Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Blurred Vision and Blurred Ultrasound

Let me start by saying I'm fine and the babies are perfectly healthy.

I was at La Villa Deli recently ordering lunch with Lila and Brendan when suddenly I felt dizzy like I was going to faint. I started walking outside to the seating area to grab the first chair I could to sit down, but when I got there my vision got really blurry and I started groping blindly for the chair. I must have looked like I was drunk. It was scary and I'm thankful I didn't fall.

Once I sat down I was fine, but could feel myself getting a little light headed again when I stood up. I tried to call Kaiser but there was a lot of construction noise outside and I was worried about standing up again to walk somewhere quieter. Lila was sweet and talked to Kaiser for me, walking somewhere away from the construction noise to get me a number to call. I was feeling well enough when she got back to call the number myself so I called from a quiet store nearby. It took awhile to talk to the appropriate people, and when I didn't return right away to our lunch table Lila and Brendan were concerned that I'd fainted somewhere and sent a search party for me (consisting of Lila). One thing I learned: always have the phone number to your doctor handy, especially if your HMO is Kaiser.

Dizziness is a normal pregnancy symptom but blurred vision is a cause for concern so the doctor fit me in for an appointment on the spot. My obstetrician did an ultrasound on the twins and they're fine. She thinks I just had a sudden drop in blood pressure, probably because the twins were laying on some arteries (thanks a lot, twins). That was a relief, but also left me wondering, if this is happening now, what's going to happen in my final month of pregnancy when the twins are bigger? Kathy constant state of blackout?

Since it would have been a month and a half between appointments, it was nice to know that the twins are still healthy. Below are the newest ultrasounds. The quality is still really poor. Both twins (or at least part of each) are visible in each picture.


Yay. More blurred ultrasound pictures. Why can't Kaiser invest in a decent machine?



The twins were stacked horizontally on top of each other, like they lived in one of these Japanese capsule hotels (probably the same amount of living space).

4 comments:

  1. Blurred vision is one symptom I never had. You must have been scared. I'm glad everything is OK and hope the twins behave themselves from now on.

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  2. I'm glad to hear everything is okay!! I have to say that for all the shenanigans that can happen with Kaiser when you're trying to get pregnant (my experience there was fine but I've heard some not-great stories with the same doctor), the delivery team there is excellent. We had a super delivery experience, as well as a super lactation consultant as early as the day after we left the hospital (the in-house ones are kind of a crap shoot).

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  3. I've been putting down Kaiser lately because of the quality of their ultrasounds (a minor thing), but the ones I got in the fertility clinic were really clear, and the number of layers you go through to speak to someone. Other than those things though I really like Kaiser and never really understood why Kaiser gets such a bad rap. I really like that you can e-mail your doctors and they get back to you and the quality of doctors has been really strong. I also like that everything's in one place (lab, pharmacy, etc.) if you have to go somewhere after your appointment. And they have free flu shots (minor, but yay!)

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  4. OMG, that sounds so scary! I'm glad you're okay!!

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