Pathetic Pair

Okay, here's an update.  As I mentioned in my ER visit post, Aaron was starting to get sick while I was in the ER.  Fast forward and now he has had a fever for six days straight.  Poor guy!!  So I'm making him go to the doctor tomorrow to find out what's up with that.  I feel so awful for him because he is trying to keep up with his online classes for graduate school and also help me out, but he just feels so miserable.  I have to say that my husband is really a trooper when he's sick.  He does not fit the typical "men are babies when they're sick" thing.  He really tries to take care of himself and push through it (which may be why it takes him forever to get better...).  But anyway, hopefully we can get him in to the doctor tomorrow and find out what's going on with him.  It's super frustrating for me to not be able to baby him as much as I want to right now.  I don't have a lot of talents, but I am kind of awesome when it comes to taking care of someone when they're sick (except myself), and I love doing the whole chicken noodle soup, feel your forehead, tuck you in to bed, get your medicine, lots of kisses and orange juice, Florence Nightingale thang.  :)  But when I try to do that with Aaron right now, he lets me for a little bit, and then sends me back to my couch to rest, unless I'm doubled over in pain first.  Ah we're just a sad pair right now.

So my health update: ever since I was in the ER, my pain had remained pretty constant.  The bleeding stopped, but the cramping and sharp pains were very regular and nearly unbearable.  I wasn't able to go into work at all for the next few days.  I went to the doctor on Thursday for my regular appointment/ER follow up.  Since Aaron was too sick to drive, and I was in too much pain to drive, my friend Chanel rearranged her schedule, found play dates for her kids and drove me to my appointment - she's awesome!  My doctor affirmed that the baby was doing really well, but mom not so much (What??  What's wrong with my mom?...oh wait that's me!).  There's really nothing alarmingly wrong with my health or anything, I'm not in any kind of danger, she was just referring to the pain I'm in (just to clear that up right away before I go on).  I asked my doctor what to do about the pain I was in and WHY I was in so much pain.  She said that it's common to have ligament pain in pregnancy from the ligaments attached to my uterus stretching to the limit and women experience that pain on different levels ranging from barely feeling it to barely surviving it.  Unfortunately I'm much higher on the pain scale with that than I'd like to be.  I already deal with fairly frequent pain from my ovarian issues so when those two things combine, it makes for some pretty extreme and very constant pain.  She said it will likely continue until at least 20 or 22 weeks (well, the ligament pain will, the ovarian pain will still probably be my whole pregnancy).  She started to leave the room as if we were done, but I was like, "Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute.  So I'm going to be in this much pain for at least another month or so?  What can we do, how can it be taken care of?  This is insanely painful and I can't even go to work right now, so what's the game plan to deal with this?"  Oh her response was fantastic... "Well, you could try heating pads, but if you use it too long it could hurt the baby.  Or sitting in a hot tub is really great!  But you shouldn't do that when you're pregnant.  You could take Tylonel, but it's so mild it's really not going to do anything and would be a waste of your time.  Another helpful thing would probably be a warm bath - but be careful about salts or soaps because your skin is more sensitive during pregnancy.  And you need to be careful about the temperature because that could be dangerous too.  Really the only way to actually help the pain is to just not move as much as possible."

....

So I'm supposed to NOT MOVE FOR A MONTH?!?  What?!?!?  She said she knew that sounded extreme and it would be a big change, but it was the only thing I could do that would really help.  I asked her about work and she said it was up to me to arrange my life to avoid movement as much as possible and just hang in there through the pain.  She left the office before I had the chance to pepper her with more questions and I went out to Chanel's waiting car and just lost it.  I couldn't help it, I just cried.  All I could think was HOW am I going to do this??  I had barely made it through that week and now this would be lasting over a month?  What about my job?  How was I supposed to clean my house or make meals?  How was I supposed to bear this excruciating pain for so long??  Surely my body would just shut down and give up before I made it to the end of October.  No WAY a person can hurt that much for that long.  I just didn't feel at all like I could do this.

