Valentines and Semi-Emergencies

Happy Valentines Day! We're having a low-key celebration with some excessively sugared preschoolers. You see, everyone is sick. We were holding out hope that The Husband would be the sole survivor and thus take care of us all. But alas, this was not to be. I've found that with three children, our household needs more than ONE humidifier. I've learned quite a few lessons this holiday. One of which being; do not kill yourself over making valentines. Ours was the only handmade, most parents just brought an unopened bag of tiny Nerds boxes and called it a day. I cannot blame these parents, in fact they are probably a million times wiser than myself.

At 5am Monday morning, everyone was sleeping. Sunday had been a rough one with both parents out of commission, there was a lot of movies, snacks passed as meals, and quite frankly, everyone was bored and cranky. But at 5am, I was awoken by some rather annoying stomach cramps. Dismissing them as menstrual cramps, I decided to coax my tired body downstairs to pop some Tylenol. Halfway down the stairs the pain started spiraling out of control, my ears were ringing, and  I felt like I could hurl at any moment. I barely made it to the kitchen sink, but the nausea would not yeild, the room was spinning, and just waiting for water to fill the glass seemed agonizing. I was able to shove a pill down my throat and drink some water before I found myself on the floor. I don't know if I had passed out, or in the daze of the crushing pain, had decided to lay down on the linoleum. Either way I was there, on the floor, yelling as loud as I could to wake The Husband. There was no way I was getting off that floor. After about half an hour of trying to get someone to notice my peril, I decided to crawl- step by step- (yes, I am singing the theme song to Step By Step as well. Darn you, Suzanne Somers) where I burst in the door to our room and crumpled on the floor once more. This was a little more than startling to The Husband. What were we to do?! I was pretty sure something in my abdomen was exploding. My spleen? My appendix? I was reeling in pain, no position would ease it, and the room kept spinning.

Feeling insanely foolish, I did not want to bother anyone. This was either going to kill me, or go away the second we woke somebody up. We opted to call and wake up my brother so he could come and watch the kids while The Husband took me to the ER, where the pain mysteriously abated. OF COURSE. The nurse asked me to define my pain level on a scale of 1-10. I hung my head and answered "three right now... but at home it was a twelve. I swear." Blood work was taken, and a dose of pain medication was administered anyway. Luckily (?) the violent pain flipped on the switch again, and I was writhing on a gurney. Additional pain meds were shot up, and off to a cat scan I went.

This whole time I was worried about one singular problem: I had made just under 100 valentines and a batch of cookies for the preschool party in the passenger seat of my car. THE KIDS HAD TO TAKE THEM TO THE PARTY! And I was pretty sure some kind of surgery would be in my future, you don't have that kind of pain for no reason. Honestly, I would not have been surprised if the doctor had told me my stomach was torn in two.

To my ACTUAL surprise, all tests came back normal. There was a mass on my bladder, but the doctor was not worried about it- probably some scar tissue from my two c-sections. Seriously, I could barely comprehend this news. (and the pain meds had made me both spacey and vomity- the nurses hated me as they constantly had to clean out my yak-bin) I probably should have asked more questions, or at least pressed the ER guy to take it a bit more seriously, but I just wanted to go home and curl up in my own bed and sleep for... ever.

Still don't know what was really up with all the pain. It doesn't add up to me that my body would push the nuke button like that without valid reason, but whatever. I guess I cannot argue with a clean cat scan.

Anyway, the night before Valentine's Day, I was determined to make the day MAGICAL for the twins. It seemed like the perfect combination of everything my 5 year olds adore. So I was gingerly minding my sore tummy... and cutting out paper hearts for a "heart attack" for the girls to wake up to:

Source: skiptomylou.wordpress.com via craftyashley on Pinterest

Valentines morning was just as magical as I wanted it to be. Granted The Husband was sprawled on the couch coughing, the girls' eyes lit up at all the nice things written on the hearts taped to their doors. It is so easy to tickle them, and I love it. Then we made pink, heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast, and whisked the little ones off to their big Valentine's Day party.

The pink bedecked girls arrived home with a sack full of sweet treats, lovely little notes, and pure preschooler joy. In the end: great day.