Well it is almost 3am and I am sitting in the emergency department lobby of the University of Washington Medical Center. My night did not start this way. Let’s turn back the clock 7 hours...
Earlier in the evening I went to a friend’s home to ring in the new year. We were having a lovely time. Just eating snacks, chillaxin... everything was very cozy. Until I got a call from one of my other best friends. We grew up next door to one another and our parents still are next door neighbors.
The call went to my voice mail which then sent me a completely garbled text of the message. At first I thought she was asking if I would be coming to her house later for New Year’s Eve. But then I saw the word ambulance.
AMBULANCE????
When I hear her message she tells me her parents called. Saying an ambulance was at MY PARENT’S house.😳 I immediately call mom and dad. No answer. This is just after 8pm. My parents never go out. Well, they do but I had talked to them just at 5:30 and knew they were in for the night. I call again. Still no answer. I call dad’s cellphone...
He picks up!
But then tells me my mom is in an ambulance and he is following it to the ER. 😢
After dinner sometime she started experiencing excruciating pain in her side, then began vomiting. She couldn’t move so dad called the medic. He told me he would call when they got to the ER.
After making some calls (one to my friend to tell her what was happening and to thank her for calling me and one to my husband who was home sick) I sort of sat around a minute. I didn’t really know what to do with myself.The whole thing was very surreal. Thankfully another friend encouraged me to head to the hospital. His encouragement snapped me out of the surreal and I left to find my parents.
I made it to my mom’s room just after 9:30pm. She was not in a good way. She looked 100 years old and her face was totally distorted by pain and fear. And she was just making the most visceral moaning sound. I panicked at first because seeing my mom like that... it just felt like something I shouldn’t be seeing. But then I sucked it up and put on my big girl pants and grabbed a chair by the side of her bed. I sat with her, held her hand and told her she would be OK. That I knew it hurt, but that the doctors would make her feel better.
We were at the hospital a long time as the doctors administered pain and nausea medications and conducted diagnostic tests. Waiting for each test result took ages.
Then out of nowhere her pain went away!
A CT scan eventually revealed the reason why. It turns out mom has two rather sizable kidney stones! I had them once in my early 20’s. Hands down it was the most painful thing I have ever experienced and now mom was experiencing that too. The stones only cause pain when they shift. So the sudden end to her pain means she either passed the stones, or they just stopped moving.
While this obviously was a horrible physical experience for her... I am so thankful that she is OK and that her pain wasn’t caused by something more insidious.
So while it didn’t feel like it at the time, this New Year did start with the happiest news. My mama is gonna be OK.
Happy 2020 everyone. Love your people hard and without restraint.
xo -dfinney
