In the ER

Well, today my breathing issues got so bad and so scary that I felt it was best to go into the emergency room. Somewhere in the latter part of the 9 o'clock hour this morning my chest tightened up out of nowhere, my heart was racing, I was having fierce hot flashes and simply could not catch my breath. I called Blinn around 10:30 asking him to come home and in the 20 minutes it took him to walk through the door, my condition worsened considerably. I actually considered calling 911 to have an ambulance come, waiting for Blinn felt like an eternity (but he got here so fast in reality, thank goodness). What a scary feeling. My baby girl squirming and crying because she wants to nurse for a morning nap, but I barely have the strength to sit on the floor next to her, let alone pick her up and put her to my breast. But I did it. My mind was racing "I need to call 911 now because in a couple of minutes I'm not going to be breathing, they won't be able to know who I am, where I am, what my problem is. I have to do this, Zachari needs to be safe. Who would hold her in the ambulance? Is it legal for her to ride in there without a car seat? What would Blinn think when he got home and saw the flashing lights and the bright red truck on the street?" A zillion questions in such short time. I'm pretty sure that sense of panic contributed to my inability to catch a breath, but what can ya do?

I feel much better after my four hour stay at the Wood County ER. They drew lots of blood, did a chest x-ray and cat scan (everything looks fine), gave me a liter of saline and a steroid to help my lungs on a steady drip over a couple of hours. I also had to wear one of those lovely oxygen tubes in my nose while also taking two doses of breathing treatments through a mask. No rhyme or reason for the scare which is actually pretty frustrating. I've seen docs and specialists and tried this or that and nothing seems to be getting to the bottom of things. I'm thankful we live three minutes from the hospital and I was able to get care right away, but I wish that care would've given me more answers. I don't want another flare up like this, I just want to be healthy. All the way all the time healthy.

What's perhaps most troubling through all this is that I can't breastfeed. No steroids for Baby Girl. In fact, I can't nurse her til Monday at the earliest and it. is. killing. me. Right now Blinn's upstairs trying to put her down for the night and she's screaming. In all the months of our nursing relationship she's never once been put down for the night by anyone other than me, she's never once had to be soothed to sleep by something other than my breast. I hate this. I'm on the verge of tears myself. Her room is directly above this computer and I thought blogging would be a distraction, but its not really helping. I guess I'll go use the (kick-ass) hand pump they gave me today (because I started leaking all over and soaked through one side of my gown) and trick my body into thinking that pump is my sweet girl's little mouth. Yeah right, this bod is way smarter than I give it credit for.

Everyone always says things like this in a time of crisis, loss, uncertainty, you name the moment, but its the little things we all take for granted, ya know? We take for granted that our brains tell our bodies what to do all the time and that everything will work in unison for the greater good. I consider myself relatively balanced in terms of trying not to take things for granted, seeing the silver lining in things, being thankful for even the tiniest of things, but today I am left humbled once again. Breathing is kind of a big deal, ya know? When I can't do it the way I'm meant to, its no fun. Today I'm extra thankful for hospital staff and hospitals who intervene with grace when the time is right.

... and she's still crying. Oh, sweet girl. Go to sleep. Mama loves you. LOVES you. I just can't come to you right now or you'll start to nurse. Please don't take these next few days as a sign that I don't love you, don't want to comfort you, and don't want to feed you from my very own body anymore. As soon as these nasty old drugs are out of my system, I'm ripping off my shirt and letting you go to town, my baby. I'm sorry. Ugh. I hate this.