Thank you Nurse Oblivious!

So yesterday I went into Martinez hospital to have my weekly fetal monitoring done (by the way, cause I've been bad at blogging lately, Since week 34 I've had to have fetal monitoring twice a week. No big deal and baby is super healthy and very silly). So I get to the hospital and all of a sudden they decide to run this "code red" drill and shut the elevators down. I thought, ok I'll just wait till the drill is over (since labor and delivery is on the 5th floor and I wasn't about to take the stairs). Well 10 minutes go by and after sitting next to some crazy person in the lobby, I decided to just take the stairs and take it one level at a time. So off I went. I made it up all 10 flights of stairs (2 flights per floor)!! Go me! Of course I was out of breath cause not only am I almost 9 months pregnant, but also totally out of shape. It was a workout, but I was proud I did it!
So I get up there and the nurse that was there wasn't the usual nurse that takes care of me. No big deal. She gets me all set up and gets me some ice water. She does the ultrasound first and then gets the monitor going. About 5 minutes later she takes my blood pressure. She didn't look at it right away and when she finally did she said, "wow, that's high! Have you been diagnosed with high blood pressure at all?" I said, "no, I just had my doctors visit on Friday and everything was perfect". I then just thought that it honestly had to do with climbing 10 flights of stairs and even though I wasn't out of breath anymore, my body was still recovering. So she runs it again...still high.
She then begins to ask me questions about any other symptoms I might be having or have experienced. Yes to some and no to others, but nothing out of the ordinary for me. So she begins to tell me about Pre-eclampsia (sp?). What it is, what it can do and how it's cured. She tells me she want to go ahead and take a urine sample to check for protein and then do some blood work to check for something else and also told me I would be there a little longer because of it.
So off I went to the bathroom and then she had moved me into a new room and hooked me all up again. She set the blood pressure thing so it would check it every ten minutes or so. The nurse came back and said my urine was just fine and that someone would be in soon to take my blood. She also said that her shift was over and "so and so" was going to be taking over. The lady came in and took my blood and was off to the lab. Mind you, I had just been to the Pittsburg health center before I came to the hospital to have have some blood taken for some routine checks, so I had to be poked in the same spot twice in one day...OUCH!
At this point, I had been there for about 2 hours. The new nurse came in (who was very nice) and said she wanted to check my blood sugar levels. So she got her crazy kit out and took my levels. Those were super high! I think I knew why, but I wasn't about to say, " oh it's probably because I ate McDonald's for lunch because I was super low and also had no time to stop anywhere else in order to be here on time." But it still was oddly high, so I told her, "let's try it on my machine". Sure enough, my numbers were still a little high, but not at all as high as hers. She had a super big and old machine. Not at all caught up with today yet. So anyways, now that was their new concern.
Another half hour goes by, the nurse comes back in and says that my blood work came back totally fine as well, but they still would like to send me home with what they call "the 24 hour urine test" just to get a more accurate reading and try and see why my blood pressure was still high.
THEN, all of a sudden, she looks over at my arm cuff (the blood pressure cuff) and says, "you know what? I think we need to find a cuff that fits a little better". She comes over to and grabs a new cuff, straps it on, runs my blood pressure and what do you know... my blood pressure is perfectly fine now! The stupid first nurse had THE WRONG CUFF ON THE WHOLE TIME!!!!
I couldn't believe that I had just spent 2 and a half hours in the hospital running all kinds of tests just to find out that goofball put the wrong size cuff on.
However, I still had to wait for a doctor to come and see me because they wanted to talk about my sugar level being so high. They were concerned. I assured them that my numbers are never like that and even showed them my chart. She thought it looked great and was ok with it. But yet, they still wanted to send me home with the 24 hour urine test just to completely cancel out any chance of Pre-eclampsia developing.
I'm glad that they are doing what they need to be doing to make sure everything is as perfect as it can be, but let me tell you, nothing makes you feel more like a 95 year old woman then having the pee in a little bowl and then have to pour it in a bucket and then "keep it on ice" as they told me! GROSS!!! And the nurse made a big point about how every drop for the next 24 hours needs to be collected. I'm so glad it's only 24 hours, but even that is such a pain!
Bud laughed when he saw the collection bucket sitting in ice next to the toilet. He asked if I felt like an old woman and I said, "heck yes I do! It's the window into our future". I hope to heck it's not. What a pain! I think it just feels like more of a pain, only because I know everything will be fine and this whole thing wouldn't have even happened if Nurse Oblivious had used the right size cuff on me!
So glad this pregnancy is almost over! HURRY IZZY!!!