Tuesday [the day before my birthday] I had my usual doctor's appointment at 9:30AM. It was the first of my now weekly appointments. I went in and felt totally fine--just another appointment. The nurse took me back, checked all the usual things [weight, blood pressure, etc], seemed as though everything was normal as always. And then she reminded me that she was going to give me my pertussis vaccine that day. "Great, more gosh dang needles!" I thought to myself. Yuck.
Yes, for those of you who don't know [if you know me at all, then you already know this], I really truly dislike needles. Um, understatement. For example... I honestly don't have any nervous feelings about giving birth in a matter of weeks now... However, I am sick about the thought of having that epidural. Yeah... I don't like needles.
Anyway, she went and got the vaccine, shoved that sucker in my arm, and left me there to wait for my doctor. The vaccine wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, just a tiny little needle. I was okay :) And then as I'm sitting on that little table waiting, I started to get pretty short of breath. Nothing new though since he's been up in my lungs for months now. So I didn't think anything of it. My doctor finally came in and was talking to me [about who knows what, I can't even remember at this point] and I really started getting short of breath--I mean, couldn't breathe period! Naturally, I started getting extremely light headed and could feel myself start sweating. I interrupted my doctor and said, "I'm sorry, but is this vaccine supposed to make me really light headed??" She just looked at me with that "oh no..." look on her face and told me to lay down.
Needless to say, I don't even remember laying down. BOOM! I was out! I started gaining some consciousness back when I heard my doctor yelling out the door, "I need some help in here immediately!" As my eyes are still closed, I'm just thinking, "why on earth does she need help? And why am I sleeping?" Haha!! A few seconds later I could feel a bunch of hands rolling me over onto my side and I finally opened my eyes a little bit. Yuck. There was vomit all over me. I felt like I was drowning in it! And there were about 6 people in the room with me running around like little chickens with their heads cut off--basically, I was dying. Ha! As my doctor was very quickly getting the ultrasound wand and lifting up my shirt to hear Little Man's heartbeat, I asked her if I had passed out [uh, duh?], and she said that I had passed out and had thrown up. How embarrassing. Luckily Baby Boy was kicking me like crazy, probably trying to get me to wake up [how nice of him to be concerned for his mama ;) ] so I knew he was doing okay.
After she knew I was okay, my doctor left me with my nurse. I asked her what on earth had happened! She said she wasn't quite sure--she said sometimes women who got really nervous around needles had passed out, but that's always immediately after the injection. Not 10 minutes after, like mine had been!
They sent me down to Labor & Delivery to have a stress test just to make sure my little guy was doing okay. Around 1PM, they sent me home to rest and said that he was doing just perfect. I got home and felt okay... Just a little drowsy and shaky. However, after eating a banana and a little nectarine, the sickness came on and I couldn't stop throwing up. I was soo cold and soo shaky. It was so much worse than morning sickness, I felt like dying! Finally, around 3PM, Jared called my doctor back and she told me to come back to Labor & Delivery to have more testing done.
When I got there, they monitored the babe who was still just kicking away. They took a few vials of blood for testing [yeah, just shoot me, will you? That sucked!], and after seeing that my white blood cell count was high, they took a urine sample to test for an infection which came back normal. After being at the hospital for ever, they finally told us we could go home around 8PM. I asked the Labor & Delivery nurse what was going on with me, and she told me that they honestly weren't sure. When I asked if I just had a weird reaction to the vaccine, she insisted that it had nothing to do with the vaccine. She actually said "You must've just had something brewing that just happened to come out after receiving the vaccine." Uh... for real? I've never passed out in my life, and then it just happened to come along after getting a vaccine. Yes, I'm still very skeptical. I'm absolutely positive it was the vaccine that I reacted so weirdly to. Definitely puts vaccines in a new perspective for me...
But anyways! I'm fine now :) I was still really shaky for a few days and had a few big bruises from the vaccine and IV, but I'm as good as new! But hey, at least I got to experience Labor & Delivery pre-labor, right?? ;)
