Thursday 26th July 2018
P is 5 Years 4.5 Months Old
R is 4 Years 4 Months Old
J is 10 Days Old
So much drama has happened to me in the last few days I hardly know where to begin with this update. I am writing this in the coronary intensive care unit of our local hospital where I have been an inpatient since Tuesday
I spent 5 nights in the maternity hospital after the c-section and J and I came home on Saturday 21st July. I was delighted to be getting home after spending 12 nights in total in the hospital. I had missed P and R and DH terribly and I was looking forward to finally starting to enjoy my maternity leave and to having J safely home with me. I felt fine leaving the maternity hospital..I was just sore where the c-section incision was and my feet were very bloated from fluid retention after the c-section which I was told was normal.
Our neighbours that we are friends with made a big fuss of Js homecoming and they had decorated the front of our house with blue balloons and banners to welcome him home.
We had a steady stream of visitors over the next few days and I thoroughly enjoyed showing J off and everyone who met him was smitten with his cuteness.
P was instantly brilliant with him..she was like a little mini mammy getting things for him, constantly kissing and cuddling him and declaring that we had gotten the cutest baby in the world
R on the other hand didn't really take much notice of him but did share his teddies with him and give him a few kisses.
DH was a brilliant help as usual and offered to do all the night feeds for the first couple of nights so that I could recuperate as much as possible. We also still have our childminder T coming in to our house Monday to Friday to help with the kids so I was getting a lot of support and was not under too much pressure.
Now to the drama:
I felt fine coming home Saturday and slept ok on Saturday night with DH doing the night feeds. Sunday I also felt fine but on Sunday night I was very uncomfortable in bed. I felt a bit breathless and my tummy was sore at the c-section incision but also above it right up to under my boobs. On Monday I felt a bit breathless during the day and a lot more breathless that night while lying down and again my tummy was sore and I noticed my feet were still very swollen and my face was too.
On Tuesday morning when J was 8 days old the breathlessness was worse but I was trying to ignore it and just get on with things. I made an appointment to get my hair done because my grey roots were driving me mad. My appointment was for 12pm and the public health nurse had phoned me and arranged to call to our house at 2:30pm to do the usual checks they do on mothers and newborns when they are discharged from hospital.
As I'm not supposed to drive for 6 weeks after the c-section DH drove me into town for my hair appointment and I walked two minutes from where he dropped me off to the hairdressers and by the time I got there I was completely out at breath. While I was getting my hair done I texted DH and told him that I thought I needed to go to the doctors because of my breathing but that I would wait to see the public health nurse for her opinion. After my hair appointment I walked the two minutes back again to where DH was picking me up and I was really struggling to catch my breath and had to take huge gasps every minute. DH dropped me home just in time to meet the public health nurse and as soon as she heard my breathing she told me to ring the gps immediately for an appointment.
When I described my symptoms to the gp receptionist she told me to come in asap. DH drove me there and we had to bring J with us as our childminder was gone out with P and R. When we got to the gps I was immediately brought into a treatment room and seen by a nurse who checked my blood pressure and pulse and called the doctor in.
The doctor also checked my pulse and listened to my heart and put me on an oxygen mask and put in a cannula and attached a saline drip and then said he was going to phone an ambulance as my pulse was very weak (only around 35), my blood pressure was high and my breathing was very laboured.
The ambulance arrived in less than 10 minutes and they brought me to the local hospital with sirens wailing and blue lights flashing
DH had to bring J home to our child minder who was back by then before he could follow me up to the hospital.
When I got to the hospital I was brought straight into the A&E resus area and immediately surrounded by doctors and nurses and attached to loads of monitors and I had another cannula put in and bloods taken.
The heart rate monitor I was attached to showed my heart rate was only 33bpm so they were concerned that I could have a blood clot from the c-section or my heart was just about to stop
A normal heart rate is between 60 and 100bpm and even at that you would have to be very fit to have a heart rate of 60bpm. I was asked if I was an athlete and I said definitely not as I hadn't done any sort of exercise at all whilst I was pregnant and before that it was just mostly walking. They stuck big pads to my chest which I think were to use encase they needed to shock my heart back to life with a defibrillator
I was sent for a ct scan which ruled out a blood clot but showed I had some fluid on my lungs. It hurt like hell when the dye for the ct scan was pumped into the cannula in my hand
As my heart rate was still very low a couple of hours after arriving at A&E (not rising above 40bpm) and they were concerned about my feet being very swollen I was admitted to the coronary intensive care unit. The unit only has 4 beds and there are at least 3 specalist nurses working in it 24 hours a day. While I was there I was attached to a heart rate monitor at all times and constantly had my blood pressure and oxygen levels checked. I was given diuretic tablets to reduce the swelling in my feet. (I was weighed twice a day in hospital and I lost 7lbs in 3 days from getting rid of excess fluid)
The first night I was there (Tues) I had blood taken at about 1am then I was woken by the nurse at about 4am because she wanted to do an ecg trace of my heart then she said she was going to call a doctor up to see me so the registrar I had seen earlier in A&E arrived at about 4:15am and he told me there were enzymes (Troponin 0.49 pro-BNP 825) raised in my blood that they would normally only see in someone who had heart failure
On Wednesday morning the consultant cardiologist Dr F came to see me and I was sent for a heart echo which is a detailed ultrasound scan of the heart. The sonographer took about 100 pictures of my heart from all angles. The scan showed my heart was slightly enlarged but appeared to be functioning fine albeit a bit sluggish
On Wednesday evening I was resting in bed after talking to my sister on the phone and I saw on the heart monitor that my heartrate was only 38bpm when suddenly I felt very tight in my chest and I couldn't catch my breath again. I couldn't speak to call the nurse so I raised my hand and luckily the nurse saw me and came over to me. Someone called for a doctor to come to see me and the nurse did an ecg trace of my heart. The registrar came to see me again and he examined me and reviewed the ecg and said he couldn't find a reason for the episode. I was given half a Xanax and I calmed down and my breathing went back to normal
Thursday morning the nurse told me that my heartrate had dropped to 35bpm during the night. The cardiologist Dr F came to see me again and told me that they were going to send me by cardiology ambulance to a different hospital in Dublin to have an angiogram (cardiac catheterization) done to check for blockages in the arteries of my heart
DH came with me in the back of the ambulance and we had a heart specialist paramedic with us constantly checking my blood pressure etc and I was attached to a heart monitor. We drove at normal speed until we hit traffic then the ambulance driver put on the sirens and blue flashing lights again and we raced through the traffic.
At the Dublin hospital I was seen quickly and brought into what looked like an operating theatre for the angiogram. During an angiogram the cardiology doctors pass a tube into the artery in your wrist and it goes up your arm inside your artery into your heart and dye is injected into it to look at your arteries and inside your heart to check for blockages. If there are any blockages they can immediately put stents in to unblock them
Thankfully my angiogram didn't show any blockages but it did show the muscles of my heart were slower than normal. The procedure itself wasn't the most pleasant thing I've ever had done but I was sedated so I was conscious but kind of out of it so not fully aware of what was happening. After the procedure I was kept in recovery for a while then the paramedics from the ambulance I was brought to Dublin in came back to bring me back to the locsl hospital. Poor DH was in waiting room all the time and he said he was very worried about me because it took so long.