What a week! Last Tuesday, Josh left for California and my mom arrived to help out with the baby. In between those two events, however, I had a bad case of the chills. I thought it was back spasms from my lower back still having issues, plus I was still on prescription strength Motrin from the delivery, so the shaking went away after my next dose.
Unfortunately, it wasn't back spasms, but a fever being partially masked by the Motrin. Wednesday morning I woke up freezing and shaking. It's a good thing my mom was here to take care of me. I laid on the couch all day, and as each dose of ibuprofen wore off, the fever would spike, and then I'd have about two miserable hours before I could take another dose. By late evening, even the meds weren't bringing any relief, and my fever was at 104. Of course, the nurse on duty at my OB's office insisted that I go to the ER, if only to rule out any postpartum infection.
So at 9:30 p.m., mom and I dropped the kids off at Mimi and Papa's house and headed to the hospital. As with any good ER visit, we had to wait about an hour and a half before I was admitted. As we waited, we were both reminded of the last time we both ended up at the ER together, and that was with my Grandma a few weeks before she died in May 2010. So we sat in the waiting room and talked about Grandma and cried together...a brief moment of beauty and grief in the hospital hallway.
And wouldn't you know it: while I waited to be admitted, I felt my fever break. Sure enough, by the time they wheeled me back, it had dropped by 3 degrees. Still, they swabbed me for everything imaginable and did an ultrasound to make sure I wasn't having complications from delivery. In the end, they diagnosed me with a nasty virus, charged me $9 for a dose of Tylenol (gotta love inflated hospital prices), gave me a bag of fluids via IV and sent me home. It has taken a whole week to recover. That is not how I was hoping to spend a week of my already-too-short maternity leave. Did I mention how glad I was to have my mommy here to take care of me?
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