On a Level From One to Shit....

These are the actual words the nurse asked us last night in the ER. No, it wasn't me this time, it was Greg; yes Greg, the one who is pretty much never sick. But when he does it, he does it good; so good in fact that he remains at the hospital where he was admitted shortly before 2 am this morning. He started feeling yucky yesterday morning and it got progressively worse throughout the day. He actually came home from work early; home from a work day that was supposed to be a late one. In fact I had not expected him to return home at all until sometime today. He was in a lot of discomfort, very bloated, and had lower abdominal pain. He had been extremely gassy throughout the day, but as the the day progressed it was mostly burping that was happening but the burps were horrendously stinky.....like.....well.....let's just say that's why our hilarious nurse Steve asked us the title question. Long story short, he has a bowel obstruction. The doctor said per the X-Ray it seems as though it's a mechanical issue; ie a portion of the intestine is not functioning. He was in contact with the surgeon and was initially going to order a CT scan, but the surgeon wanted them to take a different route first to relieve Greg's discomfort and the strain on his intestines. So a GI tube was inserted in the ER through his nose. Poor poor Greg. It looked like utter agony. As they were inserting it, he began to vomit.....a lot.....over and over again. It actually gave him a great deal of relief to empty his stomach, but the nose tube was very uncomfortable for him. Before they moved him upstairs, they gave him some dilautid to help with the nose/throat/stomach pain and he appeared to be very comfortable shortly thereafter not really caring about the tube anymore; cracking jokes as only Greg can. When I left, he was safe in his hospital bed, starting to snooze so I'm really hoping he was able to get some rest. We won't know more until the surgeon comes in this morning. It is likely they will do the CT scan sometime this morning, but I don't know for sure. Anyways...that's where it stands at the moment. I just can't believe the chaos these first 3 1/2 months of 2009 have brought us.