ER and 911 and Surgery! Oh my!

Based on my blog posts from February first no one would ever suspect that my weekend wouldn’t go as I planned. Saturday was supposed to be the day I purchased and brought home a glider chair for the nursery. Sunday was supposed to be a day we spent with friends eating snack foods and watching the Super Bowl (mostly the commercials). It was going to be the first time we brought all the infants together and I was hoping to take a picture of the FIVE of them. That’s right four of us (one person had twins) were pregnant all due within weeks of each other. At a whopping four months, Sophia was going to be the oldest of the infants. I was going to have Kurt and Sophia wear the matching shirts I got them for Kurt’s birthday. It was a joke gift based on the commercial for the movie “Meet the Robinsons” from last years Super Bowl. It’s a shirt with a picture of the dinosaur on the front and the words, “I Have A Big Head…and Little Arms” on the back.

Instead, Saturday we went out for Mexican food for lunch then went shopping for the glider chair. That took a lot longer than I thought it would and the place didn’t even had the one we pick in stock, so driving around in two vehicles (one that can haul the kid in a car seat and the other that can fit a chair in it) had been a total waste of gas. We did purchase a chair, so that went well. We just won’t get to use it for a couple weeks.

Kurt went shopping for the ingredients needed to make something to take to the Super Bowl party the next day and brought home something to make for dinner that night. Kurt had been having back pains that alternated back and forth to stomach pains since after lunch. When we got home he tried to use a heat pad on his back, then tried an ice pack, all the while lecturing me on how to care for pains like the ones he has. He had similar pains to there about three or four times since July. This was the first time the heat it/ice it tricks weren’t working, but Kurt was still able to ingest two “cheese” injected bratwurst he bought for dinner. I put poor Sophia to bed at her usual time. She didn’t get much sleep since we were going from store to store all day. I rubbed Kurt’s back. It never really helps, but he requests it all the time. As I’m writing this I’m thinking about all the times he has asked if I can feel how tense that spot is on his back and my answer was always the same, “no”. It’s always the same spot just under his right shoulder blade. We both always attributed that pain to the way he sits at his computer at work all day long and the fact that he uses his right hand to use the mouse – of course that spot would hurt being all hunched over with his arm extended to the mouse all day long.

Kurt had taken some Advil at least once that day, but that also wasn’t working. This seemed a lot worse than his usual. It bothered me that none of the usual stuff was working, but I still didn’t think it was something serious. I suggested that I could drive him to the ER. “No, no” he said, “you just put the baby to bed.” I told him the baby can recover from a lack of sleep.

We made it to the ER at about 10pm. I stayed in the waiting room trying to keep the baby quiet while Kurt went through triage. I walked around and found a quiet area. I looked up towards Kurt to see him holding a bag with brown stuff in it and asking, “Where should I put this”. Those bits of info didn’t fully connect in my brain until later. Kurt was still talking to the nurses at triage when someone from the back called his name. Kurt walked past me and I stayed in place nursing the baby to keep her quiet. I thought it would just be a few minutes an order for painkillers and we’d be out of there. My biggest concern at this point was – How am I going to get Kurt to make a follow-up appointment with our doctor after the ER just gives him painkillers without finding anything?

An hour and a half later I went up to triage to ask if I could go back to Kurt and see what’s going on. I made it to him just in time to watch him fill another bag with brown vomit. The had already done an EKG to make sure his heart was ok and an Ex-Ray to make sure his back was all in line and he didn’t have any broken ribs from sitting at a computer for eight hours a day at work or watching TV at home. Kurt was now waiting to be wheeled in for a CAT Scan. An hour later we were waiting for results which took another hour, then they tried an ultrasound. Kurtie had about six or seven very visible gallstones. They gave Kurt some painkillers and a referral to a surgeon. They told him he should see the surgeon within five to seven days. We got home around three in the morning.

Kurt was up every twenty minutes belching up stomach acid. The baby only slept for four hours and then was up for the day. Kurt stayed upstairs in the master bedroom for most of the day and I brought food and drinks to him. Sophia went down for a nap and I thought I’d take advantage of that time to get some sleep myself, but that wasn’t happening. I called a friend to help me out with the baby because her naps are usually pretty short – not the case on this day, but I had no way of knowing that. My friend and I chatted all day while I occasionally ran up to check on Kurt. He wasn’t looking well but with the painkillers, he seemed better than the previous night. Late in the afternoon that began to change the pain started getting worse and Kurt became nauseous and was throwing up. At one point he came downstairs and I told him he literally looked GREEN! He was only taking the minimum dosage of his painkillers and intended to take a higher dose when the time came. Laying in bed he seriously look like a corpse. His skin looked grey. At six I run upstairs when I heard him puking again. He was sitting on the bathroom floor and couldn’t get back up. I tried to help him, but he was in too much pain. I asked him if wanted me to call 911. Stubborn Kurtie was focused on making it back to the bed. Yelling out in pain, he forced himself to stand. I made him sit on the side of the bed closest to the bathroom, which wasn’t his usual side, while I ran to the other side and pushed pillows behind him to lean on. At that point it hurt for him to sit up and to lay flat. I told him I was going to call 911. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s probably a good idea.” Great, so glad I finally get your permission. *eye roll*

(to be continued…)