Monday, July 12, 2010

Back in the hosbrutal.

Hollywood, CA - Continuing their whirlwind tour of southland venues such as the Kaiser Permanente in Anaheim and then a follow up show at Kaiser Permanente in Downey, The Smiths are now playing a (hopefull) limited engagement at the Kaiser Permanente in Hollywood right on the Sunset Strip. Seating is limited to dad and two adult guests and there is a no drink maximum...for anybody.

[facepalm]

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Scary Stuff

I realize it's been awhile since I've posted, please forgive me.

On Wed, June 24th we took our pre-term birth class, where we met Amy one of the OB Nurse people responsible for looking after the patients outside of the hospital. (This becomes important later)

On Sat, June 26th, I took Megan to the hospital because she was having contractions and had an infection. They gave her a shot of Terbutaline (not sure if I spelled that right) which didn't do a lot for the contractions, but they were already pretty irregular. They also started her on Flagyl for the infection. At that point she was pulled from work and sent home, put on modified bedrest, which meant potty breaks and the occaisional trip to the fridge.

On Wed June 30th, Megan gets a welfare check phone call from Amy. After Megan updates Amy on the previous weekends activity, Amy insists on putting Megan on home uterine monitoring.

On Friday July 2nd, the nurse arrives at the house to setup the monitoring system. Megan is to record 2 hour long sessions, one in the morning and one in the evening. After each session she is to upload the data to them for the nurses to analyze. We were told from the beginning that the home uterine monitoring would lead to more trips to L&D (labor and delivery) as they tend to be extra conservative with that stuff.

So on Megan's first monitoring session that evening the desk nurse gives us a call within a minute of uploading the data. Drink a boatload of water, relax and do another hour long monitor starting in about 30 minutes. They called us back again after that hour and uploading the data, and said do it one more time, more water relax and start over. After the third upload the nurses advised us to go to L&D.

At Lakeview, they gave another shot of Terbutaline (here to fore called Terb) and proceeded to check her cervix at which point she measured about 1cm dilated, and had shortened to about 2.5cm (down from 3.2 at our last ultrasound about 2 weeks prior). At that point the Dr. admitted her for observation.

We stayed the night and over the course of the rest of the night she continued to have contractions. They gave her a catheter (spelling?) so she didn't have to keep getting up every 20 minutes (which is not good for a pregnant woman in contractions). They switched her to Magnesium Sulfate (Mag) and rechecked her cervix and now she measured about 2cm. Since she's only 23 wks 3 days at this point (too young for Lakeview) they moved her to Downey who can handle the younger ones (24 wks is considered viable).

The ambulance ride over was kind of bad for the contractions and they seemed to get worse. However they slowly started to subside.

After an uneventful Sunday morning and afternoon, we had a waterbreak scare. After a nerve-wracking hour, and an ultrasound, what we thought was a water-break was residual infection. The ultrasound showed the fluid levels were still great.

Contractions are still under control and now we're in the waiting game, each day is a goal.

Hands down the worst weekend of my life.