I spent yesterday morning in the ER

Yesterday I was woken up at 1am by Kathy saying, "Alex, Alex, I'm in pain. It hurts!" She was clutching her stomach, pleading with me to help her make the pain stop. We tried a few different positions and I tried rubbing it, hoping it was a muscle ache or something, but nothing worked. The pain got more and more intense. Kathy started to scream out in pain; and I started getting scared.

Kathy thought that going to the bathroom might help (she was willing to do *anything* at this point to make the pain go away). As she sat down, she started throwing up. Things were getting a lot worse, fast.

I quickly went to the computer, looking up "stomach pain after delivery" thinking it had something to do with her just giving birth; but nothing was coming up. I thought it might have something to do with her appendix or maybe with her organs returning to their original places after delivery. I was on the computer for about three minutes when I heard the screams of pain come back. I gave up trying to fix the problem and decided we had to get help; and it had to be now.

I told Kathy to get ready to go, I'm taking her to the emergency room. I grabbed our sleeping baby (I have no idea how she stayed asleep through this whole thing) and we left our house around 1:45am. As soon as we got in the car the pain went up a notch and she started having a lot of trouble breathing. Kathy was gasping for breath; rolling down the windows trying to get enough oxygen to breathe. At that moment my mind flipped a switch, and I was able to emotionally remove myself from the situation and focus on fixing the problem; and the problem was that my wife's life was in danger and I needed to get help.

I sped from our house to the hospital, covering the ten miles in under seven minutes. Kathy didn't get any better during that time; she was writhing in pain and had no idea what was going on. I pulled up to the Emergency Room and helped her out. She stumbled into the lobby and I grabbed Ali from the back seat (I don't remember putting her in the car, everything was a blur). We raced in and had to fill out paperwork before she could be seen. She was moved to the top of the list and she was attended to pretty quickly. The nurse admitting her asked a series of questions to make sure her life wasn't in grave danger, and said "I'm sorry but you'll have to wait a few minutes while we find a room. Be patient."

We walked back into the emergency room lobby, and Ali woke up. I held her and tried to get her to stay calm, I knew the last thing Kathy needed was a crying baby. Unfortunately Ali was hungry and Kathy was not in the position to feed her; so I grabbed our "emergency food" and started to give Ali some formula - she didn't like it but she dealt with it. After eating, Kathy held Ali close. The pain had begun to subside a little; instead of sharp pains shooting throughout her abdomen and back the pain had become a dull, constant pain. The most endearing moment EVER happened around 2:35am; Kathy was holding Ali and just looking at her. Ali reached out her hand, put it on the spot of Kathy's abdomenen where the pain was and just looked up at her, as if to say "Are you ok?". It was so precious, somehow Ali knew that Kathy hurt right there.

Over the next few hours they ran Kathy through some tests and figured out that Kathy has gall bladder stones. I didn't know this, but it runs in her family. So now we have to be very careful what we eat so we don't "anger the stones" until we find a way to either dissolve them through alternative treatments or remove the gall bladder altogether.

So, that's what happened.