What A Pain!

The first truly wonderful weekend in the spring, temperatures in the mid 70's, birds building nest, bugs coming out of hiding, flowers blooming, buds popping and we spent it in the hospital. That wasn't our plan. Our plan included the big mulch delivery for the Boy Scout fundraiser, planting the garden and enjoying the stake conference. In between those activities we intended to draw with chalk on the sidewalk, ride bikes, play at the park and watch basketball. Of course, there was the small issue of stake conference overlapping the beginning of the BYU basketball game. But that is not a good enough reason to get sick.

It started Friday morning. Ralph woke up with his stomach hurting and feeling somewhat nauseous. The feeling persisted all day occasionally feeling worse and sometimes a bit improved. After an afternoon nap, he rallied and decided that he could manage to head to the church to help with the Scout fundraiser delivering mulch. He was in charge of the routing and if he didn't move too much he could control the nausea. He came home exhausted and feeling worse and headed to bed. That didn't last long. He was too uncomfortable to sleep and he wanted to get the routing done for the next days mulch deliveries.

At 1:00am he woke me up and said that he thought he needed to head to the hospital and get some help. He had looked up his symptoms on-line and thought that he could have appendicitis. I woke up Lauren enough to let her know where we were going and that she was in charge while we were gone. Her alarm was set for 7am and I figured that she would be up before the little girls were.

At the emergency clinic they did some tests and determined that Ralph's appendix was inflamed and needed to be removed. We were sent to the hospital around 5 am and at 6 I called the person in charge of the fundraiser to let her know that Ralph was not going to make it to help with the routing. My favorite quote from Katrina was, "I'm glad he wasn't just being a wuss last night." That one still makes me laugh.

Ralph got into surgery at 7:30. I had gone home to check on the kids and allay any fears the little girls may have about their daddy being gone. I got back to the hospital about 9:00 and he was still in the operating room. My timing was pretty good though. The surgeon came out about 15 minutes later to let me know that everything had gone well. I still didn't get to see him for another hour and a half though. He looked pretty good although he was very tired.

They kept him over night. I had brought him some books and his ipod. He was happy to find out that the hospital had wireless internet and he was able to stream the BYU basketball game on his ipod until CBS picked it broadcast locally on TV. I could tell he was feeling much better in the late afternoon when he was getting excited about being able to watch the game. I had a quick visit with him before I went over to Stake Conference.

This morning I dropped two kids off at Stake Conference and took four with me to pick up Ralph from the hospital. We got him out and got back to conference in time for the last talk. He is not supposed to drive for a week and has to avoid lifting anything for 6 weeks. He can slowly resume normal activity as he is comfortable with it.

I am grateful for how quickly the doctors were able to identify and treat his condition. I have a greater empathy for those who have loved ones in the hospital long term. Twenty four hours was more than enough for me. I am grateful for all the friends who have offered us help and support. The kids were taking care of watching each other so I didn't have anything that I needed done for me but it is always nice to know that there are so many who are willing to help if the need arises. I am even glad that it was a beautiful spring day and I could drive back and forth to the hospital with the roof of Ralph's car open. Hmm, he is going to want that car back in a week when he can drive again.