it is a long story...

so if you want to know the details, keep reading. if not, then know that mel is okay and should be feeling a lot better in a few days.
mel was diagnosed with gastroparesis a few years back. it is basically where a part of your stomach is paralized. so what happens is when you eat food your stomach contracts to digest it. well part of her stomach decided it was tired of all that work and just stopped so the rest of the stomach works extra hard to get the food out and into the intestines. if you have ever had a muscle spasm that is what it feels like for mel. but there is nothing she can do to make it stop. so she gets pain in her abdomen that gets more and more intense the longer the stomach has to keep working. when she was diagnosed with this she was given medicine to help the food move through her stomach quicker and told how to eat so that the food wouldn't linger or overwhelm the stomach. that had been working like a charm. so well, in fact, that the doc said she could go off the meds about 6 months ago. it really is just an antibiotic that makes you poo, not a medicine specific for her disease but it basically did the same thing.
so monday (was that just yesterday?) she was in a lot of pain. her boss sent her home from work and she started getting more severe pain and it moved into her chest. so at that point we were concerned about her heart since heart disease runs in her family and, well, let's just say she is not longer a spring chicken. we headed to the er at 7:30 and went to the "good" one just in case it was her heart. well if you didn't go to the er monday then you just aren't cool because EVERYONE and their mother was there. so once they did an ekg and blood test that showed it in fact was not a heart attack they sent us back to the waiting room. no, you didn't miss something. we had to go back to the waiting room to be called back because, even though she was in so much pain she wanted to die, she wasn't actually actively dying. around ten we had mom call the "bad" er just to see if it was as happening as the "good" one and it was about the same so we stayed put. finally at eleven thirty we were called back to our spot in the hall. no, i am not kidding. her "room" was hall b. they actually had the spots labeled along the hallway. if only i had brought my camera... they finally gave her pain meds a little after midnight and then decided that it might be her gall bladder or appendix so more blood tests were ordered. well, apparently the lab thought we really wanted to chill at the er all night because when the doc called the lab at three thirty they said "oh, we forgot to do those..." we were finally given the diagnosis of gastroparesis flare up at four am and discharged fifteen minutes later. we were home in bed by five. moral of the story... only go to the "good" er if you are sure you are dying.
epilogue: upon arriving home and crawling into my warm bed i realized i was not tired. yeah, i know... i am a freak! so i remember my facebook status. there were so many comments i actually started crying. i am sure it was just exhaustion... thanks so much for your prayers and concern. you guys rock! and if you are still reading, you must really love me... because i am even sick of the story.
love to you all. back to my craftiness and thankfulness tomorrow...