Return to the Living.

I'm back.

I'm home, and extremely happy to be here.

I've just returned from another stay in the hospital, this one because of some major complications from the c section that came up last week. After a trip to the ER on wednesday night due to a fever of 103.8 in spite of antibiotics and acetominophen, I was admitted. By thursday night I was hooked up to an IV with several types of antibiotics pumping into me and having ultrasounds and CT scans to locate the problem(s). By friday or saturday (the days tend to blend together when alternating between crying, sleeping, and being stuck like a pin cusion every 5 minutes) I had a tube coming out of my abdomen draining blood and nastiness into a bag which clips to my clothes.

The diagnosis: infection of my uterus, an abscess in my abdomen thought to be caused by a fibroid continuing to bleed after the c-section, and a surface infection on my abdomen near the incision site. (This diagnosis tends to change daily depending on whether speaking to my OB/gyn, my infectious diseases doctor, or the radiologist--- who knew I'd have so many doctors?) What a mess.

I'm home for now, and afraid to be too optomistic. I still have the drainage bag attached and a tube leading into my stomach. I have home health care coming here to change my bandages for my surface infection, and I'm on major doses of oral antibiotics. The next few days will bring more visits to my doctor and hopefully only one more CT scan.

In the mean time, I've given up breast feeding because of all the chemicals pumped into me that wouldn't be good for Cassidy. In addition, I decided that waking up every 2-3 hours to pump to maintain my milk supply would be rather counter productive to trying to fight off infection and actually heal. Cassidy seems to be doing fine on formula, still gaining weight.

Jeff, my mom, and dad are my heroes. They are not only taking care of Cassidy, but are now taking care of me as well. They are amazing and have been wonderful through all of this, visiting me in the hospital, listening to me cry, bringing me food which most of the time I didn't eat more than a few bites of, and just being supportive.

Since I can barely hold Cassidy for more than a few minutes because of the tube in my stomach, I'm pretty much useless as a mother right now. This is not what I expected the first month to be like. But at least I'm alive.

Jeff figured out that I've spent 11 of the last 26 days in the hospital. Crazy.

I'll try to post some more pictures of Cassidy soon.