We’ve not been sleeping very well lately.  In fact, on Monday night, I had to use a technique on Col that my dad used to use on me when I was younger to help me sleep.  He used to make me lie down, close my eyes, empty my head and relax each part of my body in turn, until I dozed off.  It worked like a charm and Col was out cold.

Less than 15 minutes later, I get a severe sharp pain in my abdomen.  My guess is that it’s wind/gas, so, I lie flat on my tummy – no joy.  I sit up, it’s pretty bad, I go downstairs so as not to wake Col.

I can’t really breathe right, actually, it’s not so much that I can’t breathe, it’s just a struggle too, almost like there’s pressure inside my chest and I can’t get enough air when I breathe in.  I turn on a lamp, sit doubled over for a few minutes and decide I’m having a panic attack.

I stand up, walk around a bit, try and take deep breaths but it doesn’t work, by now I’m back to thinking it’s wind.

I go back upstairs, dig in the cupboard under the sink and get out some Tums to chow down on – they’ll definitely work, I reassure myself.  I go back into the bedroom, start to climb up on my relatively new footstool (yes, bye bye step ladder!) and start crying, wailing almost. 

It’s so painful. 

I feel sick, like I’m going to throw up, I can’t sit, I can’t stand, I can’t relieve the pain.  Col wakes up and asks what’s wrong, I apologise for waking him (he tells me to stop being silly) and tell him what’s wrong.  I told him I took Tums about 10 minutes prior and they’re not working, not even a little bit!

He sits up, suddenly alert and not in the least groggy and asks if I want to go to the ER.  I tell him no, it’s got to be trapped wind and that if I went to the ER, paid $100 and got told I just needed to go home and fart – I’d look like an idiot and we’d be $100 down.

I asked him to find the number of the on-call nurse that we have with our insurance and he read online ways to provoke gas, so, I swallowed air, drank fizzy juice and I made him burp me like a baby – for ages.

Either I passed out from insane tiredness, or the pain subsided enough for me to doze back to sleep, but I managed a little sleep.  Just a little, however, as 2 hours later I wake up with the searing pain back in my tummy once again.

I start wailing – again, Col is up in a nano second – he must have been light sleeping just in case, but either way, he bounds up and starts rubbing my back again.

‘It’s not working’, I sob, ‘I need a doctor’

He took one look at me, knew that it must be bad for me to say that I wanted to go to the Emergency Room and so, with that, he was up and getting dressed – while, at the same time, searching an in-network hospital on the insurance website and I was throwing on whatever clothes came to hand first.

I grabbed my wallet (Health insurance card and credit card – cause we’d no idea what we’d have to pay!) and a hoody (cause apparently Houston has decided that it’s time to be ‘cool’ again!), sent out a text to Amber and Magz asking if they were awake (quite literally that was the extent of the text I sent cause I didn’t want to panic them!) – I was going to ask how do you know if it’s time to go to the hospital, (yes, while I was en route to the hospital – I still could have opted out if they’d replied in time! LOL!).

We drove to the ER, which, as it happens, is in the same hospital that both my OBGYN and primary care physian are in, parked the car and walked inside.  By this stage my eyes were red and puffy, my cheeks were wet with tears and I was terrified.

Terrified that I’d have to wait for hours to get seen, terrified they were going to tell me that I had gas and send me home, terrified that we’d have to pay a bomb for treatment, terrified that maybe it was more than gas…  I was also embarrassed, to be sitting there in the middle of the night, crying my eyes out and I felt absolutely awful for having gotten Col up twice in the night and made him drive me to the hospital.  I felt horrible.

He filled out my paperwork, I cried, moaned and clutched at my stomach (I swear, I’ve never had pain that bad before in my life!) and before long the RN had me in a gown, in a private room taking my stats and history – ha! We’re not in Daisy Hill any more Toto!!

It wasn’t much longer before the Doctor game in, examined me, took another history (they’re nothing if not thorough!) and explained to me that she was going to get bloods and urine done and that they were going to do an ultrasound.

Almost immediately a different RN came in, took blood, gave me morphine and anti-nausea meds, left a sample cup (I was dry as the sahara, peed before we left the house and wasn’t allowed to drink – you do the math!) and said that I’d be going to have my ultrasound done shortly, she also explained that blood results took about an hour, ultrasound results took about 30-40 minutes and the urinanalysis took 20 or so – I was very impressed, everyone who came in to see and/or treat me, were very thorough in their explaining what they were going to do to me, what they were going to discover from what they were doing and how long it’d take.

