Where to begin...I wish I had taken a picture of Jeff when I headed to the hospital. He was SO sick. I have many things to be grateful for!
Two weeks ago, Jeff woke up in the night and thought he had a case of the flu. Last Friday morning (10/9/09), he woke up around 12:30 and said he didn't feel good. I went downstairs to check on him at 2:30 and got told him to take some pepto bismal to settle his stomach. He came back to bed for an hour then quietly went back downstairs and shut our door so I could get some rest-I was supposed to drive to Seattle on Friday morning for the weekend to celebrate my dad's 70th birthday. Ashley woke me up around 6:00 and said I needed to check on dad. I went downstairs and couldn't believe how much pain he was in. He was in a fetal position and moaning. I helped him back upstairs because he couldn't hardly walk. I was worried that he might have the swine flu. I got out the Lysol and cleaned up, got the kids off to school. He was getting dehydrated, so we headed to the Urget Care clinic. They checked him out and sent us to the emergency room.
Luckily, it wasn't too busy and he was able to get right in. In the midst of everything, I had parked my van right in front of the doors to help him into the hospital and left it there! Luckily, our home teachers who had come to our house before we left to UC had stopped by and noticed that my van had been sitting in the fire lane zone and came and got my keys! After blood tests and more moaning, they gave him morphine which allowed him to rest. They ordered an ultrasound and came back that not only did he have gall stones, but acute pancreatitis and his enzymes in his liver were very high. His pancreas enzymes were 6124 (normal is 50). They wheeled him to surgery to have an ERCP, which isn't surgery, just an endoscopic proceedure to see what was going on. They found several stones near his gall bladder and an obstruction which resulted in a sphyncterotomy. They would've been done with the proceedure in 10 minutes, but after doing the sphyncterotomy, they couldn't get the bleeding to stop for an additional 30 minutes. In the meantime, my mother-in-law had come down from Everett, WA to help me with the kids. They were so worried about Jeff. He felt much better after the proceedure and was on pain meds and IV antiobiotics. They didn't release him until late Monday night (9:00 pm). He's home and resting much better; somehow hospital beds aren't comfortable for most people, espeicially when you're 6'8"! He has to go back to have his gall bladder removed as soon as his pancreatitis is gone.
We're grateful for family and many friends who have sent food, prayers and chocolate :) our way. Now, I'm just praying he doesn't have another attack which would result in another trip to the ER.
We were talking this morning about how he was lucky that we both decided to eat much healthier this past summer (fatty foods set this off), how he finished his 702 lectures for his MBA the week before and how close we live to a hospital. We are definately blessed!
