Owen for us as well. AND both Amy and Shoshanah offered their frozen milk for Owen, which was appreciated more than words can express.

Back to Thursday. The scan took longer than it was supposed to, and still didn't show any blockage of the bile duct. On a happier note, I was feeling a bit better that day than I had all week and I actually felt hungry once or twice. So that was a plus (despite that I couldn't eat due to the test).

My GI decided that I must have had a blockage that cleared before the scan and that it was safe to go ahead with the surgery, since my blood work and symptoms were offering further proof of her theory. Outpatient surgery was scheduled for Saturday morning.

The surgery went as expected, removing my gall bladder, until the last part, when they sent another contrast material through to make sure there weren't any stones blocking my bile duct. And there those darn things were again.

So then instead of closing me up and sending me home a few hours later, I had to have another procedure called an ERCP to remove the blockage, where I literally also received a sphincterotomy to make my duct wider at the bottom and allow the stones to pass into my intestines. Then I was admitted to the hospital. And I stayed there two nights instead of one because I just wasn't well enough to leave the next day.

My mom stayed in town helping with Avery and Owen until the next Thursday. Ed took off work the entire week of all my appointments and then again on the Monday I went home from the hospital. Once my mom was gone, Aunt Elizabeth came to the house to play with Avery on Friday. And then last week, Granny came on both Monday and Wednesday, and we went to her house on Friday, leaving Avery there so she could later go to Grandma's for the night.

So that was our September. It was painful. And not how I expected to be spending the second month of Owen's life (did you make the connection yet that it was my gall bladder acting up back in the pregnancy, too?). By the way, I also had to leave Owen with my mom overnight one of the nights I was in the hospital, which would've been emotionally painful, too, had it not been for the pain medications. Avery didn't leave us overnight until she was a year and a half!

Anyhow, we're SO GRATEFUL to everyone who came to our aid in September. And there were a lot of you. And if we didn't mention you here, it's not because we didn't appreciate it or we didn't remember it. This is just a ridiculously long post, and I was trying to make it as concise as possible. So if we haven't said it yet, Thank You. And this probably goes unsaid, but I'll say it anyway... I'm glad it's October. :)

So if you've made it all the way to here, here are some photos from the end of August for your troubles. (I just dumped what few we have from September onto my PC tonight, so those'll have to wait.) Enjoy!

The first of Owen's monthly photos in his chair: Owen at One Month