Wow. It's been a reeaallly long time since I've written here. And sooooo much has happened. Well, I guess not so much. Just one big thing. Pain. Lots and lots of pain.
Those of you who are on Facebook will be familiar with my whining by now. A few days ago a wrote a super-long blog post detailing everything that's happened to me over the last almost three weeks. And then, I decided that nobody wanted to spend THAT MUCH TIME listening to me whine. So I'm not posting that one, even though it took me an hour to write.
Instead, I will give it to you in a nutshell:
After going to the emergency room in the middle of the night, going for an ultrasound to make sure that I didn't have a blood clot in my leg, going to the chiropractor several times, and finally being able to see a doctor at my medical clinic, here's what they've all together decided:
Baby is sitting directly on top of two major nerve endings in the bottom of my pelvis, giving me severe sciatica, and nobody has any idea how to make it any better. In fact, they're pretty sure it's only going to get worse. Sorry about your luck! Maybe try some physiotherapy?
It doesn't hurt so bad if I just keep walking. No sitting, no lying down, just walking around, all day, never stopping. But eventually, a person gets tired. Especially a 36-year-old pregnant person who also spends her days entertaining a 3-year-old, and teaching a class of kids aged 2-5 two mornings a week.
So eventually, I have to lay down. Except that then, the crippling pain just starts shooting through my leg, and after about 10 minutes of it, I can't stand it any more and I have to stand up again. I spent three whole nights doing that: dozing 10 minutes at a time, and then getting up and walking around. And after three days I was so exhausted that I could barely function.
So I did something desperate: I remembered that the ER doctor said that it was perfectly safe to take Advil in the second trimester, and that that would likely be the only thing that would bring me any relief. So, I gave in. I put Gracie in the Jeep and cried most of the way to the Shoppers Drug Mart a few blocks away (because driving was almost unbearably painful), and I bought me a bottle of Advil.
And I'm ashamed to admit that I've been pretty much relying on the Advil ever since. Of course, I can't keep this up. It's very dangerous in the third trimester, and that isn't all that far away. So obviously I'll need to find better ways to cope with the pain, and soon. But until then, I'm ashamed to admit that I've been rather enjoying getting a little bit of sleep, and a little bit of pain relief. With the Advil, the pain is totally tolerable, and the only thing that bothers me is that my right leg is numb from the knee down - and it feels like I'm standing barefoot in a snow drift.
Without it, well, I don't want to think about it. I can make it to September 4, right?
1 comment:
OK - I officially feel for you. No one deserves to go through that much pain during a pregnancy. I think that would be so much worse than being on bed-rest. Feel better!
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