12:00 a.m. May 30th, 2013

I wake up in the middle of the night with pain…pain that I’ve sort of felt before, but this time its different.  This time, its much, much worse.  It feels like an abdominal cramp – perhaps the result of some bad food, too much fiber, or maybe just not enough water the day before. They usually don’t last long and within a few minutes the pain subsides.  This time however, it’s persistent – and significantly more intense.  It feels like there’s one thousand baby kittens attempting to claw their way out of my abdomen with their razor sharp kitten claws.  I can’t sit.  I can’t stand.  I’m pretty sure I’m dying – at least in the moment it felt that way.

Ben – always the conservative when it comes to health, suggests we take a trip to the ER.  Me, the – it’ll be fine, tough it out, nothings wrong girl – refuses.  I’m certain that I will be fine.  Five minutes later, I say to Ben, “I think we should go to the ER.” – a clear indication to Ben that something is seriously wrong.

I slip on the only pair of pants I can bear wearing – an enormous pair of royal blue Indianapolis Colts sweatpants and we head to Riverview ER – a short 7 minute drive from our house.  For those of you who know me, you know that if I purposefully leave the house in a pair of sweatpants, there is certainly something wrong.

By the time we get to the hospital, I can hardly sit.  Standing seems impossible too.  I’m out of my mind with pain – a pain I’ve never felt before in my life.  We check in and they ask us to take a seat in the waiting area.  THE WAITING AREA??!?!?!  This is an ER lady!  EMERGENCY ROOM.  Can I get some help PRONTO?!!?!  I’m irritated and anxious and angry and restless and IN PAIN.

Within 5 minutes, a nurse comes to retrieve me, settles me into a triage room, and I’m immediately surrounded with people and questions, and needles, and monitors, and hospital stuff.  I remember laying down, looking up at the bright, fluorescent overhead lights wondering what was wrong with me and hoping that this wasn’t the last thing I’d see while the nurses begin poking and prodding me.

I guess when you come to the ER with abdominal pain, their first response is to assess if you are having an appendicitis – and they act fast.  They quickly determine that that’s not what they’re dealing with – An appendicitis comes on slowly and the intensity of pain builds progressively over time.  My pain, inversely, came on quickly and intensely from the beginning.  With that out of the way, their next step is to get me some relief before they can run more tests and find out what’s actually wrong.

Ah, finally some relief.  I can feel the pain wash from my body as they inject some magical intravenous pain medication into my IV.  I feel nothing – on the outside or inside – a feeling I’ll accept for now.

Fast-forward an hour (and three revolting glasses of quasi-lemon flavored fluid that they have the nerve to call lemonade) and I’m being wheeled back for a CT Scan of my abdomen to hopefully find out what is causing the pain.  If you’ve never had a CT Scan before it’s kind of creepy.  They wheel me in to a dimly lit room and slide me on to another “bed”.  The radiologist disappears into a room and then all of the sudden the bed slowly moves into the interior of a large machine – a skinny tube.  I imagine that experience to be similar to laying awake in a closed casket – terrifying.

Before the machine takes the pictures, the radiologist injects fluid into my IV.  I can feel the fluid coursing through my veins – like someone just injected hot coffee into them.  First, I feel the warm fluid in my arm, then my chest, then down one leg then – OH GOD – I feel like I just peed my pants all over the bed – except I’m not wearing pants.  All I want to do is reach down and make sure that I didn’t just wet myself, but I’m not allowed to move – PANIC.   Then the fluid continues on its journey to my other leg, then arm, my throat and lastly my head.  Just as quickly as the warm fluid fills my body it leaves and then its over.  At that point I’m allowed to move and I quickly check to see if I actually peed my pants – PHEW I didn’t – success.

They quickly roll me back to my triage room and hours later – the report.  The best they can tell me:  “It kind of looks like you had an ovarian cyst burst.  Follow-up with your General Practitioner.”  They sent me home with a few prescriptions to manage the pain over the next couple of days and we headed home.  I spent that day – our wedding anniversary – and the next few days in bed until the pain started to subside.  While the pain had gone away, I still had a thousand unanswered questions with very few answers.

Little did I know, that night – our fourth wedding anniversary – was the beginning of a very long journey – one that has yet to end…