10 days of....not Heaven....

So it has been a crazy couple of weeks.  I guess I will start at the beginning beginning, before the craziness started.  The thing is, we are expecting baby #2 in August.

This has been a difficult few months just from being sick and moving and trying to keep up with Mason.  So, of course my sciatic pain would start up again, just to make things a little more difficult in lugging Mason around.   I have had a lot more back pain this pregnancy and knew that it had to do with the herniated disc that I had had surgery on about 3.5 years ago, but figured that being pregnant was just aggravating it.  So I have been doing a bit of physical therapy to try to help it out.  Well, about a week and a half ago I was carrying my 13 mo. old when it just popped, and I had more than my usual sciatic pain.  I could barely move.  So we went to the ER that night, and they just said I had pregnancy sciatica and sent me home with some percocet.  The next day is just got worse and worse and that night I felt a searing pain and instant numbness and loss of any muscle control in my leg.  I couldn't move and was in more pain than I have ever experienced.  I would take a million c sections over that pain!!!  (that is the only other pain I could compare it too :)  Anway, we called an ambulance and they took me to our local hospital where they tried to get the pain under control with lots of drugs...but also had to transport me back and forth to another facility that had an MRI machine.  They found that I had another herniated disc, but didn't have any type of surgeon to look at it there, so they admitted me to the hospital there.  I was there for one week in horrible pain as the hospitalist, obgyn, and neuro surgeon fought over what to do with me. On the one hand they had to keep giving me a lot of narcotics just to calm my pain down to a 9 out of 10, which means they couldn't do that long term for the babies sake, on the other hand the neuro surgeon at the hospital only uses flueroscopy (xray during the whole surgery), so that would be too much radiation for baby.  The hospitalist couldn't release me until I had pain under control, so they just kept loading me with narcotics.  It was horrible.  finally I took matters into my own hands and emailed a lady that I had become friends with when we lived in San Diego because I coached her daughter.  I knew her husband was a spinal surgeon and wanted his opinion on the whole thing.  He was outraged by my care, and called up some of his colleagues at UC Davis to ask if they would take me if I could get the hospitalist to transfer me.  They said he would, and the transfer was made.  I got there on thursday, and they set me up in OB postpartum where they could monitor the baby (which they hadn't been doing very well here), and the head spinal guy that my friend had called came in to see me and told me it was pretty bad and he wanted to do surgery the next day.  He consulted with the high risk ob's and they decided to do a quick discectomy that wouldn't harm the baby right now, and that later after I have the baby may need the spinal fusion.  But since I couldn't undergo a long surgery, this was the best plan to get me where I could go home and maybe get some of the feeling back in my leg.  So I had the surgery Friday, all went well.  Baby is doing great. I came home today.  I will probably have to use a walker for a long time until the feeling comes back in my leg, but I am on the road to mending! Unfortunately, I cannot hold Mason at all.  It makes me so sad, but at least I am home!  All I can say is that 10 days in the hospital was NO FUN!  :)

Mason came to visit everyday, but boy do I miss holding him!!