Updates

Sorry for the fall off in blog production. A number of family issues, one of which I'll tell you about shortly, kept me away from the computer. That, and indolence, laziness, business, whatever you want to call it. Thanks for the encouragement, Hack, to post--I'll try not to let June go by without posting more than once.

So the other Monday (Memorial Day) we were returning home from a trip to G-ma Fouts' farm, where we had spent the weekend. A peaceful place with waving corn, country roads, and comfort food, we were returning from the trip happy, satisfied, and slightly early in the afternoon, ready to do a bit of light gardening and visiting Linda and Ed for Budnt cake before putting the babycakes to bed. Well, that was the plan, anyway.

The reality was, I found myself in bed with incredible stomach pain. My best analogy for the pain would be if a 98-lb weakling was punching me lightly and repeatedly in the stomach, and then that weakling slowly started to gain muscle mass until he was as powerful as Mike Tyson in his prime and just as crazy (he is punching me in the stomach for no reason, after all). And for the medically inclined out there, he wasn't focusing on just one area, but working the whole abdomen.

So I tried to soldier through it at first, laying on the floor while Evie played on me and Megan folded laundry. Tried to get some rest in bed while the two of them went to eat that Bundt cake. Tried to take my mind off of it by playing a video game (Puzzle Quest, an RPG-Puzzle game where Bejeweled is the main engine). Eventually, I called my parents to ask for advice, and, alarmingly enough, they recommended an immediate trip to the Emergency Room.

By this time, the 98-lb weakling had worked his way up to middleweight class. I climbed into the car, Megan zoomed off, and we were on our way to the ER at Lutheran Hospital. By this time, it was 8 p.m. and I still had an article to finish up for Play Magazine that was due that night. After the preliminaries, they took me back to a room and I proceeded to writhe and groan while a nurse with tiny eyebrows stuck me first in one arm, then the other when my right arm veins decided they didn't want to be an IV site after all. After we were left in relative peace, I dictated the rest of my article to Megan, who relayed it to Linda, who proofread and e-mailed the article to my editor. Free to suffer in peace, Megan and I spent the next 7 hours waiting to be x-rayed and CAT scanned, and for a doctor to come and examine me. Thankfully, nurses with syringes of powerful painkillers made the wait much less painful, though not less fearful.

I was semi-coherent during this time. After the first shot of morphine, the pain subsided enough to let me sleep, then after the first scan they needed me to drink some stuff that would help my internal organs show up better. That brought the pain back on again, and another shot of morphine. After the second scan, the doctor said that they had ruled out any of the emergency causes of the pain (appendix, kidney stones, gall stones, etc) and that, since I was feeling better, they were going to discharge me and give me a perscription for Vicodin. When I asked about the pain, they said that I should take the Vicodin if in pain and see my family doctor ASAP for a referral to a GI specialist.

Somewhat disheartened, but mostly just tired, we went home at 4 a.m., woke Linda up and sent her home, and I rested for two days waiting for the pain to come back, which it never did. I still have the bottle of Vicodin, and a new appreciation for what Megan went through with Evie.

Oh, and my editor decided not to use the article. Good times.