About Me

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Living Off the Land

We had been talking about camping for a couple of weeks, we finally were able to pick a date, even the rain couldn't deter us. Brea and I spent the morning getting everything prepped and ready, gathering food, games and camping supplies.
The campground may not have been the nicest one that I have ever been to, but Brea, Darrell, Clark, Addie, me, Kimmy, and her roommates had fun anyway.

Clark getting the fire started.


Only part of the stuff that was shoved into the car.

Brea prepping the meatballs for the tin foil dinners.

Addie and Uncle Clark

Darrell and Clark (with the help of Addie) setting up tent #1.

Dinner cooking.









An interesting mix of burnt that Kimmy and her roommates made.








A quick way to clean out tents before taking them down.

I didn't remember how much work camping was but I still love it and am looking forward to the next opportunity that I have to go.

Swinging Monkeys in the Trees

August 31st was my niece Sarah's 6th birthday! Sonia planned an outrageously awesome party full of jungle animals and lots of fun.


It started out with a puppet show filled with all the local animals coming to join.

There was animal tag...one of those pigs sure were wild :)



They even played animal attack, one person was jumping and trying to get the other person to be hit by an animal, if they got it they were out.

There was even yummy food.

Sonia and I made adorable jungle cupcakes, they were a big hit!

Lots of cute and fun presents, even a pink tutu from Grandma and I.

My Eeyore that I made for pin the tail on the donkey.

It was a great party and all the kids had lots of fun, unfortunately 4 days after surgery made me very tired-I went home and visited my bed.

Bye-Bye Appendix

Now for the story I know that everyone has been dying to hear. On August 26th at about 5 in the morning I was woken up by this intense pain in my lower stomach. I got up and went to the bathroom, tried drinking some water and it didn't go away. I've had lots of problems with my stomach for years so I figured that it was just a continuation of that and decided to ignore it going back to sleep.
I had to go to work at 9:20 so got up at about 8 to shower and get ready, my stomach was still hurting so I tried eating something but it still did not help. I took my shower and when Mom woke up I mentioned to her what had happened. Despite being only half awake she immediately jumped into Mom mode, asking where it hurt, how much it hurt, should we go to the doctors right then, was I sure that I really wanted to go to work, etc. I wasn't a very good sick person when I was little, I was a very big complainer and not fun to be around so I tried to play it down and said that I was fine and I was going to go to work.
My car was currently out of commission so my Mom drove me to work, she said that if I needed to be picked up to call immediately and she would come and get me. I went into work and laid down on the couch, because I hadn't really said anything to anyone everyone knew that something was wrong. My supervisor was so nice the whole shift, he would come check on me and see if I needed anything. When the 1 o'clock shift came in he sent someone to where I was working to tell me that I was going home as I looked green. I called Mom to come get me and laid back down on the couch while I waited.
I arrived at home and Mom told me that I had two hours to sleep and unless I was feeling immensely better she was taking me to the doctors...one and a half hours later I was rudely awaken and asked how I was feeling, when I flinched as I was getting out of bed she told me to get my shoes on and that we were going to the doctors.
I am a person that avoids the doctors at all costs unless I have to, so I was terribly excited as you can imagine to be going. The doctor was really kind and gentle and after I had explained to him was had happened that day, he pressed down on different parts of my stomach and seemed to find it great fun to watch me wince.
He immediately expressed that he was concerned that it was appendicitis, he asked some questions and because of some of the answers that I gave he felt that I still had sometime before it was going to rupture, but he still felt that I needed to get it taken care of.
I was sent to Timpanogos Hospital in Orem (I was very impressed with this hospital, they bent over backwards to be kind, helpful, give me the best, and cheapest bills possible) to have a CT scan done to see what insides looked like.

(hanging out waiting for the results in my scrubs after having the CT scan done)

It was a very unique experience having the CT scan done, they put this dye into an IV, the nurse had told me that when it entered my body I would suddenly feel like I need to pee (even though I wouldn't need to) and that my body would be washed over with warmth. When it happened I definitely knew what she was talking about, I asked her how long it was going to last because I felt like I needed to pee so bad, luckily it only lasted about a minute or so. After the scan was done I was sent back out to the lobby to wait for the results, I was sitting waiting for a long time when all of a sudden the nurse came back out and told me that she was supposed to be taking me to the ER, we immediately were worried and asked what was going on. She said that she legally wasn't supposed to tell me anything but that I had appendicitis and that was supposed to be taking me to the ER.
I arrived in the ER, they didn't have any rooms available so I was put in a nice curtained off bed, where I got to change into my very first backless gown. I was told that I was really lucky, the surgeon was in the hospital and that I would be able to get in very quickly. He came in and introduced himself and went through the whole procedure with me and answered all the questions that I had. After talking to him I was still a little nervous but felt a lot better about what was going to happen, I felt comfortable with him and that everything was going to be ok.

I tried to power nap before I went into surgery, I'm not sure how well that worked.

The surgery went very quickly, I was done in less than an hour and I don't remember any of it :) Besides when I came out of recovery I remember Mom trying to talk to me but I was so tired and could barely keep my eyes open. That night at the hospital was very long, they had to come in every hour and check my vitals and replace my IV's. The IV was put in kind of weird on my arm so if I moved it an alarm would go off and it wouldn't stop until the nurse came back in and cleared it. I'm not sure that I really got that much sleep so I was kind of glad to be going home.

Beautiful flowers from Leisa in my Relief Society, she came over Sunday and visited with me.

My very own hospital band

I even got an awesome hospital water jug!

A cute card that Brea made me.

Two weeks ago I went back to the doctor to have a check-up, he looked at all of my incisions and asked how things were going. He made me laugh when he said that you could barely see the incisions, when I agreed with him he said "man, I'm a great surgeon!" :D He told me that I am all clear, I still need to be a little slow at lifting heavy weights and I can't jerk my body to the sides quickly. I mentioned to him that I had been so tired lately, he said that it will probably be something that will go on for a couple more months. Besides being exhausted everything seems to be all better, I'm so grateful that everything turned out a lot better than it could have and everything is healing perfectly.
I now can say that I am missing a body part :)

Sunday, September 4, 2011

It's Raining Men (I wish!)

I had the day off and day passes to spare so I invited Leah, Jamie, Brea, Darrell, Candace, Anna, and Janet to all come spend the afternoon at Seven Peaks. Unfortunately the weather had other plans. We rode in the lazy river a couple of times and then got out so the others could ride the slides. They had only gone a couple of times when everyone had to get out of the water because of the potential rain, thunder, and lightning that was going to happen.
We got to spend lots of time sitting and waiting (law is if it rains, thunders, or strikes lightning you must wait 30 minutes once the last happens), sadly they felt it wasn't going to go away anytime soon so they closed the park for the rest of the afternoon. If only the park could have been 4-5 miles north of where it was---they had perfect weather!























It was a fun afternoon to just get everyone together but a bit of a letdown as it was my last time to be able to go before they closed for the season.