Today started just like every other Saturday.  A little bit of yard work in the morning with plans to have a relaxing afternoon – that is until Kiddo #2 calls about 1 pm.   Kiddo #2 is currently working nights so a call during the middle of the day is ODD!

She is crying and telling me she was awakened by severe right epigastric pain and thinks she should go to the emergency room.  “Will you stay on the phone while I drive there?”  Of course!!

No matter how old the kiddos are, they are still your babies.  We live about an hour away (assuming there is no traffic!) but it might as well be 3000.  With Stay at Home orders in place, we could go get her and take her to the emergency room.  Unreasonable since she lives 3/4 of a mile from the hospital where she works.  Visitors are not allowed to stay with patients and they even have eliminated you from waiting in the emergency room waiting area unless you are the patient or the patient is a minor, then only 1 parent/guardian may stay.

She made it to the emergency room with mommy on speaker phone the entire time she was getting dressed, driving there, and checking in.  She said there were no patients waiting!  They took her immediately to the back.  She called about an hour later and they had already taken labs (and she looked at the results online with her work phone) and that looks normal.  They said they were going to take her for a scan, thinking it might be her gall bladder.

Sure enough – it’s her gall bladder with gall stones and fluid around the gall bladder.  Recommendation is gall bladder removal surgery.  After talking it over, she is going to have the surgery tomorrow.  If she waits and has it as an “elective” surgery, it could be up to 6 months before they get to her with the backlog of elective surgeries.

On a positive

• we will go pick her up tomorrow afternoon and she will be with us while she recovers.
• she will get a rapid Coronavirus test and will find out if she is an asymptomatic virus spewer

Why do our kiddos have medical emergencies at the most inopportune times?