Yesterday

Once a month Jojo and I meet for lunch. This past weekend a cold front blew through Texas, so it was beautiful weather for playing outside (87* and beautiful blue skies). We met at a park and brought a picnic lunch for the kids. The sandbox had just gotten a load of sand delivered and all five of the older kids were drawn to the gigantic pile of sand like a magnet. They spent almost the whole time making a "tunnel village" in the sand pile. I forgot to put sunblock on them when we got there, but within minutes they had very intelligently acquired a thick covering of sand over every exposed surface of their bodies, so none of them burned :)

I started feeling warning signs that my heart was about to go all wonky, so we headed for the car. The kids are so good at helping to take care of me that I didn't hear a single complaint about having to leave :) Within about two minutes of starting for home, it became apparent to me that I wouldn't make it. Fortunately we were only a minute or two from Kiki's house, so we headed there.

Bless Kiki's heart (in the good way, not the veiled insult way :) ), I pulled into the driveway and made it into her house and she took over, even though she had no warning that we were coming over. She got all six kids out of the car and gave them quick showers to wash off the protective sand layer, then even washed their clothes. The kids were thrilled to get to hang out at Kiki's house; it was just as good as the playground :) They each got one of Kiki's t-shirts to wear while their clothes were being washed (one benefit of running lots of marathons and races is that you have enough t-shirts to cover your nieces and nephew when they drop by unexpectedly covered in sand) and Kiki rented a movie for them. She keeps a cabinet full of toys and activities for them too. Kiki's house is one of their favorite places :)

This time my "episode" was different. It was much, much more painful, but the pain was different. It was abdominal pain and it was some of the worst pain I've had in my life and I've had gall stones and kidney stones and delivered six children. A few hours later I was able to function well enough to come out and see what was going on. Rob left work and drove to Kiki's and we headed home. Within an hour of being home, it was pretty obvious that something out of the ordinary was going on. Kiki came over and we headed to the ER. Ashley came over to help with the kids too as we didn't know how long it would take.

Morphine is good :) They did an abdominal CT scan and discovered intestinal bleeding caused by colitis. About six hours later they let us go home with two different antibiotics and vicodin for the pain. I have a follow up appointment with a gastroenterologist in two weeks. While reading the CT scan, they also noticed a lesion on my liver, so I get to go have a MRI to check that out. Both issues are possible side effects of heart failure and since I've never had problems with either, I'm betting it's related to that. I'm still pretty drugged out, but I wanted to get this down so I can keep track of what's happening. I will update when I know more.

A HUGE thank you to Kiki for all her help and to Ashley for her help! And one to Laura for her medical advice (she made me go to the ER and stayed up really late waiting to see if I was ok and to make sure she was there to answer medical questions) and to the few friends who knew what was going on and kept us in their thoughts and prayers :)