This time yesterday I was under the mistaken impression that my husband would be flying to Houston this evening. Oh, how wrong I was.
I texted him yesterday to double check what time he’d be arriving. He answered that he’d be getting in at 7:50, assuming he was still alive.
This kind of text message is never a good sign.
Naturally concerned, I asked him for a little clarification on why he thought he might have left the mortal coil before he could make it to the plane. Well, he’d just gone home from work because he was feeling sick. Severe abdominal pain and vomiting. He thought it might be a side effect from a medication he was on and was waiting for a call back from the doctor.
I made the executive decision that severe abdominal plane and vomiting wasn’t something that needed to get on an airplane. And additionally, not something I wanted to spend 1200 miles with in a 10 foot Uhaul truck. A lot of phone calls. A lot of panic. My mom informed me that Mike looked like death warmed over, and thankfully, she could drop everything and fly out in his place so that I wouldn’t have to try to make the drive alone.
While I was waiting for the travel voucher for my mom to get taken care of, Mike dropped another piece of information: his pain had now localized to the right lower quadrant of his abdomen.
I immediately upped the terror alert level from yellow straight to red and told him I wanted him to go to the ER. Then I asked our friend Isaac to call him and tell him the same thing, just to be safe. My mother drove him to the hospital where he brightened up considerably after they gave him two bags of fluid and a whack of pain medication.
One CT later, the pain was confirmed as appendicitis.
He had his surgery this morning and is now out, thankfully with no complications. My mom will be flying out to join me in Houston and help me move this afternoon. My dad will be keeping an eye on Mike while we ladies attempt to figure out how to best tie up a bike in a Uhaul.
This is really not an adventure I wanted to have right before moving. I’m sure it’s not an adventure Mike wanted to have either. I’m just really glad it worked out.
And please. Abdominal pain is a shitty, awful symptom that often has no diagnosible cause before it goes away. But if you’re having symptoms that could conceivably be appendicitis, go to the ER. Better safe than sorry. As seen here, sometimes sorry is a definite possibility.