Thankful to Be Here

Today is one year since I was discharged from the hospital after giving birth to Karsen.

I was so excited to be going home with my new baby and I was super excited to see my children who had been at home waiting for me.

During my 2 day recovery stay, I was having back pains which I mentioned to my nurses. They brought me a fancy heating pad and gave me extra motrin.

I also noticed a weird sound when I was laying down breathing but I thought maybe I was getting a cold.

The day after Karsen & I got home I felt miserable. I hurt. I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I attributed it to not taking my pain medicine as regularly as I had in the hospital.

Two days after being home from the hospital, I knew something was wrong. I could hear myself breathing and it sounded really bad. My feet were swollen even worse than they were at the hospital. I had no energy. I couldn't even yell for my son, Jonathan to come help me.

John made an appointment for me that day to see a Dr at the hospital where I gave birth.

I could barely make it to the receptionist desk before I was out of breath.

They rushed me into a room and my blood pressure was a staggering 183/110.

I was scared. I thought I must have developed a blood clot.

The Dr heard what he thought was a heart murmur and I was sent to the ER immediately by wheel chair.

I was taken into the ER and bypassed all of the awaiting people who looked pissed that I was getting to go before them. All I could think of was, "I'm dying here so cut me some slack!"

An EKG was administered as I was wheeled into a triage room and the results were not good. Something bad was going on with my heart. I also had tons of fluid on my lungs. This was no joke.

John was told it wasn't best to have our 3 day old Karsen in the ER so he had to leave me there in the ER alone. I was a wreck emotionally. Karsen had never had a bottle in her 3 day life...how was he going to manage? I cried and cried as he left with my tiny baby.

I was so scared. All I knew was I didn't want to die. Karsen needed me. All my babies did.

After a long wait in the ER, I was taken to the ICU floor. No bathroom, no shower, the toilet slid out from under the sink bedside my bed. The walls are all glass. All I could do was cry. This was a scary floor. Nothing like the maternity wing I had just left 48 hours earlier. I was by far the youngest person on this floor.

The next day I was given a cardiogram and it showed us what had happened. I had mitral valve regurgitation and it was putting me into congestive heart failure. I was put on blood pressure meds and kept another day. Slowly my heart rate improved, they got 20lbs of fluid off of me and my oxygen levels slowly returned to normal.

My phone didn't work in the hospital so no one outside of my immediate family really knew what was going on. I was so isolated and angry that no one caught this before I was discharged with Karsen.

By the 2nd day, I was begging the doctors to let me leave. My kids, especially my baby needed me home. They finally relented and for the 2nd time in less than a week I was discharged from the hospital.

I came very close. Had I not listened to my body's warning signs that something was off who knows what would have happened.

It was scary but I am ok now and even have come off the blood pressure pills. I went to the Dr last week and my blood pressure was 110/83. =)

I have to give thanks to God for keeping me here to see my baby grow up this year. Today is kind of bittersweet. I had no idea one year ago going home with Karsen was something I should treasure as much as the occasion deserved. Not every mom gets to go home with her baby.