Friday, August 24, 2007

The Pregnant Wife & The Kidney Stone

No that's not the name of a recently unearthed chapter in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, it's unfortunately been the story of our lives for the past week.

Monday night, my wife woke up with a terrible pain in her side. She thought that she had pulled a muscle while flipping in bed but the pain didn't respond to massage or a heating pad and after 2 hours of agony, we decided to take her to the local Urgent Care.

Trouble is, they were closed at 1:30 in the morning. Actually, they closed at 8pm the previous evening. BUT THEIR *HUGE* RED "URGENT CARE" SIGN WAS STILL LIT UP BRIGHT AS DAY. Genius, eh?

So we continued on to the Emergency Room in Pineville and they admitted us to the Maternity Center because she was pregnant. Apparently we were supposed to have called before coming in so our OB could be ready for us. Again, would have been good to know earlier.

Initially, they thought that she had a kidney infection but she didn't have a fever and her labs came back negative. Still, they started pumping her full of antibiotics and kept a fetal monitor on her to track our baby's heart rate and my wife's contractions. 16 hours and 1 ultrasound later, they diagnosed her with a kidney stone.

After a consultation with a urologist, we agreed to have them implant a stent in her kidney to provide some pain relief and then come back in next week to have it removed and zap the stone with a laser. The pain relief after the implant was instantaneous and it was great to see my wife's eyes smiling again after 2 days of pain.

With the pain gone and the baby well, they discharged us on Thursday morning and we've been home ever since. My work gives us the option to work from home with permission so I've been taking advantage of that opportunity to be here in case I'm needed.

Apparently, we're now living in the "Stone Belt" and Kidney and Gall Stones are pretty common here due to the diet and minerals in the water. Yeah, I'm soooo drinking nothing but bottled water from now on. And sticking with my weirdo California diet (though that mostly consisted of McDonald's & Chili's).

1 comment:

Jane Doe Jenn said...

I've been there - I'm now 22 weeks pregnant and have had a 1cm kidney stone that announced itself back in July with stabbing pain. I can't believe what a difference there are between hospitals in how they treat people. They didn't hook me up at all to monitor the baby, and just acted like it was such a common thing to be pregnant and have kidney stones. We opted not to have the laser treatment as there was a 10 % chance the baby would miscarry. We're waiting for 37 weeks when going into labour would be safe after the procedure.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one, though! And glad to hear your wife is doing better.