Hospital, shmospital.

You know you've been in the hospital too long when you come with nothing and leave with a cart.

So, on Saturday (the 8th), Husband started having severe abdominal pains. He thought he had had these types of pains before but when I found him curled into the fetal position on our bed, I started trying to convince him to let me take him to the ER. He resisted, so I started researching on the internet what this could possible be. I came up with gallbladder/gallstones. I couldn't find any information on what should be done about the pain, except on one site that said if you are experiencing abdominal pain and you don't know why you should seek medical treatment. I told him this and the look on my face must have convinced him to go. He wouldn't let me drive him but I was going to let him do anything he wanted if it got him to the hospital.

After he left, I continued my research on the web. I discovered that it could be his appendix, so I texted him right away with that info. Of course, his phone was already dangerously low on battery power. Later I found out that he told the ER doctor that "my wife thinks its either my gallbladder or appendix" in which she replied, "Gallbladder issues are in women or fat people and you are neither of those." So it was confirmed that his appendix needed to come out and they admitted him to the hospital.

(Sunday) I couldn't get there until the morning (when my mom came to take care of all the kids). He was in a lot of pain when I got there and asked for meds. Shortly, they wheeled him back and he had his appendectomy. The doctor came out to the surgical waiting room and told me everything looked good and I even got to see pictures, which I know Husband would never want to know even existed, queasy as he gets. After surgery he was very sore and it turns out that the carbon dioxide that they used to inflate his belly irritated his diaphragm, making it hard to inhale deeply. He wanted to wait on pain meds (as he likes to only take meds "when necessary") and ended up waiting too long. He started experiencing a lot of pain and when the nurse took his blood pressure (standard before giving heavy duty pain killers as they can lower BP even further) she found it sitting at 74/48. She called the "rapid response team", which is basically like a code blue without the heart attack. In about a minute there were people everywhere. They didn't seem too concerned, kind of talking to each other about what could be going on and have you tried this and what's his _____ ? and so on. They finally decided he was dehydrated and started pushing bags of iv fluids. And when I say pushing, I means squeezing the bag with all their might. The team slowly started leaving in singles and pairs until it was just the hospitalist, the head of nursing, and our nurse. His BP evened out and everyone left. Shortly after, our doctor showed up. He said that he didn't understand what was going yet as Husband was a young, healthy male, but that it could be just dehydration, body reacting to trauma, internal bleeding, or any combination of the above. We were just going to have to wait it out. So it was a rough night.

(Monday) The morning showed promise though. Husband felt like getting out of bed and walking and really seemed to be improving. He was even enjoying his clear liquid diet. His blood work kept showing drops in his hemoglobin, which all I know about that is it has to do with his blood. Normal is between 9 and 15, and by the time Husband's reached 6.0 on Tuesday morning the doctor said that's it, we're going back in. So, he went in looking for internal bleeding.

(Tuesday) The doctor didn't actually find an "active bleeder" but found two spots that were potentially the problem and a lot of clotted, old blood. He cleaned out the blood and tied off those two spots (just in case) and called it done. He was even able to go into the same holes as the appendectomy so there was no new trauma to Husband's belly. He did end up getting a total of four units of blood, two units during the surgery and two afterwards.

After this, it was slow going but he steadily made progress and after another two days we were released to go home Thursday night.

I hope this ordeal is over. We will see over the next few days but I really think that we are good, knock on wood.***

So that's been my week. Hope yours was better! I'm looking forward to a plain, uneventful weekend. :)

Hope this finds you happy and healthy.

***UPDATE 2013-06-20: Everyone is doing great. Husband returned to work on Monday and even though he seems more tired than usual, has had no other side effects. The kds are responding better to authority with both their parents back at home. It took some time getting back into a routine. Baby boy still will not go willing to my mom; I think he thinks I'm going to leave for another 5 days. My mom just now feels caught up on her sleep. :)