Where Have We Been?

Seems like 2011 keeps finding ways to knock me down, but I keep on getting up!

My newest adventure involves yet another trip to the emergency room followed by another surgery.  I was fine last Saturday morning even participating in the JDRF walk with my nieces' team and spending the afternoon with family.  By the time 7 PM hit though, I was in so much pain I could barely move - abdominal pain is nothing to joke about under normal circumstances, but being pregnant, I called my OB who had me come in to get checked out.  I was hoping it was just that I have over-done it like my OB suggested at first, but I was fairly certain that was not the case. 

Luckily baby was dong perfectly fine, and we found a nice strong heart beat right away.  No contractions.  No bleeding.  Lots of abdominal pain though!  They quickly rule out any type of bladder or kidney issues and by the time my blood work came back it was not a surprise to see an elevated white blood cell count.  I was admitted overnight and sent to ultrasound to check for appendicitis.  The ultrasound was inconclusive (and very painful I might add) as they couldn't find my appendix.  A CT scan usually is the next step, but being pregnant we of course wanted to avoid that.  The doctor decided to wait until morning and check my blood again to see what we found, of course keeping me on some good pain killers overnight.  Blood work was again inconclusive in the morning, so it was decided to send me for an MRI.  Ever had one?  They are pretty terrible.  About an hour of sitting totally still with no one around while in a big tube magnet. I shudder to think I"ll ever need one again.  Thankfully, the results of the MRI were much better than the ultrasound and we found I for sure I had appendicitis.  While it's never "good" to have something like this, the timing as far as the pregnancy is concerned couldn't have been much better. 

I went in for surgery that afternoon, and came out perfectly fine with a very healthy baby.  The concern of course was that the surgery would irritate my uterus enough to send me into preterm labor, but despite a few contractions we never had issues.  I'm now a week post-surgery and while very sore, I'm doing well all things considered.  Baby is kicking away and very healthy - we had a level II ultrasound a few days ago that was pre-scheduled and did go very well.

We're hoping the rest of the pregnancy proceeds without any other complications.  I'm halfway there, so it's looking good.  Still considered high-risk due to some other issues, but all this means really is we'll be seeing baby on ultrasound once a month unless something else is detected. 

So...that's been our last week or so!  I hope all of you out there have had much more productive weeks than I have.  Hoping to resume some normal posting in the next day or two.