My adventure the day after the 4th

The day after Independence Day, the 5th, I was feeling EXTREMELY tired all day. And then about 4 in the afternoon I started feeling very weak, and just ill all over. Started feeling tightness in my chest and it hurt to get a deep breath. I was not gasping for oxygen or anything, but I could just tell a difference when I breathed deeply. I talked to my Mama because it kind of scared me. She had me check my pulse... 116 and rising as I sat. I could feel that my heart was definitely beating faster than normal. I hadn't done anything physical all day besides put some clothes in the dryer and take the trash out. Mama said CALL THE DOCTOR. They were gone, but meantime Brad got home and he remembered our insurance has a 24 hr nurse help line. So I called them and talked to a nice RN and told her my symptoms. This was already day 3 of very bad, umm... bowel problems. I had already planned to go the the doc on day 4 but it seemed that dehyration had caught up with me even though I'd been trying very hard to drink a lot. I just couldn't replace what I was losing quickly enough.

The nurse said that it could be a critical situation for the baby especially with the severity of the symptoms I was feeling, and that I should go to the ER. So we headed out for Summit, with all the horror stories about UMC we didn't want to make a bad situation worse, and it's not that much farther down the road to Summit. Boy was I impressed with that hospital! I was in there and checked before I even knew what hit me. Sure enough, they said I was extremely dehydrated and they gave me 2 liters of saline via IV as fast as they could drip it in me, after doing an EKG and checking for the baby's heartbeat. Boy do I love hearing that. It was 130, lower than it has been but they said it was OK.

I started feeling better after about 1 1/2 bags of IV fluid. That was definitely the issue. They sent me home after about two hours after I arrived there feeling much better. Since then I've just been taking it easy pretty much and drinking anything without caffeine like there's no tomorrow!!!

Anyhow. Just wanted to document that before it got too much farther down the road.