Seriously??

O.M.G.

This has been the week from HELL.

First, I sprained my foot over the weekend and have been hobbling around - but really that's been the least of my worries.

Justin had a procedure called a Discogram done on Tuesday.  Long story short, he has chronic back pain and has tried about everything over the years.  Epidurals, cortisone shots, hydrocodine(?), morphine pills - none of it touches it.  So, he's been going to some pain specialists the last few months trying to see if they could figure out something to do.  No one can seem to find out the exact cause of the pain.  He has degenerative spine disease or something (you know it's bad when every doc that sees his MRIs tells him he's got the back of a 70 year old man...) which is like an arthritic thing... he has a bulging disc.  But because of the degenerative spine whatever they can't do surgery on the disc - there's no good vertebra to attach anything to in that area.

Now everything I just typed up there may be totally inaccurate.  He's seen so many specialists at this point I'm lost.

So back to the story - I've seen him in pain many times.  He's a tough dude, and he doesn't complain much.  Tuesday after we got home from the test, he progressively got worse all day.  It was taking him FOREVER to move small movements.  I have never seen him like that.  Never.  I've taken care of this man after brain surgery and having his ACL on BOTH legs repaired.  This was BAD.  He was groaning in his sleep, so at 2 AM I got up and paged his dr.  The dr. who told us nothing about this even being a possible side effect.

I'm going to avoid talking about that dr. so I don't cuss.

At 3 am he was in so much pain he could barely lift himself out of bed.  He said he was going to take a hot shower to let the water run on his back.  I said HELL NO you aren't - because if you can hardly make it to the shower, what am I going to do with your 6' 6" ass when you can't get OUT of the shower.  So I instructed him to put shoes on and called my parents.  I started packing up sleepy, grumpy children in the car.  It took him 20 minutes to get to the car from our bedroom. 

At the ER they drugged him up hardcore and he slept.  He even slept through the MRI they did to make sure there wasn't a bleed.  Hard core IV drugs and 7 hours of sleep later they released us with another Rx and he is now MUCH better.

Seeing someone you love hurt like that really SUCKS.  The scary part of not being able to help them sucks.  I was super proud that my normally anxious-self held it together so the kids were not scared at all.  They were just excited to go to their grandparents - I'm not sure they even realized the whole reason WHY.

On a less terrible note, my long haired cat had digestive issues today - and the resulting bath I had to give her left me scarred for life.  I will be bleaching, lysoling, scrubbing bubbles then bleaching AGAIN that bathtub before any of my children go into it.  Then I took the hottest shower of my life.  It was just wrong on so many levels, and once her fur dries I will be cutting it so I don't have to experience again.  Aren't you glad I shared this with you?

So TGIF.  We're going to try to get out tonight and go to a live nativity.  Tomorrow we are going to go see Buddy the Dinosaur (!!!) from dinosaur train.  We feel like old people, and hope we hold up for the rest of December without any more visits to Urgent Care or the ER - but we won't count on it.  Especially since I just said that, I'm sure I just jinxed it on many levels.

*Sigh*

Hope your week was MUCH better, and I'm already anticipating a much better week NEXT week ;)

xo
amy