You Can't Call Me A Slacker - the ER Saga, Pt I

I know I haven't blogged yet this week, but you aren't allowed to call me a slacker.

I'm pooped, and I have a good reason (not an excuse. There's a difference - right Cory?).


McStudly started having some stomach issues around Wednesday last week. We assumed it was gas. Haven't you ever had those gas pains that really play tricks on you? The ones that feel like they're just going to blow a hole through your stomach, they hurt so bad (sorry if you can't handle the imagery... my bad). Well, we wrote it off as gas.

Friday night, he was still pretty uncomfortable, but if any of you have a man in your life, you know how anti-doctor they can be. You'd think he was going to see Dr. Bin Laden, or something. And the Airman in him just coulc not approve of that.

We both tossed and turned all night - if you share a bed with someone, you know it's nearly impossible for only ONE of you to toss and turn. It's practically contageous! Until he got up to go to the bathroom early Saturday morning.

He came back into the bedroom grabbing at his stomach and before he said anything, I knew... call it intuition, or call it just plain luck, but I knew it was pretty bad. So he started to say it "Babe... it really hurts." I need to take you to the hospital, don't I? Come on. Get dressed. Let's go.


He didn't even fight it. I think we were both concerned for the same thing. The pain was on the right side of his stomach/abdomen. Who wouldn't think it was his appendix? So we went in to the hospital. I let McDog out before we left, but didn't feed him since it was only 5 am. Even Austin was confused that we were awake!


We arrived at the hospital and it was DEAD! So we were taken right back and put in a room. After a few questions and a few different people asking the same ones over and over, the staff came to the same conclusion - the appendix. So McStudly was given to bottles of Barium to drink (Banana flavored, in fact) and I was given apple juice and a chocolate chocolate chip muffin (life's not always fair, is it?!).

It took him 4 hours to drink the barium. 4 HOURS!! The best part was his response to the whole thing (backstory - I had to drink the stuff when I was 14, back before they flavored the stuff). He said "You're a better person than me, babe. You could drink the stuff, but I just can't." Ha ha. Priceless.


But honestly, there was something that topped it off EVEN more! He had such a hard time with the barium, that he was getting more and more nauseous. The pain wasn't helping with that, so they started giving him pain meds (Delodit - sp?) and something for the nausea (Zefran - sp?), yet there was a man riiiiight outside our room that puking his GUTS out! Seriously... somehow the man managed to sound like chewbacca and it was making things even HARDER for McStudly. So we shut the door and the meds started really kicking in.

And then it happened - he got loopy! ha ha ha. OH boy was it entertaining. I almost wish I could've gotten it on camera. I was on the phone with his mom during part of it and she was even laughing. He was telling me that I smelled like Heaven. He was humnming along with his new favorite channel on the television... the Calming and Relaxation channel - you know, the one with the scenic, unending video montage of quiet streams and sunset, accompanied by some kind of soothing asian-esque music? Yeah. He hummed along with it. HYSTERICAL!!

While he was in la-la-land, I was practically force-feeding him the barium and he was just drinking it up! We had some friends come visit while we were there and unfortunately, he was back to his normal self by the time they got there. Major bummer! But it was nice to have friends around for a change.


Well it was a long Saturday in the ER. He finally went for a CT scan and as it turned out... we were wrong. It wasn't his appendix at all. According to the ER doctor, it looked to be Crohn's Disease.




... more to come...