Surprise!

My guess is that my faithful readers (ok, Sami) thought I would never blog again.  Life got in the way and became busy.  I originally started this as sort of a journal, then kept going for my kids when they were away at college.  I  have been thinking about blogging again lately though.  Life is so fast and so unrelenting sometimes that often a whole week will go by and I cannot remember what I did.  Not that I do anything super exciting, but when trying to put together a letter for Elder Carruth it is hard to remember what transpired the week before.  So I'm going to try to do this again.  So someday I, and my descendants will actually know a little bit about our life in 2015 and beyond.


Our excitement this weekend is something I never really thought would happen.  We are expecting!! No, not a BABY...a kidney stone.  Dan has a 7.5 mm kidney stone lodged in his innards.  It started with a stomachache Thursday night.  Friday morning he was fine, then by Friday afternoon he was in agony.  Stabbing pain around his kidney area in the back and then wrapping around to his stomach.  He took awhile to "decide" he needed to go to the ER.  Robert gave him a blessing of comfort and we took off for the ER.  I was very conscious of every bump I hit, every time I hit the brakes too hard.  It was a long, long ride.  There were lots of people ahead of us in ER...we were triaged pretty fast though where they took blood.  We then had a 2 hour wait for the blood tests to come back.  It was agonizing to watch him in so much pain.  Sami, Robert and Mike Shupe came and Robert and Mike gave Dan a blessing of healing.  Finally I had enough.  I went to ask where we were with the blood tests and we finally were seen again shortly after that.  Good news: no infection, no aortic rupture, clean appendix.  Bad news: probably a kidney stone.  He had to give a urine sample to rule out UTI for sure, which he was unable to do.  That led to a catheter.  That was the only time I cried that night.  I hope to never see him have to go through that again.  They then took him away for a CT.  Sure enough, big ole bad kidney stone.  They gave him pain meds after the catheter, so at least he wasn't in any pain any more.  They released us to go home around 1 am.  We have to check in with a urologist tomorrow and hopefully they'll get him in soon and blast that thing into bits.


What I learned from this:
1.  Be an advocate for your own health and medical care.  If someone you love needs to go to the ER make sure they have someone with them AT ALL TIMES.  Make sure the ER is aware of medications the person takes and their health history.  Often times ER staff will move fast because, after all, it is an emergency.  Make sure you know what they are doing at each step.  For instance, Dan was given medication for pain, but the only question we were asked is "are you allergic to anything".  The answer was NO, but there could've been an interaction with some of the medication he takes on a regular basis.


2.  Don't be afraid to ask questions in medical situations.  Make sure you understand what the instructions are.  This is another good place to have someone with you to make sure what you heard is what the doctor said.  In this case, the doctor said NO ibuprofen or aleve...but the written instructions say to give it for pain.  I asked the doctor twice, so I know that his instruction is what we should follow, but had I not been paying attention Dan's kidneys could be damaged while we dosed him up on something he shouldn't have.


3.  Be aware of what you are putting into your mouth.  The older I get the more I realize that the more processed our food is, the farther away from actual "food" it is. Same with liquids.  I'm not on a soapbox here, I am not perfect in this area at all.  I'm going to try to do better though.  I never want to have the pain I saw on Dan's face, ever.  I know I would've been on the floor - his pain threshold is much, much higher than mine.


That is all for today!  Go - Do - Be.  That is my motto.  Go = get started, do something positive.  Do = be actively engaged in life. Be = be your best.


Love, Melinda