When it Rains it Pours

Ashlyn woke up Wednesday night/Thursday morning at 2am screaming and crying with her belly hurting. She also had a fever of 102. I was up for a good 2 hours with her trying to calm her down. I gave her some Motrin hoping that it would help. By 5am when Britt came in from work she was crying out in pain again. I took her to the doctor first thing Thursday morning. Appendicitis was the first thing that popped into my head. The doctor was shocked at how much pain she was in. He ordered blood work and a urine sample. Everything came back with the results that he wanted. He said that more than likely it was just viral. There was only a 5% chance that it could be appendicitis. He told me that if she was still showing the same symptoms on Friday to bring her back in and he would order a catscan on her appendix. He called in some hydrocodone for the pain and sent us home. By 5:00 that afternoon she was worse than she was before. All she did was lay in her bed an moan. I called back up to the doctor's office and spoke to the doctor on call. He told me to take her to the ER and that he would call the hospital and order the CT scan. It killed me to see my child suffering the way that she was! I've never seen anyone in as much pain as she was laying on that hospital bed. It was the worst feeling as a mother knowing that my child is laying there helpless and I can't do anything to take this terrible pain away! They drew blood, started an iv, gave her morphine for the pain................. MORPHINE for my 4 year old!!!, did a catheter, gave her an enema of dye so that they could do the catscan, ran the catscan. She was PITIFUL!!! The surgeon was 99% sure that it was appendicitis. He had the OR room ready, and he was fully prepared to do surgery on my baby. To all of our surprise the CT scan came back normal. Her appendix looked fine. They admitted her for the night because of her pain level. Also they weren't sure what was going on, so they wanted to keep a close eye on her over night. Not the greatest thing in the world, but I was happy that they kept her so that they could monitor her pain level. By Friday morning her fever had broken, and her pain was slowly going away. She definitely had the doctor's scratching their heads. All they could say was that apparently she had some kind of nasty virus. The doctor finally released her at 8pm Friday night. As Ashlyn was being released my mom called and said that she was bringing my dad to the ER because he was having pain in his arm and tightness in his chest. Mom came into to Ashlyn's room bawling. My dad was having a heart attack! They transferred him from Catawba to Frye. I couldn't leave with my mom because I was stuck at Catawba until all of Ashlyn's release forms were drawn up. I have never in my life been under as much stress as I was at that very moment! I felt like my world was crashing down on me. Britt met me up at the hospital to take Ashlyn home and I rushed up to Frye to find out news on my dad. He had a complete blockage in his main artery. There is a 90 minute window whenever there is a complete blockage. He made it to Frye, and the heart team had the stint in place right in that 90 minute time period. If he would have waited a few minutes longer before going to the hospital, or if anything wouldn't have played out the way that it did my dad may not be here with us today. I PRAISE GOD that my daddy is still here!!!! He's been in the critical care unit, but they finally moved him to a regular room last night. They will assess the damage today to see if he has any long term damage to his heart. Please pray for my dad, that he makes a full recovery. Please keep our family in your prayers. It has been one heck of a week! On top of all of this our house was struck by lightning on Thursday night while we were at the hospital with Ashlyn. It knocked out our satellite dish and receiver, our computer modem and speakers, and our brand new remote control gate that we just installed a few months ago. For the love!!!!!!!!