Since I spent most of last week in hospital after an emergency referral from my GP I thought I’d catch you up.

About a month ago I had rung the doctors when I was 6weeks pregnant as a home blood pressure machine was telling my my pulse was 140, telling them that I could feel my heartbeat in my chest, I was overheating and shaking. I was told to come in and use the machine in the doctors reception that takes blood pressure height weight etc and pulse. It came out with my pulse at 64…it’s never been 64 In my life! I asked the receptionist how accurate the machine was and she said very and not to worry. I asked her to please let me see a doctor and she agreed to send the results through to the doctor and he would ring if there was a problem, I was confused as obviously the results are fine so he wouldn’t ring, I asked to please talk to the doctor, saying I just didn’t want anything to go wrong with this pregnancy and she agreed and put me on the computer in triage to get a call. I went home and waited, and waited and the doctor never called…I am so angry at this as by not taking any notice and practically being doctored by the receptionist my baby and my health were put at risk.

When I went to my antenatal consultant appointment on 7th January I was asked for a blood test to check my thyroid levels as I had previously had an over active thyroid and that’s a risk in pregnancy. I hadn’t heard anything so I assumed it was fine.

Morning sickness was getting worse and on 14th January I threw up blood. Assuming it was because I was throwing up so often my throat had got irrirtated, but wanting to check and to hopefully change medication to something else I went to see my GP.
He started by doing my blood pressure and his machine said it was slightly high and he questioned the pulse reading the machine had taken – he took it manually and confirmed that machine was right saying my pulse was 138. He also noted I was shaking and clammy. I told him I had previously presented at the doctors with exactly this but had been told it was fine and that a doctor never called me back. He asked if I’d had any bloods taken recently, obviously being pregnant I’d had the standard ones taken the week before and I mentioned the thyroid test. He looked up the results and told me the results had come back abnormal – over active. He was going to put me on tablets like I was on before, but he called the endocrinology department at the hospital to check which ones were safe in pregnancy and ended up talking to the consultant I was seeing for my check ups last time. She told him to admit me to the Acute Medical Unit and to send me up to the hospital at once.
Terrified at this point I went up to the hospital, had my blood pressure and pulse taken by a nurse and was given a bed. I then had an ECG which showed my heart was fine, just fast. I was told that 140 is a safe heart rate as the heart goes this fast while exercising, however it is not ideal for extended periods of time (I’m pretty sure mine had been that fast for about a month!) they said the likely causes were the over active thyroid, but that dehydration would also be causing the heart to work harder as the blood would be thicker and harder to pump so they put me on a drip.
I stayed on the drip until I’d had four bags pumped into me. I was transferred to the gynaecology department as they needed to look after me and baby and the endocrinology department would come up and see me. I was told to collect my wee so it could be tested for ketones each time I went and for my thyroid I was put on 200g of Propylthiouracil twice a day, which was later upped to three times a day as my levels were so abnormally high. I kept questioning whether it was safe for baby being on that high a dose and just kept being told it was worse for baby for my thyroid to be over active. I know there are slight risks with the medication of nose and throat abnormalities as well as giving baby an under active thyroid if the dose is too high but I wasn’t really given a choice for anything else!
I was also put on Ranitidine twice a day to help with the nausea but kept on the Cylizine. I only threw up once while I was in hospital and that was on my last night, however I was kept in bed apart from going to the toilet which I think also helped as I have found moving makes it worse.
They have kept me on the Asprin, however it is no longer the main focus and no one seems sure that Antiphospholipid Syndrome was the cause for me to lose my little girl.

On Tuesday they sent me for a scan to check baby was doing ok with everything that had happened and there on the screen only two weeks on from the last scan where all I could see as an oval blob with a heartbeat was a tiny human. Legs in the air, hands on its chest. It was such a relief to see Shrimp playing around that I felt I started breathing again! Only another 30 weeks to keep that little heart beating!

My ketones finally went down to nothing on the Wednesday evening however came back Thursday morning. They quickly went away again and the doctors didn’t seem concerned with a trace. At that point they were happy for me to go home. Endicrinology finally agreed to discharge me on Friday 17th.

I came home to my parents and have been taking it easy, I don’t want to go back to throwing up 6x a day but I need to test my limits of what I can do without throwing up!