Because I Made Plans, Obviously!!

Oh,  my what a time we have had this summer. Here is the latest:

June 7th--Raley has a stomach bug. It only lasts a day and a half. It kind of makes us glad we had cancelled our vacation plans because we would have been at the beach and we have already HAD that vacation in 2007.

June 11th--I wake up at 6:30 am to the sound of Pattie heaving in her bed. Shortly after getting her situated I have to run to the bathroom myself. Pattie is better in a couple hours but I am down for the whole day and half the next day.

June 14th--We are on a day trip to the land and Jayme tells me to pull over. He now has the stomach bug. For the first time in, well...ever, he calls in sick to work the next day. He's weak and miserable.

June 19th--We are at my parents house for the weekend. We leave the kids to go to a wedding shower and my Mom calls to tell me that Raley is running a 102 degree fever. On the 21st we get home and I take him to the doctor. They test him for Strep, it's negative. They tell me it's a virus that they have seen lately, it just has to run its course and to keep him comfortable by alternating Motrin and Tylenol. It may last a week the doctor says. It ends up lasting 5 days.

June 26th--We are at my Dad's family reunion. Jayme is not feeling well. He has had a pain in his side ever since the stomach virus. We have considered maybe his gall bladder, or possibly a pulled/strained muscle. When we get home the next day he is running fever. We figure it is what Raley had and start him on Motrin/Tylenol rotation.

June 28th--The boys go to my parents' house for a few days of fun.

July 1st--Pattie starts running fever. Jayme is still running fever.

July 2nd--I convince Jayme to go to the doctor to verify he has what Raley had since his symptoms are a little different. He came home early from work the day before and called in sick that day.
5 pm--We head to the clinic in town. The doctor examines him and we tell him about Raley's illness. Jayme mentions the stomach bug and pain since then. More poking and prodding. Doctor tells us we need to go to the ER for an abdominal CT scan, as he thinks Jayme may have appendicitis!!
6 pm--Just before I call my Mom to tell her that we are heading for the hospital, she calls to tell me that Clay has started to run a fever. She has mds and will start the Tylenol/Motrin dance.
7 pm--We get to the ER. Of course it is crowded on Friday evening but he gets in fairly quickly since we were sent by a doctor.
9 pm--They give him the contrast dye drink which he must drink slowly over the next 1 1/2 hours. It tastes horrible and he has a lot of trouble getting it all in.
10 pm--Pattie's fever is returning and I have no meds with me so she and I go home. At this point we are fairly certain Jayme will be admitted and possibly go into surgery that night.
11 pm--After the scan and talking with the surgeon, Jayme calls to tell me they are not doing surgery yet, but he has been admitted. He is going to sleep and will fill me in on the rest in the morning.

July 3rd--Pattie and I head to the hospital when we wake up. When we get there Jayme explains to me what the surgeon told him the night before. I'll do my best to explain here. Basically, back when his side started to hurt in June, his appendix had a rupture. Just a small one and it started to leak. The body's natural response to this is to build a wall of fatty tissue around the appendix to seal it off. The appendix when inflamed is about the size of your pinky finger. The wall would make it a little bigger than that. Jayme's immune response built a mass of tissue the size of a softball around his! 10 years ago, they would have gone in to remove the appendix making a 2 inch incision. When they saw what they were dealing with, they would have opened him up all the way to his chest, removed the mass of appendix along with sections of his large and small intestines, portions of his abdominal wall and some other things that were in the way. He would have had a long, painful recovery and an altered life with many possible complications. THANKS GOD FOR ANTIBIOTICS AND ADVANCEMENTS IN MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY!! These days, they pump you full of IV antibiotics for a few days, send you home on oral antibiotics and when the mass shrinks down in about 6 weeks, they go in a remove the appendix endoscopically and you go on about your normal life.

July 5th--Jayme is discharged from the hospital. We go to the pharmacy and get his oral meds. He nearly has a heart attack at the price ($130!!) and listens to the pharmacist tell him some of the more common side effects and that he absolutely CANNOT drink alcohol while taking these meds. We go home and he is slathered with dog kisses.

July 7th--Jayme is back to work, feeling some of those side effects he was told to look for. The boys are on their way home as I type. It was kind of lucky that they were at my parents house all this time. Clay only ran fever for a couple days and as of Monday Pattie is fever-free as well. Hopefully this summer will turn itself around now and we can have some fun as a family until Jayme goes back for surgery.
While Jayme was not the best patient ever (patience isn't his strong suit) he did retain a sense of humor and posed for this picture:

The caption we came up with is: "Someone wishes he had a little Captain in him!"