E.R.

On Sunday I woke up with intense stomach pain. At first I just thought it was cramps, but they were the worst cramps I have EVER experienced. In fact, the pain was so severe that I couldn't stand or sit comfortably. It felt like something was stabbing my stomach every few minutes. It also felt like someone had kicked me really hard.

I spent the morning in bed finishing "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," but when that ended my discomfort became even more apparent. I tried taking some pain medicine, but it didn't even touch the amount of pain I was in. I texted my brother who has had his appendix removed to ask what it felt like. His response was, "nagging pain in my stomach. A different feeling of pain than normal." This described how I felt exactly.

Sunday happened to be stake conference which wasn't until 2:00. I decided I would be okay to make it to stake conference, so we left early and got good seats. We didn't plan super well and sat at the end of a long row. Stake conference was dragging on and I was in a lot of pain. Finally at about 3:30 we decided to leave and go to Urgent Care because it was bad. It was not fun to climb over the 7 bodies in our row and I don't think the people sitting on our row were very thrilled with us either. 

I do not love spending money on anything let alone urgent care, so this tells you I was in a lot of pain. We also had a Sunday family dinner coming up that I did not want to miss. I was almost certain with my symptoms that I had appendicitis. After talking to a doctor and nurse at urgent care, they sent me to the E.R.

At this point I was worried that we weren't going to make it to the family dinner. I was also disappointed because Andrew and I had made cookies to bring for dessert. (Mostly Andrew though because I had to sit down in the middle of the baking process and instruct from the couch.)

The doctor in the E.R did not seem to think my appendix was the problem from the get-go. He seemed to think I might be pregnant. I kept thinking great, now we have spent $250 on an ER visit and I'm going to leave with nothing wrong. I was worried and embarrassed. After lots of testing, no I'm not pregnant, they finally found out what was wrong. I was just thrilled that there actually was something to validate this intense pain.

Apparently I had an ovarian cyst rupture. This causes extreme pain. Many women experience 1 or 2 of these ruptures in their entire life, but some people rupture cysts anytime they ovulate. I was happy to have morphine to ease the pain (and apparently did/said some funny things) and was prescribed 2 medications to help ease my displeasure.

I have felt much better since Sunday. The doctor said it would pass after a few days. I did end up missing Sunday dinner, but my parents and sister ended up bringing the leftovers to our house when I got out of the hospital. Andrew also drove 40 minutes round-trip to pick up medicine for me. There are almost NO pharmacies in Utah open on Sunday. I'm glad that it wasn't something more serious and I'm also glad Andrew told me we should go to Urgent Care.

Living the Dream

Today marks our 11th day in our new house! It still feels unreal. Andrew and I keep waiting for the actual homeowners to come back from vacation and thank us for house siting, but it's not going to happen!

Some things I have loved so far:

• Parking in a GARAGE. It's so nice to have a dry car in the mornings. Andrew has been teasing me to no end about me forgetting we have a garage and trying to go out the front door to find the car. Oops.
• Not worrying about being too loud. I have played my keyboard at 10:00 PM at a normal volume without thinking about neighbors. I also don't tell Andrew to turn down the T.V constantly because I don't care if it's loud.
• Having no nap interruptions. I don't have anyone to blame anymore for being woken up when I randomly have the urge to nap at 2 PM on a Saturday.
• Having our own mailbox. Who knew I would love this so much? I have missed getting great coupons and deals. 
• Enjoying the neighborhood trail. We went for a run Saturday and it was so nice. I'll take it over a treadmill any day.
• Having friends over to our new place. We have so much room to entertain! 
• The million dollar view. The mountains are gorgeous. 

Some things that have been stressful:

• Our basement leaking water with the first big rain. (No it didn't flood and it could have been way worse, so we're very grateful.) Let me also note this was the day after we moved in. We spent Saturday putting concrete/soil in our backyard to prevent this from happening again.
• The thermostat NOT working. Saturday was rough because it was 84 degrees outside. Luckily it has cooled down and our new thermostat should arrive Thursday.
• Our toilet running every 5 minutes. After several efforts to fix this problem, we finally turned the toilet off in that bathroom. Hopefully this will be taken care of this weekend.
• The to-do list getting bigger and bigger and more and more money being spent. I keep reminding myself that this list is a gradual thing and all doesn't have to be done immediately. 

It's been an adjustment not to be able to just call the landlord when there is a problem, but I'll get used to it. Even though things haven't been stress free, I'm happy. Besides, we kind of signed ourselves up for more stress and responsibility by buying a house, right? 

I can't wait to make more memories in our new house and to be celebrating our 20th year in the place.