So this morning on the way into work I rolled my ankle. I went to the ER and everything. I had to keep reminding everyone that I was pregnant (at least 4 times). Seriously people...you have a patient's record there in your hand...give it a quick once-over before walking into the exam room. Anyway...I sprained my right ankle and skinned my left knee. I didn't hit my belly or anywhere near there when I fell. I was very thankful for that.
Basicall this is how my morning went...Bus ride into work - uneventful so I won't say anything more than that. I get off the bus and start walking up to my building. The plaza in front is made up of thousands of tiles...half of which wobble and are cracked. So I'm about 20 feet from the front door and I step on the side of my foot, roll my ankle outwards, and I fall. I lay on the ground in a crap-load of pain until I realize that there are a few people that saw it happen and they are coming over to rescue me. (Whoever said Chicagonians aren't kind lied...as far as these people are concerned.) So I get up off the ground and hobble in quelching my need to cry. As soon as I get into work everyone jumped up and did so much for me. They got me ice and Tylenol, helped me elevate my foot and escorted me down the street to the hospital.
So I get to the hospital and I check in with the receiving nurse. I tell her what happened and that I am pregnant (First mention...I'll just notate this as #1). So she types some stuff into my patient chart and sends me over to the wristband lady (she's easily 2 feet away from the receiving nurse) and she asks me if I have any conditions that the doctors or nurses need to know about...umm...yes I'm pregnant (#2). She then types some notes upon this "new" news into my records and she prints out a wristband for me and has me wait in the waiting room. A couple minutes go by and the nurse that takes my blood pressure brings me to her area. As she is asking me to describe what happened I explain everything down to the Tylenol I took and the prenatal pills I'm taking (pretty good clue someone's knocked up I'd say). She then asks me if there is anyother medical condition I need to make sure the doctors and nurses are aware of...yep, I'm preganat (#3). "Oh, that is important to know...I'll make a note of that now before we send you off to the exam room." So I get to the exam room and the nurse comes in to poke at my ankle and ask if this or that hurts...no, no, YES!!! "I'm going to bring in some ice (clearly the garbage bag full of ice I came in with is not cold enough) and I'll grab you some Motrin." So I tell her that I've already had some Tylenol and that I can't have the Motrin anyway. She decides to give me a quick 2 sentence blurp on why mixing Tylenol and Motrin is ok because they are 2 different types of pain killers. To which I say, "I'm pregnant." (#4) She looks at my chart and says, "Oh, I see that now. Sorry." Then come the x-ray technicians. I ask if I should be getting an exray due to the whole pregnancy thing (#5 & technically #6...but we'll count these ladies as one) They both look at each other with panic, consult my chart to confirm that I am in fact pregnant, and decide that if they put 2 lead aprons on my belly and keep the x-rays as far away from my belly as they can it will be fine. Now it's the doctor's turn to come in. He pokes and moves my ankle...same result as the nurse. Then he offers me Motrin or Ibuprophen. And I promptly tell him that I'm preggers (#6). "Oh, well, then let's just keep that ice on it and keep it elevated until we get the x-rays back." He then asks how far along I am and I tell him I'm in the middle of my 23rd week. (Before I go into this next part let me preface it by saying our little man is safe and sound in his mamma's bellers.) So he launches into this discussion how at the 24th week of pregnancy you hit this milestone where the chances of the survival of the baby are increased significantly, and that even though I didn't hit my stomache the force of me falling and then suddenly stopping could cause the placenta to tear away from the uterine wall. We can do an ultrasound for this, however, if this did happen there is nothing that can be done in any case. I was fine until now. I'm going into a minature panic. He calls my baby doc and explains what happened. They agree that they will take the baby's heartrate and if it is abnormal they will order an ultrasound. Everything is normal...so I avoided that stress. Then after an hour of waiting the doc said the nurse will come in and have me stand and walk on my ankle. If it hurts too much he will give me an air cast and send me home. She came in with a paper on how to care for a sprain, and before I could stand up to see if my ankle was ok she was telling me where to go to check out and she walked out. So I'm now sitting at work, still in pain with nothing more than a "tough-it-out" from the hospital. But the silver lining is that it's the weekend and my baby's ok!
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