too much excitement.

Is anyone missing a good dose of drama or excitement from their life? Because I’m pretty sure I got your extra helping and I’d like to return it. No, seriously. I know there are some of you who don’t follow me on Facebook, or who only get snippets of news off of Instagram, so I’ll fill you in on the latest…

So yesterday was pretty fun. We went to a birthday party for Benjamin’s friend, and had a great time. I was pretty tired by the time we got home, but I went ahead and hopped in the shower, which has became one of my nightly habits since it helps me relax at the end of the day. Anyway, it was a good day. I was happy to be able to relax at the end of the day, though.

{38 weeks! Happy, happy, happy!}

Well, toward the end of my shower, I started seeing floaters. Like, a lot of floaters. There have been some occasions where I have seen a couple floaters here and there, but this time, the floaters were everywhere and lasted a couple minutes. After they cleared up for the most part, I started feeling like I was about to black out. Thankfully, Carl was nearby and had me sit down and after a little bit, I decided I needed to lay down for a little while because my vision had become blurry.

I should note quickly that my PTSD has affected the way I see my own health, because a lot of the time when something is wrong with me, I’ll brush it off or ignore it because I don’t want to be a burden or inconvenience for someone else {mainly Carl}. I’m sure this is why I never woke him up for night feedings with Benjamin and why I refuse to go to the doctor unless I really need it. So while Carl was extremely concerned about me and asking what I thought we should do, I was brushing all of this off and saying my blood pressure was just a little off because of the warm shower.

I laid down for a couple of hours and nothing seemed to change, except that I could distinctly see a dark blob in my vision.

Changes in your vision in pregnancy is not something you ever want to take lightly. It’s never something that you should just brush off as nothing. This, paired with my suddenly fat ankles {complete with slight pitting} made us both fear that this could be pre-eclampsia. And pre-e, if you didn’t know, is not something you need to mess around with. Carl called in to Labor & Delivery and the doctor on call, not my doctor, said that she couldn’t really say unless I came in to be checked out.

So we packed up the car, complete with sleepy Benjamin, and drove an hour to the hospital. It didn’t take very long to be wheeled to L&D… and didn’t take very long for the RN to say that she didn’t think this had anything to do with pregnancy, but that she wanted me to go downstairs to the Emergency Room to get my eye looked at, since it was unilateral and not bilateral – only in my left eye was I having these problems.

I was irritated and tired and it was well past 1AM at this point but we went down and spent forever in the waiting room before finally getting taken back to the creepiest examination room in the world. Seriously it was really, really creepy. We stayed back there for a really, really long time and I had one very serious anxiety attack and had some cool washcloths to put on my neck and head. I just knew that something wasn’t right, and I was just freaking out. It was pretty scary. And nobody seemed to be coming to see me. Thankfully a nurse came in and brought Benjamin a pack of crackers and some apple juice, so he was content with that and watching TV.

Eventually the doctor came in – who was also 38 weeks pregnant although she looked like she was 4 months along at most – and asked a few questions… and then left us alone again. After a while, someone came and took me to an eye exam room and that’s when the show finally got on the road.

The doctor examined my eyes, dilating them some and numbing them before poking some weird little pressure gauge all over them, and then putting some neon dye in my eyes to see if there happened to be any scratches or anything. Nope. No scratches. She couldn’t make any conclusions so she went and called up one of the eye doctors, who was in church apparently, and who said that he would see us at 9AM at his office. That was pretty awesome, because obviously doctors’ offices aren’t open on Sundays and he was doing this for me!

I might mention, too, that this entire time we have been at the hospital, which was from like 1AM to 8:30AM, Benjamin had not slept at all. He’d been up and active and just as normal as could be, while Carl dozed off a few times and I attempted to doze to keep from freaking out. Benjamin is such a good boy… he was so awesome even if we had to get onto him a couple times. He was a real trooper! Proud of my boy for pulling his first all-nighter like a champ! ha!

{watching TV in the eye exam room while daddy took another cat nap and mommy waited for the doctor to come back in}

We left out and drove directly to the eye doctor’s, and as soon as he got there {um hello porche!} he took me back and started to examine my eyes. It look a little while for my eyes to dilate enough for him to see to the back of them, and I’m pretty sure he dilated them about 3x more than normal, but with the first glance, he told me it had nothing to do with retinitis pigmentosa. RP is an eye disease that runs in my family, which my mom has. I was afraid this was going to have something to do with my eye problems, so I was very relieved when he ruled that out. Also relieved when he said that my retina had not detached.

Finally he was able to determine that I had a fluid leak behind my retina, which wasn’t normally a big deal at all and would reabsorb and heal itself over a few months… however, the fluid behind my eye had a little bit of blood in it, which makes sense because the dark blob in my eye that I can see instead of … well, seeing, is red-tinted. It’s sooo weird to be able to see a leak of blood in the back of your eye, let me tell you! Anyway, that isn’t normal.

So I’m going to have to see a retina specialist to make sure that this isn’t something that’s going to require drainage and that nothing back there is damaged. Not excited for that, nor the bills we will have to pay because of all this, but some things I guess you just can’t control.

Long story short, I’m fine and the baby is fine, but my left eye is pretty much useless right now unless I want to look at a blob of eyeblood. Yuck. We are thankful that this problem isn’t something serious, except for being seriously inconvenient. Now baby C is not allowed to come any earlier than expected because I just can’t deal with any more surprise emergencies! ha!

Thanks everyone for keeping us in your prayers! This sure has been exciting but I really wish all the excitement would die down for a little bit, you know?