Tag: me

Okay, so the cough is definitely getting better. The anxiety is not. The last three nights have been brutal.

It seems to go like this…I go to bed at a reasonable hour. I’m already anxious because of previous nights’ bad sleep, which doesn’t help. I can usually manage to get about two to three hours of fitful sleep in, I think in 45 minute chunks. I don’t feel too much anxiety during this time.

Then around 2:00, the anxiety sets in. I wake up freaked out. I am usually able to calm myself, and then I fall asleep again. I wake up five to ten minutes later freaked out again. This goes on for hours. I have to get up to pee so often that in the morning I’m scared to flush the toilet for fear all that toilet paper will clog it. My throat is as dry as the desert. Heartburn sets in occasionally.

Someone at work mentioned the possibility of sleep apnea to me. That had me worried all of Tuesday night that I wasn’t breathing and that Beet wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Didn’t help matters much! Every time I woke up I felt like I was gasping for air.

Last night I slept for a couple of hours on the futon while Greg worked on the computer. He said I was snoring a lot (which is normal), but I wasn’t stopping breathing. That made me feel a bit better. And when I woke up during the night last night it didn’t feel like I was gasping. Plus it seems like people who have sleep apnea aren’t aware that they are waking up, and there doesn’t seem to be anxiety associated with it.

Last night I moved to the couch at about 3:00 and slept upright for a bit. It may not be sleep apnea, but I may be waking up due to congestion from my cold. But I don’t feel congested. That said, I think things were a bit better on the couch. That might be because by moving locations I woke up fully, and was able to calm myself down a bit better.

Anyway, the long and short of it is…I’m scared to go to bed, I’m having terrible sleeps, I’m worried I’m going crazy, I’m starting to feel sleep-deprived, and I’m scared this will never go away.

So here I am, three weeks into this “cold”, and I’m still not feeling 100%. But I think I’m getting there.

Last week was awful. The pink eye started to clear up right after I started the antibiotics, even after it spread to the other eye, but my cough and sore throat were so bad that I basically didn’t work at all on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. On Wednesday night I started feeling as if my heart rate was racing, and during the night I woke up multiple times with what I think were anxiety attacks. The feeling of anxiety continued on Thursday morning, so with my mother’s urging I went to a clinic (I couldn’t get in to see my doctor).

The doc at the clinic checked me out, gave me a requisition for an ECG and some blood work, and put me on some antibiotics for the cough. She didn’t seem too concerned about my heart rate, but recommended the ECG if things didn’t calm down.

For the next three days, the anxiety attacks and racing heart continued, and last night I was getting pretty worried. I was scared to go to sleep, because every hour I’d wake up totally freaked out. Even though I’d talked to both my dad and sister who reassured me it probably wasn’t anything serious, I still was scared. Which obviously wasn’t helping me calm down!

So last night I phoned the doctor on-call for my doctor’s maternity group. I got a call back about half an hour later, and she was super nice. She was actually covering for my doctor, and it was someone outside the group. She was able to reassure me that it was probably nothing serious, but she said if things got any worse to come by the hospital the next day. She also suggested a couple of techniques for calming myself down.

Oddly enough, last night I actually had a reasonable sleep, all things considered. No anxiety attacks, and just a bit of coughing. And today’s been much better from the anxiety perspective. I feel a bit short of breath and a bit on edge, but nothing compared to yesterday.

From a cold perspective I’m also feeling better, so perhaps I do have some sort of an infection and the antibiotics are kicking in. But I’ve still got a brutal cough, and I’m getting tired of almost puking every time I have a coughing fit.

I’m seeing my doctor tomorrow for a regular pregnancy check-up, but I’m not feeling too confident that she’ll have an explanation for the anxiety attacks. I AM hoping she can give me something for the coughing. I know that I can take Tylenol with codeine, but I wanted to talk with her first.

I’m also hoping she won’t give me any flak for going to the clinic…she mentioned at one point that while I’m pregnant I should see her, not go to a clinic, but when I can’t get in to see her, what choice do I have?

To top this off, I’m out of sick days at work, so I’m not getting paid for the days I missed. Kind of sucks when I’m about to go on mat leave — the more money we can save up, the better.

On the positive side, through all this, Beet’s been moving around like a gymnast, so it’s been reassuring that things are probably all right with him/her.

Here’s hoping I can get a good sleep tonight, and maybe some answers tomorrow.

Last night as Greg and I were getting ready to go out for dinner, I noticed a smudge on my glasses. I tried to clean them a couple of times, but the smudge persisted. I realized it was my eye, but didn’t think anything of it.

After dinner we hit Old Navy for a bit of shopping, and my eye felt like it was tearing. I looked in a mirror, and some yellowy-green goop was coming out of it. Great…pink eye! I visited the clinic this morning and the diagnosis was confirmed.

I had a(nother) terrible night…every time I coughed my eye hurt, every time I woke up I needed to pee and cough, every time I woke up my eye was plastered shut with goop. And I still have a sore throat.

I’ve officially had enough. I feel like crap. I have felt like crap pretty much consistently for the last two weeks. I don’t wake up each day feeling better than the day before. Some days I wake up feeling worse.

I know I will eventually feel better. I just want that to happen NOW. I feel like my life is on hold until I can feel healthy again.

Sigh.

