Thank You

Thank you, Matt Logelin. Thank you for sharing your story, even though it was heartbreaking at times. Thank you for baring your soul, in a way that most men never would. Thank you for inspiring me, to be a better person. Your descriptive writing brought Liz into my life. Every diaper change and feeding and shopping trip, I've lived a thousand times in my own life.

I had a baby on August 6. He was beautiful and perfect and loud. It was the easiest delivery ever. The epidural was awesome, and I only pushed for 15 minutes. Yeah, I could do this again, wait what? So I lay in my hospital bed, and millions of people (really just 2 loud kids and 2 loud grandparents) paraded through my room to see my new precious boy, Sam. We all got settled in our room, and I began to have this nagging chest pressure and difficulty breathing, but all I wanted was to go home. With my other 2 pregnancies, I stayed in the hospital as long as I could. With Sam, I was ready to go home the first day. There were many other things going on in my life and I really needed to get home and tend to my family. There was a 10 year old girl and a 5 year old boy and a husband, who wanted their mom and wife to come home. So we waited the 24 hours, all the while, the chest pressure getting worse. But I thought, it's nothing, so I didn't say anything, because I just wanted to go home. Amazingly, Sam wouldn't eat. This is shocking now because he likes so spend all night eating, but the first 24 hours, nothing. He just wanted to nap. I'd try to nurse, and his lips would be pursed together and his eyes just two little slits as he glared at me. How dare I interrupt all this napping, especially after I had kicked him out of his nice warm living quarters. I'm kind of mean that way. My kids don't call me the fun killer for nothing. The next day, he decided he was hungry, and everyone on the floor knew it. He's continued this ritual at home. So after 48 hours, we loaded up and headed out. And did we look like a sight. Me in the wheelchair with Sam in the car seat. The kids each dragging a bag, while my husband waited downstairs in the car. My chest hurting all the way. The first 24 hours at home were a whirlwind. Everyone wanted to hold the baby, then not hold the baby, then feed the baby, then show me their progress on the video game, and on and on. Luckily my mom had been there and cleaned the house while I was still in the hospital, so it was still vaguely clean. I tried to rest, but every time I would drift off, somebody needed me. Plus it was hard to breathe when I lay down. By the fourth day, I knew something was wrong. And before I ever looked up my symptoms on the internet, I knew that it was most likely pulmonary embolism. WebMD confirmed my suspicion, and after conferring with my husband, I left my 3 babies at home and went to the ER. I didn't want to go. I thought if I ignored it, the pain would go away, yet at the same time, I could drop dead any second. So I went to the urgent care clinic, told them I was having chest pain, and proceeded to wait, and wait, and wait some more. Obviously they weren't very concerned about my chest pain either. When I finally saw the doctor, she acted like she was really concerned. She told me all the bad things that my pain could be, and left me sitting on the exam table, in a gown, to wait, and wait and wait, and to cry. Now, I was going to have a panic attack. The nurses finally rolled in and took some xrays and then an EKG. They determined that I wasn't in an any immediate danger, but I would need to go to the ER. Did I want them to call an ambulance for me? I'm ok, but I need to go to the ER in ambulance? Do these people even know what the hell they are doing? In my state of denial, I refused the ambulance and drove my self, with some admit papers, to the hospital ER.