One Week Later

The first week with Carly home has been wonderful. It's just as you could expect, those glorious sleepless nights (one night she did give me a whole 4 hours of sleep), being a milk-maid and taking as many naps as possible.

I can't complain. Connor and Abi are getting along better than they ever have before and Abi isn't as clingy as she used to be and doesn't seem bothered by Carly at all.

I have been going over to my moms house each and every day from 8-5. My poor mom has been trying her bet to keep up with Connor and Abi and letting me take my afternoon nap. I get to sleep with Connor and she tends to Carly and Abi. It's been so nice to have her help (I love you mom!) and to not worry about the kids during the day. During the hours that I am at my moms, I don't think I have changed a single diaper!!! I am so spoiled.

The worst part of this whole first week struck me at 3pm on Friday afternoon. I began to have a side ache and thought that it would go away, but it didn't. The pain got worse and it became more difficult to walk, or stand, or laugh or cough or anything like that. I tried to sleep it off, but having to wake every two hours to feed Carly proved to add to the pain.

At 5am, I woke and took some ibuprofen in the hopes that the pain would then be relieved some. Nothing changed. I called my Dr.'s office and got the Dr. that was on-call. He suggested that I go to the emergency room. My symptoms sounded like appendicitis.

7am, Saturday morning, I passed my little Carly off to my mother-in-law and Todd took me to the ER. After 5 vials of blood were taken to the lab, the results came back that my white blood count was very high, so there was definitely some type of infection. So the next step was to have a CAT scan.

They took the CAT scan, but the results of that were too hard to tell because my right ovary was inflamed and completely covered the appendix. I was off to Ultra-Sound where they did the regular and an internal ultra-sound to look at my ovaries, my uterus and the appendix.

At 3pm they finally came to the conclusion that the only thing that could really determine what was wrong was a laparoscopy. So they had the surgeon come in. He did a physical and explained that he would explore the uterus and the ovaries, but that in the end he was certain that I would just need my appendix removed.

My wonderful husband sat by my side the entire time. I couldn't complain about being hungry, at least I had a bowl of cereal that morning. But there he sat in a chair with nothing to read, nothing to eat and nothing to do but sit and wait. I was in and out of sleep the whole time, so I wasn't the greatest company. He never complained about his boredom or lack of things to do. What a good guy.

Sure enough, it was appendicitis and at 5pm, I awoke from my very first surgery, totally out of it and pain free!!! I got to spend one night in the hospital (a vacation?) and have to "pump & dump" until 5pm tonight. I am also on this liquid diet....totally annoying, but I will try my best to stick to it.

So, that's what's new in my life! I hope that you are all in good health! I sure appreciate today's medical technology and am even more grateful that we are back here with family. I couldn't have imagined burdening our ohana in Hawaii with three kids at 6am on a Saturday (not that any of them would have minded).

The kids were pre-occupied with all the outings that their two aunties, uncle, grandma and grandpa Riches took them on. Thanks family for all of your help! I love you and couldn't do it without you.