Our almost trip to Utah

This weekend we were supposed to head out to Utah for our friend Luke's wedding. We were scheduled to leave at 12am Friday morning. At about 10pm Michael started feeling really horrible and felt as though he was going to throw up. Talk about perfect timing... 

Earlier that day I had gotten him his free fish tacos from Rubios and so we thought that maybe it was food poisoning. After throwing up a few times without any relief in pain, we decided to call his dad to come over and give him a blessing. By this time it was like 1:00am and we told the people we were carpooling with to leave without us.

By 2am the pain had become unbearable. We tried to go to an urgent care facility, but unbeknownst to me, urgent care facilities aren't necessarily 24 hours. Who knew urgent care wouldn't be available when it's urgent? So after two failed attempts we decided to go to an emergency room. Poor Michael. The funny thing is, we had had an FHE where we looked up hospitals and urgent care facilities for just such an occasion and yet I was still completely unprepared. 

After checking Michael into the emergency room and then having a scary security guard ignore me completely for 5 minutes when I needed a parking permit, we were finally able to get some drugs to relieve the pain. Funny thing was, they weren't really working. When a nurse came in to check on him, he said the IV hadn't been connected properly and the drugs hadn't even gotten into his system; way to build confidence!

A couple hours, several different drugs and fluids, and a few different nurses later and they decided that they would do a sonogram, but that we would have to wait until 7am. 

Oh, and did I mention it was Michael's birthday :)

Not your ideal birthday present, but definitely a surprise. Actually, the fact that it was his birthday almost made the whole experience a lot better, as everyone was especially nice to him. They even made him a birthday hat!

After the sonogram, the doctors thought that maybe it was some sort of gall bladder disease, even though he didn't fit the criteria. To make sure, they wanted to do a CT scan, of course that meant several more hours of waiting.


After the CT scan, we waited just a few more hours for the results and to have surgery doctors come and evaluate Michael some more. Eventually they decided it was appendicitis and that Michael would need to undergo surgery. Of course, that meant even more hours of waiting. Finally, at about 7pm, Michael entered the operating room.


A quick note on that - Michael was the first person the surgeon he was with had ever seen actually walk into the operating room. The drugs must really have been doing their job. The surgeon even had Michael wave at doctors in another operating room just to see their reaction. 

Post-op. Michael was a little loopy after he got out, much to the delight of the nurse taking care of him; she couldn't stop laughing. Michael was definitely a favorite around the hospital that evening.

All in all, everything went well. Apparently they were able to remove his appendix in under 15 minutes! Crazy. He stayed overnight in the hospital so they could monitor his recovery and then was out the next evening. In and out in less than two days, not bad at all. Definitely a birthday to remember.

Best lines of the night: 

If someone doesn't come soon I'm taking my saline and walking!

I'm glad they took it (the appendix) out, it was only slowing me down.

The worst part about this whole ordeal is that Michael is not allowed to lift anything over 10 pounds (a gallon of milk is apparently around 8....), he cannot participate in any athletic activities, and he cannot be in water above his waste FOR A WHOLE MONTH!! If only this had happened during the winter months :(