Our Eventful Thanksgiving

We were able to celebrate our first Thanksgiving with an interesting turn of events.

We spent the day at an aunt's house in Spanish Fork (15 min from Provo). We enjoyed our time with the family eating dinner and pies , playing games, and watching movies. We were really fortunate to have family close by since I didn't have much time off from work. I was more tired than usual that day, but wrote it off to my weird hours at the hospital. We ended up heading home around 10 pm.

When we got home I started to have stomach pains and thought I was just getting hungry again since it had been several hours since dinner. I ate some leftovers we had taken home and we got ready for bed. At 11pm the pain got much worse and I started to wonder if I had gotten some sort of food poisoning even though Skyler had eaten everything I had and felt fine. I tried everything I could think of to relieve the pain without any success. By 1 am I was really hurting, started vomiting, and was curled up in a ball crying. That continued for the next 3 hours and we were starting to get pretty worried. Around 4 am we weren't sure what to do next. I had gone through all the possible scenarios in my head of what it could be, but was sure it wasn't my appendix. We decided to go into the Emergency Room.
We got there at 5 am and it was pretty slow for a holiday weekend. We got admitted right away and the nurse started an IV, took some blood, gave me some anti-nausea medication and morphine while the doctor came in for the exam. By then the pain had localized in my lower abdomen and the doctor decided to run some tests and do a CT scan. Around an hour later he came back to tell us I had Appendicitis and would be having surgery that morning. I started crying immediately! Even with all that nursing knowledge I was completely scared. I know I'll walk away from this experience a more compassionate nurse having been on the other end of things. Skyler signed the consent for the surgery and we waited for the surgeon. Skyler gave me a kiss and then I didn't remember much after that. I remember waking up in recovery and crying because something in my stomach hurt. I also remember complaining about my oxygen being in my nose and my compression boots being twisted. I'm sure my nurses earned their salary that night. :) Skyler came in and slept in a recliner next to me for the next 4 hours
until I woke up hungry and sore.













The recovery process began that night with walking laps around the hospital and trying to eat anything I could keep down. Skyler kept talking about how this must be preparation for the future event of kids with all the nausea, pain, and walking laps. :) He was so helpful that whole hospital stay running on no sleep. I'm not sure what I would have done without him. We ended up getting discharged the next day. The last few days have been a challenge, but if anything good came out of it I've learned how lucky I am to be married to someone who can still tell me I'm beautiful when I haven't showered, can't keep my food down, and I delirious because of pain meds. :) I am so glad I have him.