Hospital Gurney Bliss

8:00 PM

Saturday evening started out so peacefully. The kitchen had been cleaned, the twins went to bed, and Michael and I sat down with his mom, Ricky and Gigi to play a game of Spades. We sat as a family at our dining room table (some of us with glasses of red wine, others with cream soda) and played a cheerful game while holiday music entertained our ears. Feeling full and warm, we headed off to bed fairly early, enjoying the first cold evening in Arizona.

12:30 AM

Michael awoke with the worst headache of his life. After 45 minutes of crying and vomiting, we rushed to the emergency room. Tick, tock . . . Tick, tock . . .

2:00 AM

Dr. Johnson was thorough in both his questioning and physical examination, and he was clearly concerned. He recommended both a CAT scan and that he extract spinal fluid to look for a blood clot, tumor or aneurysm.

2:30 AM

Shot of Vicodin (For Michael. No one offered me anything).

3:00 AM

The CAT scan was painless, but the spinal tap was quite unpleasant for Michael. This is now the second time I've seen this happen to someone (the first was Dylan at 11 months old). I felt horrible for Michael, but remember, I carried and gave birth to twins.

4:00 AM

Michael woozily asked me to join him in the hospital bed. Now, if you've ever visited the ER, you know that by "bed" I mean "gurney." So there we are, curled up on this gurney that couldn't have been much more than 2 feet wide. In his drug-induced haze he asks me to list the items that we're going to sell at our garage sale next weekend, and somewhere in between infant car seats and crappy formica furniture, I dozed off.


5:15 AM

The lights tear my eyelids open and there's Dr. Johnson, telling us that Michael's been walking around with a sinus infection for the past 2 weeks. We leave with prescriptions for pain medication and an anti-biotic. Halfway home, Michael turns to me and says, "So, what did the doctor say about my migraines?"

5:30 AM

Lying in bed . . . home . . . sleepy . . .

Maybe it was the thought of something horrible happening to Michael, or the cold night, or (to be quite cynical) the fact that football season has finally ended, but I snuggled up close to him that night, trying to recreate the feeling I had just before I dozed off on the hospital gurney.

The following evening I did it again.