Day 268 - Under Pressure

'Does my face seem puffed up to you?'

Not the normal question you expect to be asked upon waking, but by crikey, it certainly did seem puffy. K___'s cheekbones, normally high and well-defined had all but disappeared and her eyes had turned into slits between pillows of flesh.

'Er... yes; a bit,' I answered.

It was quite late, about nine-thirtyish. There must be something in the air at my in-laws and I normally sleep like a log when I'm there. K___ had woken about six-thirty and had felt fine. She'd got up and gone to the lavatory but returned to bed for a bit. When she awoke the second time, she was immediately aware of her face feeling strange.

If you've been through the whole pregnancy thing, you will probably aware that puffiness can be a sign of pre-eclampsia. I wrote about the evil that is pre-eclampsia here, so won't do it again, but suffice it to say we were both aware that puffiness is Not Good. In fact, everytime K___ goes to her midwife's appointments, they always make a point of asking 'any puffiness?' as it's one of the classic signs and particularly when it's in the face. When K___ had her abdomen pain the first time, when she ended up in hospital, I had looked at the NHS Direct article on pre-eclampsia and I remembered that women typically show more than one of the following symptoms:

• severe headaches,
• vision problems such as blurring or seeing flashing lights before the eyes,
• pain in the upper abdomen,
• vomiting, and
• sudden swelling of feet, ankles, face and hands and excessive weight gain because of fluid retention.

We logged back onto the site to retreive the list above. The problem was, of course, that K___ had had pain in the upper abdomen just a couple of days before. I said I thought K___ should text D____ and K__, our midwives, and explain her symptoms. D____ quickly responded and said she would pop round and take K___'s blood pressure. One small problem. We were 120 miles away from where D____ thought we were.

Kate called her up. D____ went through all of the symptoms above and K___ explained about the pains early on Christmas Day but was able to answer 'no' to the others. D____ recommended we get ourselves into the maternity unit in Grantham and get herself checked out. K___ phoned them and asked if it was okay to come in. It was.

Grantham hospital is run down, I regret to say. I am very much in favour of socialised medicine and regard it as a sign of an enlightened society, but recent governments seem to have done their best to run the NHS into the ground and Grantham Hospital certainly didn't look like it was in danger of over-dosing on funds. We eventually found the maternity unit, a dour 1960s building, skulking at the back of the sprawling site, and took a lift to the third floor. We were made to sit in a waiting room for about twenty minutes (I took the opportunity to run back to the car and move it closer to the maternity unit) before a nurse took us into a small room and got K___ to describe her symptoms.

The first thing the nurse demanded was a urine test, the ol' 'piss on a stick' routine. K___ is well used to this by now, and disappeared to a nearby lavatory. The reason for this test is that pre-eclampsia is characterised by the presence of protein in the urine. You wee on a stick and it goes various colours depending on what's in it. It was fine. A big relief.

The nurse got K___ up on the bed and made her pull her trouser legs up to expose her lower legs. She pressed her fingertips into K___'s shins and I saw the white fingertip marks stayed visible for a few seconds after she removed her hand, a clear sign of oedema (fluid retention). But we knew there didn't seem to be any sign of proteins in the urine. The nurse took K___'s blood pressure and it did seem to be a little up on what it should be. We were due to come home the next day, and to visit the clinic for yet another midwife's appointment (we seem to do little else of late!) and we knew that she would be able to take K___'s blood pressure again.

For now, everything seemed to be okay, but needing an eye kept on it in case the situation changed.

Later that day, we went and got a new tyre for the rear passenger side of the car. It kept going down and needing reinflating. Although that's the other way round than K___'s situation, somehow that seems rather fitting.