Delirium

We had been home from the hospital for a couple of days and everything seemed to be getting back to normal. Then as I was getting ready for bed I started feeling a little "chilled." I figured it was because we had forgotten to turn the heat up. But then it got worse and then I'm told I said some pretty crazy things. Seems I had a temperature of 104. I took medication to try to bring it down but it would only work for a little while and then shoot back up. I don't remember much except that I kept asking Daniel for his belly measurements. He kept telling me that I was delirious but I was confident that I wasn't because it made so much sense to me. I remember explaining very carefully that we needed the measurements because we were moving to a new house and our bedroom was rather small. I needed to know how big his belly was so I could calculate the volume to see if he could fit in our room. Since everyone was pretty concerned about the fever it was good I could bring some comic relief to a stressful situation by being temporarily insane.

The next day I still had the fever and felt absolutely awful - I thought it was just a flu and it would pass in 24 hours but Daniel was insistent that we call my OB. It's a good thing we did, they had me come in immediately. I must have looked as bad as felt because a couple nurses apologized for not recognizing me. One sweet nurse came in and held me for at least 5 minutes as I sobbed. It's been a long time since I was that sick.

My OB said that I had endometritis which is an infection of the uterine lining. He said that I was bad enough that he considered sending me to the hospital. I was so happy when he decided that he would try the outpatient treatment first as long as I promised to call in if my symptoms worsened in the slightest. I was sooooo relieved not to have to go to the hospital again. Fortunately, my body responded well to the outpatient treatment and in a few days I was feeling like myself again. In times past, they calculate that endometritis was responsible for 16% of the maternal mortality rate. Thank goodness for modern medicine!