A long night in the ER

Last night at about 2:30am, Eric woke up with extreme pain in his abnomen so I got him up. We thought it might be gas pain so we waited up a while with no relief. I decided to give him a vicadin to see if the pain would subside enough to sleep and he threw up a few minutes later. I then checked his temp which read 101.6 so I started to worry more. We called my aunt who is a nurse at about 3:30 and decided to wait another hour to see if the pain would go away which it didn't so I called my parents to come stay with the kids and we were off to the ER at around 5 this morning. When we arrived, it was very slow so I thought we would get fast service, however, there was a big problem getting a vein to run an IV in Eric. We had many nurses and Dr's attempt to poke him numerous times with no luck. They wanted to rule out appendicitis and wanted him to drink a contrast to do a catscan on his abnomen. He instantly threw up the first few sips of the drink as they were still trying to poke him. They decided to try his artery in his groin at this point which failed miserably too. They even brought in an ultrasound to try to see the vein and ended up going to the other side to try again with a very large IV needle. After a lot of pain and a lot of blood and many tears shed and prayers said by me, they finally got his IV port in. They tested his blood and urine and we tried to prep him again for the Catscan. He received pain and naseau medication and was finally brought to the catscan at about 9:30 this morning. They would not let me go with him which was our second bad experience. No one passed on his health status with ALS so they asked him to transfer to the table when he got there. He could hardly talk because he was tired, heavily medicated and laying flat on his back. When they finally understood him, a very thin woman and an elderly man transfered him to the catscan table. All the while no one explained to us the procedure except that it would only take 5 minutes. When they finally got Eric on the table, they put a bunch of pillows under Eric's head which restricted his breathing. He tried to tell them, but they couldn't understand him. They finally figured it out when he kept staring at the pillows and shook his head no. The older gentleman said not to worry that he couldn't breathe well because he was on oxygen, what they didn't understand is Eric's forced vital capacity is very low which I explained to the prior doctors in our room. They taped Eric's arms down and he felt like he was in a straight jacket and fed him through a tube. A while later, they appeared by his feet and pulled out the blanket from his groin and applied the dye and did the procedure with no explanation of what they were doing. Eric arrived back at the room by 10 and was groggy and clearly not happy but too tired to talk. Eric's parents and my parents were at the hospital by then waiting with me. They came back with the results later and said "the good news is you don't need surgery, the bad news is you have a kidney stone and will need to pass that." They gave us some prescriptions, paperwork and pulled his IV and sent us home by about noon. Eric's mom is staying here with us a few days and my parents went to get the groceries I have been meaning to get the last few days and we slept until 6 tonight. Eric is still in pain and I need to go get his RX. Please pray that he can be comfortable and that it will pass quickly and the pain can be controlled.
We have been meaning to update the blog this week after he got back from his trip which was amazing which Eric and Zach will update you on soon. It has been a very difficult week for us adjusting with school and schedules and emotionally.
As much as I enjoy the break from taking care of Eric, it is hard to go back to the routine after I have a break. When I do it every day, it feels like our "normal" and when I don't like when we were in Hawaii with no schedule or responsibilities, I realize how hard it really is when we go back to our routine and I get almost irritable instead of full of grace. We both have been having a very hard time coping with this disease this week and have shed a lot of tears. Please keep us in your prayers as you have been. My sister and her family have been struggling this week also with her cancer and chemo treatments and are facing some very big decisions so that makes it hard for our whole family. Sometimes I feel like this world is so broken with sickness, sin, broken marriages, financial strife etc, I just want Christ to return and take us all home to glory! Our life verse comes to mind especially today:
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

May the Lord watch over us all this week and provide for all of our needs.
In Him,
Lori and Eric