We just love the hospital

Yes it has been a bit since our last little update, and we would love to say it was due to us vacationing in some exotic place, but unfortunately it's just due to Amber taking a vacation in the hospital . . . twice. Yes twice, in one week's time.

The first time, we went in due to some intense low back pain. Come to find out it was caused by a 10 mm kidney stone which was way too large and thus "stuck". Who would have thunk that something as tiny as 10mm/1cm could cause so much trouble. Now she really only had 2 options of treatment-1-put a stent in-2-blast the stone apart with sound waves-both were "surgical procedures". The bright side of the story is that the lithotripsy machine (option #2) would be at that hospital the next day. So she went with that option, got a nice bruise, was a little trippy from the anesthesia, but otherwise fine and went home that night (wednesday).
A few days later she started feeling this gnawing feeling right below her sternum. It didn't hurt, but was just annoying. Travis convinced her to finally call the Dr. (saturday), and he told her to go into the ER. This really was not the answer she was looking for. So away we went into the ER. [sidenote: If you ever have a choice of when to go into the ER, choose early am during the week] We really thought it would be nothing, and were speechless when the Dr came in (laughing) that she would have to have her gall bladder removed because it was 4 times the normal size. Amber has never had any issues with eating or her gall bladder for that matter, so we had all kinds of questions-which no one was really able to answer. We did find out that 90% of all gall blabbers removed have issues with stones before hand-isn't she the lucky 10%. This of course required another surgical procedure-this time with actual cutting-and that didn't happen until late sunday night. Amber was NOT happy about having to wait 36 hours to eat, and then was restricted to a clear liquid diet-then was excited to get moved up to a pure liquid diet-how sad is that? (If you ever have to have any laparoscopic procedure-watch out for the shoulder pains!) She was also told no lifting-hard to do when you have 4 kids and one is a 2 yr old and another is a 3 mo old baby.

Thankfully we have an AMAZING ward (church group) who just took care of everything-farmed the kids out, meals, groceries, cleaned, and more. It was very humbling to rely on others so much, but such a great blessing. Travis also has a great boss who is very understanding and let him have a flexible schedule during this time. Most of the kids thought it was great-a new friends house everyday. Do you know how ere it is to recover in a quiet house?(when normally you are always listening to children playing? or at least a baby sleeping) And it's very hard to not be able to pick up your baby, or to look pregnant again (when you just lost all the weight), or to even have staples in you. We think it was a little harder because so much happened in such a short period of time-we all had our "crashing" moments. But like all things. . ."it came to pass", and didn't stay. We are finally starting to get closer to normal, and are just very thankful for all that we have.