Emergency Room?

So I (Nick) am not big on doctors, medications, hospitals or basically anything that has to do with medicine, or the human anatomy for that matter. It grosses me out--OK!

So last week when I began having some upper abdominal pain, I thought I just needed some antacid. That was my first of many concessions when it comes to "medicine". My pain got worse and worse, so much so that I had to cancel my sales appointment. I could hardly move, and when I did it was an attempt at stopping the pain. Nothing was working, and it felt like it was getting worse.

So finally I caved and Becky and I decided to go to the emergency room. Ugggg...why do they call it an emergency room. No one is in any haste to treat people so that negates the emergency part. I waited longer than I was treated. It started in triage. Where they ask you what is hurting, and they always ask the assumptive question in the stop faking it tone, "what is going on tonight?" or "do you drink a lot of alcohol?" For both questions there seems to be no good answer when you are look for relief from pain.

After triage there was some more waiting, then the phlebotomist (vampire), took some blood for tests. I hate getting my blood drawn, it is gross, I can not even watch or think about the blood getting taken from my body. Yuck. After this, more waiting.

Finally we get taken out of the waiting room, into the real emergency room. Room number 6. Where we...yep you guessed it...waited another hour and a half. Finally the doctor came in, felt my stomach, said he was going to run some more tests. After he left...oh yes...more waiting!

They did a few tests to make sure nothing major was going on. Everything came back fine. Then they tried sticking an I.V. in me and missed twice. Once they succeeded the third time they gave me a bunch of drugs. Here is a little sample of what it was like.



Pretty funny huh. Basically I had a slight case of food poisoning which caused a lot of gas in my stomach. So both of those factors caused me to have a lot of pain. I am feeling much better now, and looking forward to a great Christmas Holiday.

Thanksgiving In Kentucky

At the end of November we did a little road trip. The main destination was Columbia, KY. Where Becky's Grandma lives. But first we made a little detour to Noblesville, IN. Where our friend Ben & Christina Malan live. We stayed there for a night inbetween our drive from Chicago to Kentucky. Ben & Christina had to work the next day so we spent sometime before sleep to see their new home, and to catch up on life. The next morning Becky and I went to leave, but we didn't want to just lock their door handle to their house, we wanted to leave the deadbolt locked. So we made our own olympic event of trying to jump over the sensor of their garage door. We exited the house sucussfully, after a few attempts and we were on to Grandma's house. But there was one more important stop before that.

CHICK-FIL-A! Yes jeleous readers. We went to Chick-Fil-A. Not once, but twice. We enjoyed some fresh chicken with some delicious buffulo & bbq sauce as well. God Bless Chick-Fil-A.

We got to Becky's Grandma's home in Kentucky. First let me say it is awesome to stay there. It's like we can put our crazy lives on pause for a few days. This allows us to catch our breath, recharge our batteries, and have lots of fun. There is no pressure, no expectations, and no work.

This year we got to visit Lake Cumberland State Park in Kentucky, it is about 40 minutes from Grandma's house. It was very beautiful.

Our extended weekend there consisted of a huge thanksgiving meal, staying up late playing games (mainly Capitalism & Texas Hold'em), having late night talks, and the Black Friday 5am trip to Wal-Mart.

The trip to Wal-Mart is funny. It is like the chaos of every other big city store on black friday, but since it is a much smaller community than the Chicago suburbs it is a lot nicer. People are friendly when they are pushing each other over, and very nice and polite as they squeeze past you. Plus it seems like a lot of people know each other. So instead of "Hey I Had That Toy First", it was "Hey how is your family". Very interesting, and cool.

Any way on the way back we carvaned with Jeremy, Tina & Allison, stopping once again, at, you guessed it Chick-Fil-A.