Ridenour Ranch: Christmas 2011

Well, it has almost happened again! I have nearly gone an entire month without a blog post. Shame on me. What is my excuse this time you might ask? Well, let's see, it could be Christmas concerts and shopping and MOPs events and classes and grading and dr. appointments and even laundry...but lately it has been the emergency room.

We had a rough start to the holiday season you could say. Gil, while at work December 15, suddenly got a bad pain in his stomach. Thinking it could be an appendicitis he went and saw a nurse at Briar Cliff. She said it probably was not an appendicitis, but rather a virus that had been going around. Gil called me to come get him because he was so sick and vomiting that he couldn't drive. He spent the rest of the evening in terrible pain, but still thinking it was just the flu because of the nausea. After the kids were in bed he finally decided we ought to head to the emergency room to get it checked out. I was thinking kidney stones by this time, but his pain was in his stomach rather than the back. Well, sure enough the doctor confirmed a kidney stone diagnosis. They admitted him to the hospital (we were in Wayne) and got him on some morphine and fluids and anti-nausea meds. I stayed with him that night. He was completely depleted from vomiting so much and the intense pain. The next day we had hope that the stone would pass. From the scan it wasn't too large and he was on all that fluid. But the afternoon it still had not passed, but he was feeling pain-free. We decided to go home and wait it out there with pain meds. But by the middle of the night the pain and nausea were back despite the medicine. All day Saturday he laid on the couch and couldn't do a thing. By Sunday morning we decided he needed to go back to the hospital. He could not properly hydrate himself to get the stone moving because of the nausea. So, we went back to the ER and Gil was readmitted. He stayed that night again...and the next night....still no stone had passed. We wanted to go home, but were afraid he would just be too sick again. On Tuesday we decided we needed to leave the Wayne hospital (small and unable to do the procedure to remove the stone). He got an appointment with a urologist at UNMC in Omaha the next day, the day we were planning to leave for his parent's house to celebrate Christmas. We were hopeful! The appointment went well, but they said since it was an elective surgery he would have to schedule it and the soonest they could get him in was in a week. We took it, but hoped it would pass on it's own before then and that he would stay feeling well. Unfortunately the nausea and vomiting was back that evening. I called back to the urologist in the morning to see about nausea meds, but they told us to come into the ER....SO third trip to the ER that day. That was quite a process, but we really hoped he would finally get surgery. The doctors told us the operating rooms were quite busy and he was on a list, but they thought it might happen that day (Thursday) or for sure the next. We sat there all day, Gil hooked up to his faithful IV and not eating, me reading magazines and watching reruns of "Everybody Loved Raymond." Finally by six o'clock that night I needed to get home to the kiddos and it didn't look like surgery would happen until the following day. Gil's dad came in to relieve me and I headed home, bummed that we would have to wait another day. Just when I arrived back at his parent's house, John called. They had taken Gil to pre-op!!! Yay!!! He would be home that night after all, I figured. Surgery is quick and recovery too. But John called back about two hours later to say that he was bumped and back in his room. No surgery. He was told noon the next day (Friday). That was the day of the Buhman Christmas in Missouri, so Gil's mom and sisters took Jude down with them while John kept Cora at home and spent some time at the hospital with us. The doctor came in at 11am (yes, before noon!) and took him to pre-op again. This time I got to go along. We hadn't been there for more than five minutes before they came to tell us the doctor would not be available for another couple hours...back to the hospital room we went. We were beginning to feel quite defeated at this point. But we hadn't been up in the room more than five minutes before another doctor came to say a different urologist was available if we were willing to go with him. By that point we were willing to go with a stranger off the street (almost!). So back to pre-op we went. And it was for real this time!!! There was a lot to surgery and waiting and pre-op and recovery, but basically he was done in an hour and back in his room in two. Unfortunately, the doctor thought there might be some infection and wanted him to stay ANOTHER night. We hung out again all day in the hospital, but at least Gil was feeling better, could eat, and the stone was GONE! He came home Christmas Eve morning and has been feeling better and better ever since. What an ordeal! We are just so glad it is finally over. And all the time I was talking about "daddy" being in the hospital to the kids, I was just glad I knew he would be getting better soon.

So after all that we still had one day left to celebrate with the Ridenour's! We then came home Christmas morning to celebrate with the Koester's. Here are some pictures to document (they are all out of order...sorry!). I'm feeling bad that I didn't get any of Gil in the hospital, but I'm sure he doesn't feel too bad about it!

Merry Christmas From the Ridenour Family!