Of Appendicitis, Hernias, and The 9th Wonder of The World (i.e. our vacation weekend)

Well, this weekend (Thur-Sun) Amanda and I took off for a vacation before school got hectic again (by hectic I mean I am only taking one class right now, just eight hours of study a week and 40 hour work weeks, not too bad, ha ha). Anyways, Thursday starts off with me getting to sleep in, woo hoo!! that part was good. Then after waking up around 12pm I studied for six hours for my evening class, went to that for three and a half hours, stayed after for an hour and a half hours for an extra credit psychological study that this lady was doing for her doctorate degree. This put me out of school around 10:50pm (where Amanda was waiting outside to pick me up). This gave me a round total of 11 hours of Organizational Behavior on Thursday and one fierce headache & complete lack of ability to function. Amanda got me some food and took care of me, what an awesome wife!!

Just as I was settling down to watch Shooter in bed (now around 12:45am) Amanda says that she is having pain in her lower-front abdomen, has been nauseous, and had some other symptoms. After some discussion we decided that we think that where her pain is is also where your appendix is. So I tell Amanda to go on the internet and find out symptoms of Appendicitis, of which she ended up having many! Appendicitis' aren't things to be messed around with as they can kill you, so again I get on the trusty computer to find a local hospital (about 5 miles away, Nice!) while Amanda calls a nurse hot line to double check if we should be going or not. The Nurse says that it could be a number of things, but that we do need to go to the ER.

Now it's 1am in the morning and off we go, me with two comic books in tow, and Amanda with Memoirs of a Geisha to read. Now luckily at this particular hospital, the ER isn't packed at 1am in the morning, so we actually got in quick (took more time to fill out the paper work that to be admitted into a room). They put Amanda on an IV, then through a bunch of tests ranging from blood work to a CAT-scan in this initial process. The results: "Clinically," the doctor says to us, "it can't be diagnosed as Appendicitis, but the CAT-scan showed possible inflammation of the Appendix, so I've talked to the surgeon about your case and he will have to make the final decision if we are going to operate or not." (given the events of the wee morning did not happen so fast and there were great gaps of waiting in between). In the mean time they got us a room and admitted her to the hospital, by this time it was about 4am and the surgeon wasn't going to show up (supposedly) until 6-7am.

We then called Amanda's parents so they could come take over at 5:30am, and so Ken and I could give Amanda a blessing. They needed to come take over for me because Amanda was supposed to be watching G-ma Hendrickson who is at Mom & Dad's right now (so I took over, which meant I went to Mom & Dad's and finally got a few hours of sleep). I went back to the hospital around 11:45am. The surgeon had ended up coming around 10am to make the decision. He said it was not an Appendicitis and that it was possibly a hernia and made the decision to have Amanda get an Ultrasound to see what it could be (hernia?). Amanda got her Ultrasound shortly after I returned, which was around 12:15pm in the afternoon. During the Ultrasound they said that it was not a Hernia but that She had a muscle in a place where they had not seen one before! So they looked at the other side to see if the muscle was symmetrical (normal, not a weird growth seeing as there was only pain in one side) and it was! So they declared Amanda the Ninth Wonder of the World because the eighth was "that swimmer guy who won eight gold medals" (i.e. Michael Phelps).

Imagine, my wife the Ninth Wonder of the World, how exciting right? She got back around 12:45pm from the Ultrasound with this knowledge that nothing was wrong and we would be going home as soon as they reviewed the results. Well, EIGHT HOURS LATER (yes about 8:30pm), after much TV watching, naps, and me taking a quick break to eat and shower, the surgeon finally released us and we got out of the hospital (granted he came in around 7:40pm and it took nearly an hour for the release to happen.

From the Hospital we went to Papa John's to get Amanda some real food (that's right she didn't eat for over 19 hours of her hospital stay because there might have been a surgery) and then went over to her Parents to hang out a bit and relax. But all-in-all I can't complain too much cause Amanda and I were able to spend lots of quality time together and talk and cuddle on a hospital bed. Of course I forgot my camera (Nicole wouldn't have) so no pictures. That is my vacation so far! Woo hoo! But tomorrow looks pretty busy so we'll make the best of it and be grateful that nothing was wrong with Amanda (thank goodness!!!).

P.S. RESULTS OF THE POLL: Well, since I only received a consensus of two votes (both third place) on one of the books listed, I went with that one, which is the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and it is pretty interesting so far. Also, the poll was a success because I found a lot of people who read my blog that I didn't know even had blogs. Thanks to all of you for making yourselves known. I also didn't hear from someone I thought I would hear from but I guess HEIDI had no input for me on what to read because of my No Stephanie Meyers clause.