November 11th

My dear mother-in-law, Barb, came over and stayed with the kids while I took Kevin to the ER. When we knew Kevin was going to be admitted I sadly left him so that I could quick get home to make a plan with Barb. Fortunately, St. Francis is just down the road from our house which makes getting back and forth to Kevin easy. Unfortunately, it is a small hospital so things might move a little slower and they have to bring in all of their specialists.

We decided that Barb would stay with the kids until bedtime and I'd go back and stay with Kevin until the drugs kicked in and he could go to sleep. I didn't want to ever leave him but needed to try to keep life as normal as possible for the kids and can't miss anymore work than I have to.

The rounds doctor saw Kevin while I was there and explained that they were going to give him lots of meds to control the pain, keep him from moving as much as possible, and then have the spine doctor review the MRI and possibly consult for surgery if necessary on Friday. Kevin was given dilaudid, toradal, IV steriods, flexerall, and morphine. Even with all these meds and laying in a supposedly comfortable bed (according to Kevin) he was still in great pain. They upped some of the doses and still nothing made Kevin feel any better. I left around 9 p.m. and Kevin was just starting to feel some relief and was about to fall asleep.

All the while the kids were o.k. but weren't really sure what it meant to be in the hospital. Unfortunately, Kevin often doesn't feel well and recently he'd been pretty bad so that isn't new to them. Kevin is always around so it was weird that he wasn't home but they didn't seem to concerned.

The kids had a good time with Grandma and got lots of love and attention! Barb cooked up some pork chops I had and they devoured them! For some reason every time my kids are with Barb and Dick (Kevin's parents) they eat really well. We just can't figure it out! Maybe she tops everything with M&Ms or something! Or she just cooks a lot better than me which is definitely true.