Story about Pre-eclampsia .

Post partum eclampsia

Mar 1, 2016


My story is an unusual one. Apparently I had preeclampsia and it went undiagnosed. I started noticing symptoms around 35 weeks (swelling, upper right quadrant pain, shortness of breath), but was told that was all normal. I managed to go until 41 weeks and 4 days with my daughter. She was born completely healthy! On my discharge day my last blood pressure reading was taken at 8am. It was 141/91 which is considered high. The nurses thought that was normal after a long labor like I had. I left at 5pm without ever having it rechecked. The next night it started to feel like my chest was caving in. I chalked it up to stress and readjusting. Around 2am my daughter woke up so I got up to feed her. My head hurt so bad and I was dizzy. I took some pain medicine thinking that would help and went back to sleep. A couple hours later I woke up vomiting. I thought it was a reaction to the medicine I took. I tried to brush it all off but I kept vomiting and the headache didn't go away. My husband called the ER and they told him it was probably brain swelling from the epidural and that I should go in to be seen. So we made the drive up there. I got checked in and my vitals were taken and we were told be seated. We waited for over 2 hours! People with colds were being called before me. My husband asked the front desk what was taking so long and they told him that they had me wrote down as a "bad headache". Shortly after the headache turned to a migraine. I applied ice packs and that didn't help. I also ended up losing my vision briefly. Finally I was called back and asked to provide a urine sample. I went to the bathroom but started to get shakey and feel out of it. I couldn't pee into the cup properly and stumbled back to my room. As soon as I sat on the bed I had an Eclamptic seizure. The hospital hooked me up to magnesium and I had a ct scan and an mri done. I also was diagnosed with what they called PRES syndrome (pockets of moisture on the brain and is often linked with preeclampsia). I don't remember much for the following couple of days. The magnesium basically kept me asleep. I lost control of my legs and couldn't get out of bed. While I was in the ICU, my blood pressure kept spiking to stroke levels and the staff would had to administer emergency medicine to bring them down. Every time it looked like they would stabilize long enough for me to go home, they would randomly spike again and they wouldn't let me leave. I spent almost two weeks in the hospital. My daughter could only come see me for visits and had to stay with family members. All I wanted to do was take care of my newborn baby. It was the most heart breaking experience of my life. I had NO idea that preeclampsia could affect you post partum. 

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