I had all sorts of titles in my mind for this blog post:

“being pregnant + being sick = ICKY”

“it’s been quite a week”

“some cold meds would be nice”

“i just want to sleep”

“heartburn hell”

You get the picture. Sunday afternoon after hosting a friend’s baby shower, I lay down for a nap. When I woke up, I felt like absolute shit. Full on cold. I had felt a bit under the weather on Saturday, but nothing compared to how I felt when I woke up Sunday afternoon. My head felt like it was going to explode, I had the shivers, runny nose…but oddly enough, no sore throat. That’s rare for me, and I was thankful.

I spent the next day and a half a pathetic pregnant sick woman. Sunday night trying to sleep was absolutely brutal. Because, to add insult to injury, I also was experiencing the worst heartburn I’ve ever had. Every time I tried to lie down, my throat would start burning up. I took some Tums, but I quickly reached (and exceeded) the maximum dosage recommended for a pregnant woman, and it would only help for an hour or so. Oh, and I’ve been having leg pains on and off when I’ve been sleeping since I got pregnant. Not cramps, just shooting pain up the sides of my legs. So they revisited me Sunday night as well. And I was freezing, but I was too sick to get up and get more blankets. I eventually heard Greg get up at about 2 am (he smartly was sleeping in the spare bedroom), and he got me a fleece blanket.

Monday morning I knew I wasn’t going to work, but I had a conference call that I thought I could manage from home. I did, but was wiped afterwards. To complicate our lives, Elliot has pink eye and had to stay at home Monday. I was in no shape to take care of him, so Greg had to stay home from work. One big happy family. 🙂 Thankfully the pink eye hasn’t seemed to affect Elliot too much, and he was back in daycare Tuesday.

Tuesday morning Greg and I had an hour long appointment that I managed to sit through, kleenexes in hand. I stopped at the office for a few minutes afterwards and came home to work. I managed to get a bit done, then had a nap. When I woke up, I was feeling better from a congestion point of view, but a sore throat and cough had kicked in. It’s HARD to cough when you’re pregnant.

So here we are on Thursday afternoon, and I’m still coughing up a storm. I am feeling better — I managed a full day at work yesterday and took care of Elliot today, but I’m definitely not great. I’m hoping I can shake this cough in the next day or so. The heartburn is still in issue, but I got some Gaviscon last night and that seems to be working better than the Tums. I actually slept five hours straight last night, which was great.

I’m very appreciative of my husband, who not only puts up with all my complaining, but has totally picked up the slack from a cooking/cleaning/Elliot-care point of view.

I’m looking forward to feeling healthy again.

And I’m at work. I think that’s a first — it’s almost 5 pm on Christmas Eve and I’m still at the office. Not getting a lot of work done, I must admit, but the way our Christmas Eve plans have worked out it doesn’t make sense for me to go home before we go out. So I’m here for the next hour or so, and then Greg and Elliot will come get me, then it’s on to the de Goede household for a bit of Christmas Eve cheer.

And not only am I still at the office, I’m here on my own. From a human standpoint, at least. I do have Yoshi to keep my company. He’s anxiously awaiting our departure.

Anyway, this all sounds rather depressing, but it’s actually been nice to have a quiet day before the Christmas mayhem starts. We’ve got a week of family visiting ahead of us, and there won’t be a lot of quiet moments until after the New Year. Maybe I’ll even go make myself a cup of tea.

Merry Christmas!

Here are a couple of pics of the new hair colour…

After many years of being a chemically-assisted blonde, as of last night, I am blonde no more. I usually go a bit darker in the winter, but not this dark. It’s a bit of a shocker every time I look in the mirror.

So far the reaction has been positive…but you never know if people are just being nice. (Although a note to my husband: thanks for reacting favourably! I’m pretty sure you weren’t just being nice.)

A picture may follow…we’ll see how brave I am.

I’ve been having some good massage karma so far in my pre-natal yoga class. The first night we paired up to give each other a back massage, and there were an uneven number of women in the class. I was awkwardly left standing on my own (with flashbacks from elementary school). The instructor and I paired up, which meant I got a fantastic massage that was double the length of anyone else’s because they switched halfway through.

On night two, we paired up again and this time I got a partner. I gave her a massage first, and then we switched. She started working on my back and right away I thought that this girl knew what she was doing. Turns out she is an RMT – lucky me! I’ll try to sit next to her next class as well. 🙂

And I don’t want to. I think this is my first birthday ever where I truly did not need to do anything to celebrate. That’s not to say it went unnoticed — I got cards, a new purse, the promise of new hiking shoes, treated to lunch and a trip to Plum, dinner made for me, birthday cake, a decorated chair, calls from family and friends, and happy birthday was sung to me three times. But none of this was pre-planned by me — it just all happened. Spontaneously, from my point of view.

Usually I feel this big buildup to my birthday, I plan some sort of celebration, and a lot of times I’ve felt let down at the end of the day because the day hasn’t lived up to my expectations. This year there were no expectations. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I was talking to kaptaink about it today, and we were thinking that perhaps it’s a reflection of how satisfied I’m feeling with life in general. Things are going tickety-boo (for the most part), and I don’t feel like I need a pick-me-up for my birthday. Not that those who want to celebrate are dissatisfied…I just didn’t feel the need this year.

Or maybe it’s because I’m 36 years old and I’ve decided the next party won’t be until I’m 40. Regardless of the reason, I’ve had a nice day, and will go to bed feeling happy.