In sickness and in health

This second pregnancy has been quite a bit rougher than the first on my body. Thankfully through everything the little one on the inside seems to be doing extraordinarily well. It is just a fairly new and humbling experience for me to be ill. Not to say I have never in my life been sick but usually it's been something that I can deal with at home and bounce back from. I don't think I usually have a problem with excess pride but I know I not only took my generally robust health for granted but possibly felt slightly self-righteous about it. Not to say that I blamed or had no sympathy for those who were experiencing health problems (I had enough experience with my Dad in and out of hospitals all my childhood to have great respect for illness) but I may have felt that being stoic and bearing with more trivial health problems was in some way virtuous. With the advent of this second pregnancy, however, I discovered just what it was like to be completely debilitated with morning (or all-day) sickness and to have to rely on my husband or a few others to help me keep up with the basic tasks of life with a toddler. So much for being strong and stoic, a herculean effort was required not to allow myself to wallow in self-pity. Morning sickness once over, I was able to regain some of my self-reliance and, although nowhere near as strong and active as I once was, was able at least to keep up with my boys. Then came the time of stress I alluded to previously and I found myself stirred up, unable to sleep at night and feeling crampy on and off for quite a while (isn't it interesting how often matters of the heart or mind can affect our physical well-being so drastically). I finally worked through everything spiritually and emotionally to the point that it wasn't affecting my everyday life when I was told that there was a blood-clot on my placenta. Perhaps a result of the stress, perhaps not but it was difficult at first not to begin to worry about that, too. Thankfully my Doctor was not worried about it at all but is still planning on monitoring it through the rest of this pregnancy. So that was the situation last week on my pregnancy. I know this is nothing in comparison to what many women experience in each of their pregnancies but it was quite a bit more than I had ever expected to have to go through. After all, my mother had easy pregnancies as did most of the women in my family. Why would I be any different? Didn't I deserve to be healthy? Then came this past week. I was feeling a little off most of the week but I wasn't sure if it were partially just psychological because I had just found out about the clot and although I didn't want to overdo things I also didn't want to keep using my pregnancy as an excuse to be lazy or waited upon. So I flopped between thinking I was actually not feeling well and thinking I was just imagining things. Then Wednesday came along. It was a pretty good day and Logan and I did a bit of running around to get things done before the long weekend. That evening I had a bit of a back-ache and figured I had probably over-done it during one of my fits of thinking that it was all in my head. So I rested a bit on the couch and it seemed to ease up. So I got up and went on with life only to have to sit down again a little later. But with it easing up with rest I figured I just pulled a muscle at some point and shouldn't over do it for the next little while. That night, however, I couldn't sleep for the pain no matter what position I was in (even sitting on the couch as I had earlier the evening). I took a bath and it seemed to help at first but not for long. By about four in the morning I was vomiting with the pain and finally broke down and went out to buy some Tylenol (have I mentioned that I try too often to be stoic about pain?). I simply threw up the first two pills and then I was afraid to re-dose myself in case some had absorbed already. The pain was as intense as labour but started in my back and would spread around my abdomen at which point I usually threw up and started again. By morning James put his foot down and took the day off work and brought me to the hospital. I was in the obstetrical triage all day as they ran various tests and tried to make sure I wasn't in full-blown premature labour. Through it all, though, I could hear the baby's heart and feel him moving around and kicking like normal so it was a comfort to know he wasn't in distress (I must say the kicking didn't help me at all, though). To make a long, excruciatingly painful story short, it turns out that I have a kidney stone. They admitted me for observation over night (they were still worried about the contractions that the pain had brought on) and finally, after about twenty-four hours of pain on pain, they were able to give me something to lessen the agony. All I remember thinking while sitting in the hospital bed was thankfulness that I lived in an age of modern medicine. After a night of relief in the hospital they did a final ultrasound that confirmed that it is a kidney stone (and only one, thankfully). They determined that because I am currently pregnant they could do none of the normal procedures to remove it because of the various risks to the baby so I am going to have to pass it naturally (unless further complications arise that make it necessary to have it removed immediately). They then released me that evening (kicking and screaming...Not really but definitely with mixed feelings!). So far, trying to cope with it I have found that: water is of utmost importance, that there are periods in which I do not feel pain but that I shouldn't push myself at these times because it will come back with a vengeance, that I need to take pain relief as soon as possible once the pain starts seriously because it is harder to get down than keep down, and that my husband is more wonderful than I had known before! Anyway I would like to add a little reflective coda onto my tale concerning, and summing up, the various threads of thought I have loosed above but unfortunately I feel as though I am reaching the limit of energy I should be expending on here so will leave this with no more than a farewell for now...