So a week ago I got put on Procardia to stop labor and contractions. Procardio happens to be a blood pressure medicine. The point of it aiding in labor/contractions is that it relaxes the uterus muscles. At my checkup on Wednesday it was reiterated that I needed to be taking it every 6 hours. Lame.
Thursday was my first day taking the stupid pills every 6 hours. Thursday night I slept really well too. I was so tired Friday morning when my alarm went off that I didn't even get up. That started me off on my day about 15 minutes late.
While I got ready for the day I mostly felt fine. Then I came to eat some breakfast and had a terrible headache. I wasn't making any connections, so I popped back my 6 o'clock Procardia and then headed off to work.
While I was driving to work I started to feel very disoriented and confused. I was having moments where I didn't really remember what I was doing or where I was going. Then when I did I would think, "That was weird."
By the time I made it to work my perceptions of things felt off. My vision wasn't blurry, but looking at things also felt weird.
I got out of the car and stumbled a few times. That's when I got real worried about myself, because I had no idea what was going on.
I managed to get my bags, unlock the doors (I'm the first one at my work), and lean against the wall all the way down to my office. That's about when I could feel my consciousness wavering and felt extremely nauseated. I just knew I was going to vomit and pass out - I just wasn't sure in what order.
I got my door opened, dropped my bags and just laid down on the floor. I mean, if I was going to pass out, I didn't also want to fall.
That's when it occurred to me that my blood pressure had probably dropped way too low. I managed to text something coherent to my husband, and a co-worker who was in early (and never on my side of the building) happen to come over to ask me a question.
She flipped out with me and then got me to sip on some half caff coffee and juice. I managed to get up in a chair and just sat there lifeless for a good half hour.
My blood pressure started to come back up, but it was like I could feel it coming back up too fast.
Finally, at 8 o'clock the little clinic in the building opened. I went over to get my blood pressure checked and it was - unsurprisingly to me - high. Like 160/90.
This is all foreign to me anyway. I've never had blood pressure problems and all through this pregnancy my doc has even bragged about how awesome and consistent my blood pressure always is.
So, I called my OB office and spoke to a nurse. She agreed it was very odd that my blood pressure was high, but after hearing about my morning she's guessing what happened was my blood pressure bottomed out and then my body over-compensated to bring it back up too quickly and probably burned up my sugar/metabolism to do so. So I probably had low blood sugar at that point too.
She told me to lay on my side and drink some juice, and continue checking my blood pressure every 15 minutes for an hour and that if it didn't normalize to call them back.
Thankfully it did. Though, I was worried because the first two times we checked it it was still high.
I felt like death the rest of the day. I was fluctuating between being cold and shivering to being clammy and hot. Plus, I just felt so super exhausted. So tired.
It was a long day too. By the time we got home from church, sometimes after 10:00, I noticed that my ankles and feet were swollen pretty badly. This is the first time I've had any swelling. I have no doubt it's because of all the weird blood pressure flux I had going on today, but it's worrisome nonetheless. My doc was worried about swelling too, because it can apparently be another side effect of the Procardia anyway.
Needless to say, I didn't take the Procardia again. And... of course... that's when I realized how well it'd been keeping those contractions under control, because I had about 3 pretty good ones in the afternoon and then had Braxton Hicks pretty much the rest of the night.
#sigh
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