Thursday morning I went for my normal weekly endocrinology appointment. The endocrinologist sees me for the diabetes during pregnancy. She listened to my heart as usual, but then started asking some not so usual questions about family history of heart problems, especially at a young age, etc. I told her I didn’t know of anything. She also asked if I had been having any chest pains or discomfort.
I actually have been having some issues the past few weeks. One of the things is having my heart race and being short of breath every time I wake up from sleeping. She didn’t like the sound of any of that. And then as it happened I started having chest pain and pressure during the appointment, and it spread to my back, neck and arms. I wasn’t anxious or anything so I found it odd, and a little too strong to be something brought on by someone else asking about it. So I mentioned that as well.
She sent me for an EKG in the building and that came back abnormal. Then she had the lab come up and draw blood so they could run the heart enzyme tests. They had to send a couple of them to the hospital. She ordered them “STAT” but after a couple of hours they still weren’t back, and I didn’t have a lot of discomfort right then, so she sent me home to wait for the results. After I started driving home, I didn’t feel well and began to have chest pains again. Still I just wanted to get home, and hadn’t eaten anything all day so I kept driving.
After eating some lunch I just didn’t feel right and I wasn’t sure what to do. Then the doctor called me back and said I needed to get to the ER because all 3 of my heart enzymes came back elevated. The risk, she said, was a blood clot in the heart, lung, or leg. I was home by myself, and Nick was an hour away, so they had me call 911 to have an ambulance take me. They got me to St. Jude late afternoon (I think around 3 or so… time was sort of escaping me).
They ran all sorts of tests:
- blood panel (I would post pictures of my arms but I don’t want to gross you out – let’s just say I am black and blue and swollen from all the pokes in my hands and arms)
- CT (“cat”) Scan
- Chest x-ray
- Leg ultrasound (to check for blood clots in my legs)
And they checked for the baby’s heartbeat and couldn’t find it. They tried a couple of times with 2 different people and couldn’t find anything, so they also ordered an OB ultrasound.
Then I sat and waited…. I remember thinking man, I wish I would have had Chris email people to have them pray. I felt a little nervous with so few people praying for me. But of course, Chris had thought about that and did email everyone and got them praying, and it made a HUGE difference.
As soon as they got the OB ultrasound running and I saw the baby on the screen it was doing flips. The baby was pushing off the side and flipping – I have never seen anything like it, Nick and I actually got to have a laugh at that as we saw the baby was A-OK!
Later at about 10 PM we got all the other test results back…. no blood clots, no obstructions, nothing. Then the doctor sat down in the chair next to my bed, put my chart on the bed, looked at me and shook his head. He looked confused. He said the heart enzymes were “dead on normal”. He said that’s pretty much impossible because when the enzymes are high like they were, they stay elevated for a week. So the only thing he can do to explain the tests from earlier in the day is by saying it was a “gross lab error”.
At first I was a little thrown – a lab error? I spent all day at the doctor (I had been there, except for my short trip home, since 8 AM) because of a lab error? But then I wondered – did God heal me? Even to me it sounded silly. Not because of God, but because “it’s just me” and it was probably just nothing and they just messed up. But I don’t know. My faith is so strong, huh? haha.
Then I talked to Chris Friday morning and he said he just knew God did something. He didn’t think it was a lab error at all. And in my heart (hehe) I really feel that God did something for me Thursday. And I am thankful for all the prayers. I stayed pretty calm the whole time and wasn’t panicking. I felt at peace but still had no clue if I was really ok. But Chris had said something earlier in the day to me that really made a difference the whole time. He said, “Well God has taken care of you this far, so he MUST have a plan for you.” And I let the truth of those words help both Nick and myself as we sat waiting.
I am still having chest pains and still not feeling great. I don’t know what it is. Maybe stress? I usually actually deal with stress pretty well. I used to have issues with stress, but that was a few years back and since then I’ve been fine. I don’t know if it’s changes at work or what – and of course everything with pregnancy is magnified. I just hope whatever it is goes away soon because I can’t really keep going like this wondering what every little pain is.
The ER doctor said if I feel pain worse than I’ve been feeling to come back.
Sigh….
Thanks to all who prayed and thought of me.
Still uneasy,
Anna…
(Click the photos to see them bigger).
