Vacation Time

Brad has had the Carlsbad flu several times this season. We all have. So it wasn't a huge shocker that while under a tremendous amount of stress (you know, moving, fixing the house, working, yadda, yadda), he came down with the flu again.

The only weird part is that I never caught it.

But that weekend, my parents came to take us to Utah, so we didn't think about it much anyway. That week Brad carried Claire (and sometimes Grace) up to the Timponogos caves:

We played at South Fork Canyon (where Grace gashed her head and nearly went in for stitches--Thank goodness my dad was there to fix it): By the end of the next week (at our "Winters are Hot" Bear Lake Family Reunion), Brad was feeling crummy again, but still well enough to survive some excellent wipeouts on the wakeboard and tube.

Well, that wasn't his best moment.

And then, this Monday, he endured an evening of shmoozing at a wedding reception for one of my good friends, Deja.

And here he is on Wednesday:

I can sort of explain, although I will come out as the worst, most unattentive wife ever. I am repentant. Neither of us really wanted to go to the hospital because we didn't want to pay the fees. But under the insistence of Aunt Kathleen, GG, and with some cash she stuck in my pocket, we headed to the ER. Just to make sure that his constant abdominal pain was nothing too serious.

Good thing.

Because after urine and blood tests and finally a CT scan, we discovered that Brad's usually pinky-sized appendix was the size of a softball. And it had already ruptured. Two weeks ago. On the date that he came down with his non-infectious "flu."

The promised hour-long appendectomy turned into a two-and-a-half hour procedure which also included the removal of parts of his intestine (which had been completely infected by his appendix). Our Oxford-Duke-Johns Hopkins trained surgeon said this surgery was very rare and was more complex than he had anticipated. And as a side note he mentioned that the infection would have continued to spread had we not come in, eventually proving fatal.

We were that close (insert mini pinched fingers here) to not going in. Too close.