Meanwhile, Col played around with my TV and turned off the seriously annoying, way too early Christmas songs that were driving me mad – and instead put on Fox News for me.

A lovely lady came to take me for my ultrasound, she was very sweet and talked to me during my short trip from my room to the ultrasound room and during my procedure.  I couldn’t place her accent.  She said that I was probably scared and hoping she didn’t find anything on the ultrasound and, given that I’m still just a baby at 25, she hoped so too.  She told me I had a lot of gas (I started to panic here cause I figured she was going to tell me nothing was wrong with me! LOL!) then told me about her 17 year old daughter who was having aches, joint pains, losing her hair and was diagnosed with arthritis the day before, she got a little emotional. 

Turns out she’s from Casablanca, Morocco and she was very pleased to hear that I didn’t think she was old enough to have a 17 year old daughter!  I never got her name, but she was lovely and as she returned me to my room she said she wished me health and hoped that nothing was found on the ultrasound.

Unfortunately for me, there was something on the ultrasound.  (I was almost relieved, cause then it kind of gave some kind of legitimacy for me giving Col a night of absolute hell!).  The doctor told me I had some gallstones, as far as gallstones go, mine are, in fact pretty little, not the huge pretty looking colourful ones.  She said she was writing me up for vicodin, anti nausea meds and getting me the information for a surgeon and I could go home.

I kinda just stared at her.  Surgeon? Can’t you just, break up the stones or something? She replied no, you can’t and although surgery isn’t urgent right now, it’ll have to happen at some stage and it’s best to build up a relationship with a surgeon ahead of time. 

‘Do you have your own surgeon?’  

I kind of looked at her incredulously and just shook my head…during my history-giving, I’d told them I’d never, ever had surgery of any kind,  I told them I’d been in this country for only 18 months and she’s asking me if I have a surgeon? LOL! Yeah, he’s hiding under my bed! LOL!

The nurse then took out my IV, gave me my information from the doctor and took about 15-20 mins or more to answer any questions Col or I had, she really did a great job.  She tried to answer everything as basically as she could and she said anything she couldn’t answer or wasn’t clear on the surgeon would be able to.

On the way home, my morphine started to wear off, the pain started to come back (insert more abdominal clutching and tears here) and CVS told us that my prescription would take an hour or so, so Col took me home.  When we got home, he set me up in bed, laptop, drink, made me toast and hot chocolate and sat with me til prescription time.

Last night he made us dinner, watched a movie beside me while I slept, just to be beside me and today he worked from home – but, not at the table we’ve got set up for him to work from home, he didn’t want to disturb me from getting some ‘good sleep’ as he calls it, so he worked downstairs.

Today he was a gem yet again, I woke up after noon, I thought my pain was gone but I quickly discovered that it hadn’t.  I was bored of being in bed though, so I went downstairs and Col made me tea and toast ‘on demand’, went out and got a rotisserie chicken for us to eat (and more bread cause I’m turning in to a toast fiend!), he cooked dinner (again), moved me back upstairs and hooked me up to my technology, ran me a candle lit bubble bath while he cleaned the kitchen, hooked up the tv and dvd player in the bedroom and filled the dvd changer with one of my tv shows and offered to not go to football tonight – which I told him was just silly and he should go and have fun.

I may just be the luckiest girl in the world!

He did say though, that we should get me a Roman servant, cause having someone wait on me all the time looks good on me! lol!  He also discussed just how sick I must be, given that normally, when I’m sick, it’s the one time I am most productive – and I just don’t have it in me to clean (or do anything for that matter) at the moment.

I know I’m a lucky lady, I know that most husbands are ‘pretty good’ in this kind of situation, but I really and truly struck gold.  My hubby is great, he may say he is clueless, he may say he can’t cook and wouldn’t be able to live without me, well, I have news for ya – he’s wrong on all counts!  I’ve been treated like a VIP in the last 36 hours and I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve him (I’m still not convinced I do!), but I hope to keep doing it – he’s really gone above and beyond, today especially.

He’s just gotten home from football, smelly and sweaty and asked how I am.  I told him I was ‘hungry again’ and he offered to cook a plethora of things for me – he’s really just that great!

And this, this right here…

is how much he loves me….not, that I ever needed any kind of proof…