We had a very quiet Thanksgiving this last weekend. It was very welcoming to us. Spending some time with my family in Colorado at my sister's place and enjoying our time being normal. We're glad to have had a quiet, boring, uneventful holiday this year. Last year, however, it was quite the time. As I said before, we think this has to do with a lot of what happened with Q's rough year from the previous post. In order to tell our whole story of last year, this part of the story has to be included. It's how we spent last year at Thanksgiving, so you can see why we were happy to have a nice quiet time with family.
Last year, my wife Erin and I were expecting our 3rd child, we were going to move into a brand new home, and we thought the year would end great. That wasn't the case. At Thanksgiving time, as we were planning an enjoyable holiday with Erin's family, she came home on Wednesday complaining of stomach/back pain. We didn't really think much of it because she was 31 weeks pregnant and we were going to her parents, so she had ample time to rest.
On the way to Baudette (4 hours away by car), Erin didn't feel very good. She threw up a few times and just didn't have an appetite or anything. It was just stomach flu, right? As the weekend went on though, she became completely uncomfortable and still wasn't feeling good. Friday morning, she woke me up and said we need to go to the ER.
Off to the ER we went. The doctor and nurses got Erin back to comfortable, thanks to morphine and getting fluids in her. Considering we were far away from home and in a very rural area, the Doctor has to be prepared to take on whatever. Trying to find some humor in the situation, it was pretty funny watching the nurses trying to figure out how to hook up the baby monitor since they didn't deliver babies there for a few years.
After doing some tests, the doctor first thought it was a UTI. After a few more test results came back, then the doctor thought it could be Erin's gall bladder. The issue though with being in a rural area for a holiday weekend is a limited hospital staff so the ultrasound tech for the area was not there. After consulting with the doctor, we were off to Bemidji to the nearest larger hospital with an OB, an ultrasound tech, and most importantly a surgeon if needed.
After waiting a little while, we loaded up the ambulance and headed to Bemidji. Thankfully the kids were with Grandma and Grandpa, Aunts, Uncles, and cousins to keep them entertained while we headed two hours away. Once we got to Bemidji to the hospital, we were wheeled up to the Birthing Center. It started to hit me how serious this was. I wasn't sure if we'd have a baby but I wanted to make sure that first, my wife got better, and second, baby was safe, sound, and stayed in the womb. When we got into the room, the OB doc started checking Erin. Where the pain was getting described, there were lots of questions about if it was really her gall bladder. The attending nurse then said, I bet it's her appendix. The doc summoned the general surgeon on call to the room to get his opinion.
The surgeon came into the room and he also thought there was potential for Erin's appendix having issues. With Erin being pregnant though, X-rays and MRIs were not possible. They couldn't expose baby to radiation. Also, being the gallbladder was a possibility, they wanted to do the ultrasound. The ultrasound tech took a look at Erin's organs and found her gallbladder was good to go and healthy. She also looked at baby, and thankfully, baby was still doing great. Now what do we do? Our surgeon put it out there and said they weren't sure it was her appendix but they could do the surgery and remove her appendix, no matter what. Or, we could stay on antibiotics for another 12 hours and see how she responds. The issue though was Erin's body was fighting hard. Her White Blood Cell count had raised a little bit from Baudette to Bemidji. Granted, that could have been resulting from many different factors, but it was concerning for sure.
After some consideration, we decided for Erin to have the surgery. It was the best choice to get moving now. There were many risks though, especially with baby. However, I felt we were in great hands for a very tricky situation. At 8:30 pm on a Black Friday, we were headed to the operating room and I was going to wear out the carpet in the waiting room pacing around. After an hour and a half, the doctor came out and told me it was the appendix. The worst part though was it was a burst appendix! The doc said it was 2/3rds dead so Erin probably had a burst appendix for a while. It made quite the mess, but they got it cleaned out as well as they could and were going to have Erin in the hospital to monitor baby and to monitor her for infection. The next 24-48 hours were very critical to make sure baby stayed in, otherwise, we were going to have a helicopter ride to Fargo to NICU.
Long story short, the rest of the weekend was uneventful thankfully. Baby stayed in the womb, Erin got better each and every day, and we were able to go home after 6 days in the Bemidji hospital. Getting home was a little interesting as a good ol' snow storm was coming into the area, but nothing was going to stop us from getting home. We made it home and were going to get ready to take on the next challenge of moving to our new house.
After we experienced last year, it was nice to enjoy some time with family, eating a full Thanksgiving meal, and just enjoying each other's company. We didn't have to run to a hospital or deal with the anxiety of what we experienced. It was nice to have a quiet, relaxing holiday.
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