abdominal and chest pain...

[hillary8l8]

I'm pregnant with my second child, was diagnosed with PIH with my first and was induced at 37-4 weeks. I am now considered a chronic hypertensive, and am on 200 mg twice a day Labetalol. BP was high, but came down after being taken off of work. Normal 24 hour urine done a couple weeks ago. This past Sunday I came down with what I'm assuming was a stomach bug...nausea/vomiting/diarrhea which lasted about 3 days. When I went back to the OB this week I had lost 6 lbs in a week, and it took a while for little guy to pass my weekly NST. I also was having some little contractions every 2-3 minutes at the start of the NST, but they resolved. My midwife thinks it was all due to dehydration, and I agree. Since getting over this stomach bug (which I still feel like I haven't completely) I can't really eat anything because about 10-15 minutes after I eat I get terrible chest pain. And when I say terrible, I mean it feels like I'm having a heart attack or something. This is coming from a girl who likes to eat, and I haven't really been able to eat much of anything for the past few days because I am afraid of this pain coming back (and it does every time I eat, no matter what I eat, no matter how much I eat). I have some general nausea and abdominal pain, but today I had some discomfort under my ribs on the right side. It wasn't by any means a really bad pain, just more of a pressure/discomfort. This lasted about 4 hours, and is mostly resolved now. I'm just wondering by everyone's experience if this is something I should worry about? Does the pain from the liver associated with HELLP come and go? I don't want to call my OB and have them think I'm crazy, and just tell me that it's indigestion.

[blythe]

I'm posting from my phone, sorry this is short. Could you call L&D and tell them what you just told us and ask if it woul make sense to run a preeclampsia / pih / hellp panel just to be sure? How many weeks pregnant are you now? HELLP moves really fast when it does hit, but it seems like we've had some posters report pain that came and went for a few weeks before the underlying dysfunction finally crashed. Let us know what L&D (or your doc) says. Midwives are great but they don't always have the experience to determine when things are going wrong - and only bloodwork can say for sure.

Also, our experts tell us that women with chronic hypertension have a 25% chance of developing superimposed preeclampsia, and one of risk factors for hellp is developing it in subsequent pregnancies.

[tree]

I agree with Heather's post above. It is possible that this is all due to aftereffects of the stomach flu, but it could be HELLP. The pain is a big red flag for HELLP. Stomach bugs don't generally cause upper abdominal pain. They can get the results really quickly if you have the test done in L&D. It doesn't hurt to do the test, but it sounds like a really good idea considering your risk factors of previous PIH and current hypertension.