Back to the story

So to get back to the story of being pregnant.  The pump was a miracle for a couple of weeks, my mom was with me at first so before I went back to work she helped me shop for maternity pants, I wasn't showing yet, but I needed looser pants to allow my site to not be bumped all the time.  Things went really well at first, I could eat normally and I was able to go back to work.  I only worked for a few days - it feels like longer, but I was just figuring out dates, and it was probably only about a week, and then I started throwing up again.  I again stopped being able to keep anything down, and based on my weight and dehydration, they sent a nurse out to my house to put in an IV.  I had a few issues with it flowing fast enough, but it stabilized me a little bit.  A day later, I had my weekly doctor's appointment.  I did find that when most patients are pregnant women, they don't want a sick person, especially one toting their own IV pole to sit in the waiting room long, so I was seen almost immediately.  At this appointment, I had my first ultrasound.  With a lot of hyperemesis patients they are carrying multiples, so my doctor wanted to check that out  (also a side note -  people with HG are more likely to be carrying a girl).  They did determine that there was for sure only one baby in there and it was really incredible to see it moving around so much.  I didn't enjoy it as much as I wish I would have though, because I already knew I was going to be hospitalized again.  This doctor's appointment was kind of scary, my doctor talked about the possibility of getting a tube inserted so that the baby and I could get the nutrition that we needed.  She also decided that my situation was now more serious than what she dealt with.  I still saw her weekly for my appointments, but all the decisions were now being made by a high risk doctor.  It did impress me that she turned me over to someone else and I trusted her more.  So again we went straight from the doctor's office to be checked into the hospital.  At the hospital I was on the maternity floor, then because of overcrowding up there, right before night I was shifted down to pediatrics.  My new doctor came in and told me that I would be having the tube inserted.  He explained it some, it was called a PICC line - PICC stands for peripherally inserted central catheter - and I'd get it the next day.  This visit was a difficult one, I was given Reglan a lot, which we figured out makes me feel like my skin is crawling.  It gave me the jitters, and I wanted to walk and not be still, but was too weak to do so.  I'd guess that I told Tad I wanted to go home about 100 times or so.  The pediatric nurses were really wonderful to me, there was no one else on the floor, so I had their undivided attention.  When Tad had to go home to let the dogs out and get our things for the night, they put me in a rocking chair with a really warm blanket so that I could get some of my jitters out.  After that when it was time to get my meds, they would give me benedryl first, to calm me down - which really worked but it was REALLY painful.  It would burn my veins and I could feel it as it traveled up my arm.  I hated it, but I was glad for more calm and less freaking out.  The next day I would get my PICC, and my parents came up for it.  I was very scared to get it put in, so the nurse that would administer it called me in the morning to talk me through what she would do and tried to put me at ease.  It didn't really work, but I appreciated her kindness and thoughtfulness.  Getting a PICC is a sterile procedure, so only Tad could stay in the room with me.  The nurse strapped my arm down to a table (not a good feeling) and got it put in.  She was incredibly kind and told me that she'd tell me what she was doing at each step - I told her, no thanks.  First she numbed my arm with a painful burning shot, then cut my skin open a little bit to be able to thread the catheter into my vein.  It went up into my right arm, and stopped just above my heart.  The procedure went well, it was not nearly as bad as I would have guessed.  My PICC had 2 'ports' on it, so I was able to get fed through one of them and could get medication and my blood drawn through the other.  They kept telling me how nice it was going to be that I could get blood drawn this way and they didn't have to stick me.  the bad news was that a PICC makes you more likely to devlope a blood clot, so I had to go on blood thinners, which was an injection to the side of my stomach daily.  Again, Tad learned how to do this, as there was no possible way I'd be sticking a needle in my own stomach!  After getting the PICC in the hospital made me up a bag of TPN (total parenteral nutrition).  They got me hooked up to it right before I went to bed, and that turned out to be a very long night.  No one had taken out my IV, so I was getting IV fluid and TPN all at once.  I would have to go to the bathroom SO bad about every 20 minutes.  So Tad would drift off to sleep and I'd have to wake him up to take me to the bathroom.  It was awful, but then a nurse figured out that I didn't need both, so I got off the IV fluid.  We had to stay in the hospital until the next night, because Tad had to learn how to change my bag and take care of my lines.  They also came out to our house once to walk him through it.  It was a complicated process and it was important that he did it correctly, but the nurses were very impressed with him :)  Below are some pictures of the PICC  - another time I will post pictures of Tad caring for it.  sorry this was a long entry! 








This was in my room, since I was on pediatrics, they gave me a beanie baby dog :)




not a very attractive picture, but the purple line on the right shows where the tube stopped inside of me and you can see the PICC - here I am attached to the TPN, but the other one was free.