Thursday night after dinner my wife started getting some bad stomach cramps. Then worse stomach cramps. Then nine on a ten scale painful stomach cramps. So off to the ER we went.

She has Crohn’s disease and got about a foot of her colon taken out seven years ago, so anything GI-related is serious business for us. We thought it might be a blockage.

We got to the ER around midnight, and got into a room about three hours later. An hour or two later the ER doc came in and got her some morphine, and she finally was able to get some sleep. Another two or three hours later they got her that CT scan they had promised.

Then the ER doctor said it just might be a blockage. He said he’d call in a surgeon, that surgery was likely. He’d give her an NG tube in the meantime, thought it might take the pressure off.

My wife has only had major surgery that once. She’s had some “flares” since then, and some minor procedures, but nothing like that first time. The thought of major surgery threw me. I about lost it.

It was morning now, so I went outside to start calling family. I’d had about a half hour of sleep.

Another couple of hours later the surgeon came in and asked a lot of questions. Very good bedside manner. Maybe the best I’ve ever seen. She didn’t think surgery was necessary but would call in a GI doc to make sure. A couple of hours later the GI doc, who I’d seen in the hallway off and on for three or four hours, came in and said the same.

After twelve hours, we went home with three prescriptions and a diagnosis of gastroenteritis and went to bed.