Fast forward a few days... I still pretty much feel that way... but I'm doing it anyway, day by day.  It seems to be getting worse unfortunately.  I could sit for a couple of hours and then have to lie down, but for the last couple days I can barely sit for a half an hour before I'm losing it and have to lie down.  I don't know what the medical explanation is for why lying down is less painful than any other position but it works!  Though I'm running out of activities to do on my back!  Thank heaven for TV and laptops.  I've also gained a new appreciation for the unconsciousness of sleeping!  It's the only time when I'm not in some kind of pain so it is such a blessing to be able to sleep.

I do have to add that Friday was really tough but really awesome.  I went to Time Out for Women in Denver in the evening.  It's a weekend conference for women put on by my church and I had purchased tickets a couple of months ago to go for Friday night and all day Saturday.  With all these issues going on, I wasn't going to go, but my friend Amy called and encouraged me and told me that they would help me and try to minimize the walking and all of that.  I prayed about it and felt like I should give it a shot, so I did and I'm so glad!  It was very painful but the other ladies were so supportive.  Karen and Loni walked at grandma-pace with me through the convention center and C'Anne let me hang on her arm and put my feet on her lap and even crash on the floor in the back of the room when I couldn't handle sitting for another minute.  It was really difficult, but the messages that were shared that night were amazing!  I feel like there was something in particular that was said that night that Heavenly Father wanted me to hear and I'm so grateful to Amy for encouraging me to go and helping me get through it so I could hear that message!  As hard as it was, I was so pumped about the inspirational, uplifting messages that I wanted to try to go on Saturday too!  I prayed about it and felt that I needed to let that go and rest.  I was extremely disappointed at first but I'm so glad I stayed home on Saturday because my pain was particularly bad, probably the worst it's been yet, so it was very good I was at home for that.  And it turns out I can buy a DVD copy of the conference online anyway!  So I won't miss out!  :)

So Aaron and I are feeling a little pathetic right now as we can't really take care of ourselves and are just dragging around, sleeping and feeling miserable.  I really miss going to work, I don't have the best job in the world, but I still enjoy it and I love my coworkers so I like being there.  When I'm working my days tend to fly by and I get a lot done since I'm well-trained in what I do, so the productivity is very satisfying.  I keep reminding myself that I'm being very productive lying on the couch at home because I'm growing a healthy baby and that's the best thing I can do right now.  For now it's just hard.  I'm not ready to stop working but I can't sit or stand for long periods so that's pretty limiting.  You really can't plan life, can you?  Aaron and I have been taking turns taking care of each other and we're just getting through one day at a time right now.  

I really had no idea getting this baby here would be such a challenge, but I've never been more invested in anything in my entire life!  We'll get through this and it will be worth it.  I just feel really grateful that of all the pregnancy issues we could have, the issues we're having are only affecting me.  I'm SO grateful that our baby is doing well and is healthy and safe because that is all that matters to me in the end.  I wouldn't change a thing, I'm glad this pain is mine and mine alone and my baby is safe inside of me.  I just pray that continues to be the case.  Since a lot of the pain I'm in is from things stretching, I tell myself that the pain is because my baby is growing, so that's a really good thing and I wouldn't want to change that.  And the other part of the pain I'm in is from my super over-stimulated ovaries and large cysts and whatnot, and that pain wouldn't be there if we hadn't done fertility meds, without which there would be no baby - wouldn't want to change that either!  So there's nothing I would change!  Those are my little minds games to get me through this.  Sometimes it works wonders and I feel motivated and strong.  Other times (I admit, much more often) I'm much weaker in spirit and just feel exhausted, overwhelmed and not up to the task.  In fact, I may or may not have broken down in tears in the hallway at church this morning after the excruciating task of sitting through the first hour of church (Chanel came to my rescue again and drove me home, thank you Chanel and Ryan!).  

The Lord will not give us anything we can't handle.  So He clearly thinks more of me than I do and I need to be up to the task.  I have no idea how, but I know can do this.  I can't do it alone, but with the help of my friends, family, angels and the Lord, I can do this.