Good news: Chuck's still alive

Bad news: We racked up a bit of a hospital bill last week when Chuck had emergency surgery!
Now that I've got your attention, let's figure out what in the world happened to my husband. . .

Did an injury occur when we went shooting last Monday . . .

with these awesome people? (Sidenote: a future post will be dedicated solely to this shooting venture because it was awesome, and yes, Eden did destroy that pop can that Quinn is holding. She's hardcore).

Nope, not a shooting injury (thank goodness!). Hmm, did something happen later that day when Chuck joined Quinn and Eden for a whitewater rafting trip on the Payette River??

(Okay, this is not actually a picture of them, BUT it is very similar because I stole it from Sean's facebook page. Sean is the fellow at the back of the raft, aka the river guide. He's one of Quinn's best friends and has been a rafting guide on the Payette for the last several summers and his wedding present to Quinn and Eden was taking them out rafting. Chuck got to tag along, lucky!)

Nope, it (again, thankfully) wasn't related to the rafting trip. So what happened? Well, I'll tell you. Chuck's own body turned against him:

Yep, appendicitis!

And although the 'doctors' say that appendicitis is a random infection of the appendix without any apparent cause, we know differently - on Tuesday morning I, ahem, strongly encouraged Chuck to shave the mustache he'd been sporting for about a week, which he did. That night, the stomach pains started. We have since come to the conclusion that Chuck is a modern-day Samson and draws his strength from his hair. (But hey, who needs a healthy husband when you can have a clean-shaven one??)

So, as I said, Tuesday night Chuck started having severe stomach pain - he was up pretty much all night and miserable. He called in sick to work on Wednesday and moped around the house. I finally convinced him to go to an urgent care clinic that evening, and they convinced him to go to the emergency room . . . where appendicitis was diagnosed at about ten pm and it was decided they would do the surgery immediately!

That was a fun call to get. I freaked out for about thirty seconds, then snapped myself out of it :). I summoned my mom over from Boise to stay with the boys, and my dear friend Nicole to stay with the boys in the meantime until my mom arrived, and I then I headed to the hospital.

I made another call, and these awesome guys beat me to the hospital to give Chuck a Priesthood blessing. We are very appreciative of their willingness and worthiness to do this at ten-thirty on a Wednesday night.

And then it was go time! They loaded up Chuck's IV with some happy concoction to knock him out and then wheeled him off to the OR.

I found the empty waiting room and distracted myself for an hour by texting Sam and Heidi and Lee (Chuck's younger brother who had an appendectomy just a few months ago!), talking on the phone to Quinner, and taking random pictures of myself. Hey, we all cope different ways, right?

Then the lovely nurse came out at about midnight and told me that the surgery was over and everything had gone wonderfully. A few minutes after that, the surgeon came out and confirmed all of that. He did apologize that they had forgotten to pause the screen (the surgery was done laparoscopically) to take pictures of the inflamed appendix, but I assured him that was just fine :).

And about an hour later, Chuck and I were reunited in his hospital room, where he enjoyed a late-night (early-morning?) snack of orange jello.

The next morning Chuck got a visit from the surgeon with post-op instructions. We both really liked Dr. Ballantyne, which is always nice. This is also when he estimated that Chuck's appendicitis was 'acute' and would have probably burst in the next twenty-four hours. Soooo when your wife tells you to suck it up and go to the doctor, you should go because she's probably SAVING YOUR LIFE.

Then Chuck got to go for a romantic stroll around the hallway with his grandmotherly nurse (unfortunately not pictured) to prove he was ready to go home.

And as much as I enjoyed the sight of him in a hospital gown, I had been nice enough to bring him regular clothes to wear home :).

I was bummed to say good-bye to my special bed, aka window seat :). And yay for wi-fi at the hospital so we could gratefully receive all of the facebook well wishes!

As always, a special thanks to my mom for all of her help. She ended up taking the boys to her house Thursday and Friday so that Chuck could recover more easily. I got to have 'visitation' with them on Friday when my mom and I took them swimming, which was super fun :). Chuck really missed the boys, obviously, but those first couple days post-op were pretty miserable for him, so it was really nice to know that Clyde and Will were happy and taken care of and just focus on Chuck.

I retrieved them on Saturday, and they immediately (and gently!) joined Chuck on the couch for some Star Wars video game playing . . . sigh :).

Chuck's doing much better now, about a week post-op. He still moves real slow and the incisions are a bit painful, but he's hanging in there. Thanks for all of the love and support we've received!!