After departing our house at 4:20 AM, we arrived in Greenville by 10:30 AM. There was a slight snafu at the airport when luggage tags and identifying objects from someone else's suitcase, were placed on my suitcase, and I thought for sure someone had accidentally grabbed my bag (which looked identical to their bag - right down to the turquoise blue pipe cleaner I have wrapped around my handle) and departed the airport. For the next 90 minutes, Liz and I took turns calling the owner of the luggage tags no less than 70X. When I sent Charlie a photo of the baggage tag - he also started calling them. Seeing as this individual worked with Amazon, per the tag on the bag, I also sent an APB to several of my Amazon friends with the plea that they help me track down this person and implore them to return to the airport. Aside from needing my toothbrush, when we left Vermont it was 12 degrees, it was now 65 degrees warmer and I desperately needed to swap out my flannel for linen.
See, I never check my bags for this very reason. But because we were flying in to Greenville on a regional jet with virtually no overhead space, everyone had to gate check their suitcases. Suffice to say, it was only when I'd finally left the airport - and was nearly at my mother's house - that the person finally checked their messages and/or was tracked down by colleagues, they called to tell me that they had the correct suitcase and asked, "Did you open the suitcase to confirm it wasn't yours?"
Uh, no. Why would anyone ever do something logical like that?
After driving all the way back to the airport to retrieve what actually was my bag, we had lunch with my mom and her friends in the lovely dining halls at Furman University. Over the next few days, we accompanied mom to a doctor's appointment where she was diagnosed (and treated) for bursitis in her hip. We lounged about watching movies (Cinderella, 2015 for the win!)...
Visited my aunt Grace and numerous cousins...
And made a fun event out of raking up 1,000,000 gum balls from Auntie's front lawn. This was the payment for Liz and Liz's hard efforts!
We visited my sister, Marylou...
And Liz got advanced lessons on knitting and crocheting from her grandmother and aunt.
Before we left on Monday afternoon, we stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant near my mom's house where we played a raucous game of Crazy Bridge. These days, I never leave home without a deck of cards in my purse; they're right next to my Altoids, First Aid Kit, multi-purpose tool and headlamp. Scouting has clearly rubbed off on me, I'm almost always prepared.
Not surprisingly, the Mexican food didn't sit well with me. Increasingly for the past few years, I've come to realize that I generally cannot eat out at restaurants without significant gastrointestinal upset. Mom loaded me up with some Maalox and Tums and we bid adieu for the airport. After landing in DC, Liz pointed out that because there are no Chic-Fil-A restaurants in Vermont, this would likely be our LAST CHANCE to have the world's best chicken nuggets for who knows how long?? The thought briefly crossed my mind, "I probably shouldn't...." but that didn't stop me from dashing in and adding an 8-count to her 12-count order before we boarded our final leg home.
I was feeling great.
We landed just before midnight, in the midst of a blizzard that was sweeping across Vermont. After dropping Liz back off at school, Charlie and I returned home and went to sleep. A mere three hours later, I woke up with what felt like a rock in my stomach. After getting up and moving about, the pain only intensified. By 6:30 AM, Charlie awoke to my moaning and retching. Expletives were issued when he asked what was wrong with me. After pacing about the house for a while, by 8:30 AM in my pajamas and snow boots, and holding a bucket which I kept filling, my husband loaded his delirious wife in to the car for a trip to the Emergency Room. I kept telling him I really thought it was just gas, but Charlie insisted that I be checked.
God bless this man for staying by my side: in sickness, the worst of me most definitely comes out. I was cursing everything and everyone, including S. Truett Cathy, the founder of Chic-Fil-A. He may have been a Christian man, but the devil is surely in those chicken nuggets.
For the next two hours, as I literally writhed around in pain and cries, clutching and filling a disposable cardboard bowl the nurses gave me ... we waited in the lobby of the ER before being placed in a room. They asked me what my pain level was on a scale of 1-10, and I gasped "12." They gave me warm blankets and an IV with morphine and asked if there was anything else they could get me and I said, "A GUN." The morphine didn't touch the pain. Nor did the oxycodone which they added to my regiment. They gave me even more morphine. The only time I laid flat is when I had to for the CT scans and ultrasounds. The rest of the time, the most comfortable position I found was standing, with a slight bend over the gurney, with my head propped on a stack of pillows. The painkillers didn't kill the pain - they just made me so groggy I couldn't complain as loudly.
Charlie called to tell my mother I'd arrived home safely, but was now in the hospital. After 12 hours, my diagnosis was a splenic infarction. We have no idea how or when this would have happened and visits to specialists are in my future. But I remain unconvinced that my purportedly injured spleen had ANYTHING to do with the acute illness I experienced Tuesday. Because it was ultimately determined to be a "nonsurgical" emergency, I opted to leave the hospital and return home where I would feel much more comfortable bending slightly over my own bed with my head propped on a stack of pillows.
Although I was loaded up with prescriptions for Zofran and oxycodone, once home, I took two Dulcolax, and drank a hot cup of water with a capful of Miralax. Within two hours, like holy, glorious magic, I started to feel better. I then downed two more Dulcolax and chased it with 119 grams of Miralax which were mixed into Gatorade, replicating the cleanse protocol that was required before the colonoscopy I'd had in 2022. Wednesday was largely spent in the bathroom, but for the first time in 36 hours, I could stand upright and didn't feel like my body was possessed by dark forces. Charlie took off his garlic necklace and extinguished the prayer candles.
Laxatives did what morphine and codeine could not.
Holy sh*t. Gas is no laughing matter.
I've already added Dulcolax and Miralax to my purse.
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