Bring it on!

My washers and dryers were up and going Thursday morning, so I gave them a spin (really). It was amazing to stuff them full of clothes and watch them go. I was completely mesmerized by the see-through doors on the washers. It was astounding, too that in 22 minutes I had clean clothes ready for the dryer. I did 8 giant loads start to finish in about 2 hours. It was a happy time. It really is my own personal laundrymat. I had to program the washers and dryers for different scenarios, but now that's done and I've got my p-touch labels to remind me which cycle I want, I am all set.

The day was a little disrupted, though by a severe pain I kept having in my abdomen. It had woken me up at about 2am, and it just kept coming and going throughout the day. I just kept thinking it would go away--just some tummy trouble or something. I kept saying that until about 4:00 on Friday afternoon when I was on the floor in pain. I knew that it may be tummy trouble, but it was very severe tummy trouble.

Kristy was in town, and Mark was hunting with Josh, so I called Kristy at about 6:00 after I had decided to go to the emergency room. She came and stayed with the kids until Mark and Josh got home later that night. I drove to the hospital and sat for 3 hours in the waiting room, feeling like I was seriously going to explode.

After I got a room in the ER, I got some morphiene and life was better. The doctor couldn't decide if it was a rogue ovary or my appendix. I was thinking more colon obstruction, but I let her figure things out. After an exam, bloodwork, ultrasound and CT scan, it was discovered I had colitis as the cause of my pain and my white blood cell level was high. By this time it was after 2:00 am, and since there was no impending surgery or other procedure, I called Mark to come take me home. Until this time I didn't see the need for anyone to be there watching me lay on a hospital bed. I'm pretty low-maintenance, and I didn't want an audience. They sent me with an antibiotic prescription, and home I went. I crashed for pretty much all of Saturday and Sunday. Today I feel like myself again. I still have to go see a specialist to figure out what is causing colitis. Hopefully it was just a crazy, one-time infection.

When I was in the hospital and the pain was so bad, I kept going to my happy place. Normally that is the Caves Branch River in Belize. But this time it was my laundry room. I kept picturing those shiny silver washers spinning my clothes around and around and it made me feel better.