Appendicitis in the family!

Sorry it's grainy - I wasn't thinking about the nice camera when we ran out!

We were going to have a completely normal, busy week last week! But things never go as planned - Monday afternoon Aaron called me on his way home from work (around 2:30) saying he was having the worst stomach pains. He somehow made it home (after stopping several times). I thought it was the flu - we had heard that stomach cramps were part of it. After an hour or so of him literally writhing in pain (nothing we did helped) he decided it was bad enough to go to the ER. I made plans to have Taylor picked up from wrestling and we headed out to Valley Medical Center's ER. I was a bit worried about going here - I'd heard some scary stories about it. We checked him in pretty quickly and were pleasantly surprised at how nice it was. They had just recently remodeled the ER and it looked great. We were put in a room and they got his IV going (kind of a funny story with Jake, the EMT in training) and got him some morphine. That didn't help at all so they gave him more. After examining him, they ordered a CAT scan. Nothing moves super fast, as you can imagine, but they finally got him in for that around 8:00. After waiting again for the doctor to look at the scan, they came in and said it was appendicitis. We weren't excited that he was going to have surgery but at least he knew that the pain was real and not made up. The morphine was still not touching the pain so they brought in another drug that finally made him feel better. We got on the phone to friends and family and talked to the kids to let them know. Luckily they had a surgeon on staff that night and by 10:30 he was in surgery - not before he could post on Facebook the lovely picture you see here! I waited in the waiting room - I was the only one there - pretty slow night I guess. The surgeon, Dr. McFall, came out at 11:30 and said everything went well. At 12:30 the nurses came and got me and we headed into the main hospital to his room for the night. We got him into bed and I fed him some juice and jello - Yum! Around 1:30 I left to go home for a few hours of sleep, getting home around 2:00. I got up with the kids and got them off to school then headed back to the hospital. Aaron was discharged around noon and we headed home for some much needed rest. The one nice part of all this was the forced rest he had to take last week. I loved having him here during the day - I'm not sure he remembers most of it - that Percocet is pretty potent and makes you do some funny things. He showed everyone that came by his scars (which was more than they all wanted to see I'm sure). We feel grateful that they were able to get him in quickly and that it hadn't ruptured.

Early Saturday morning, our phone rings - it's my mom in Arizona and her calling this early meant that someone was in the hospital or had died! What are the chances but she had taken my dad to the ER the night before and he was having his appendix taken out that morning! Are you kidding? Before last week and I didn't even know one person who'd had their appendix out and now two in my family had theirs out in the same week? Crazy! By the time he got into surgery however it had ruptured. It took twice as long and he ended up staying in the hospital until Tuesday - he was on some serious antibiotics and was having a hard time getting his lungs to function properly again after being intubated. But he is home now and he and my mom are getting some much needed rest! So glad for that!

We are grateful to have them both home again!