An Amazing Week

WHAT AN AMAZING WEEK IT HAS BEEN

When I say that it was amazing, I don’t necessarily mean wonderful.

Things started out pretty good on Monday. We had a nice day, things were going well. Billy got some good news about his family situation. The kids did their school and it was a good And then on Tuesday morning we got a call saying that the person who had borrowed our car was stopped for a suspended license. We had to go to the Sheriff’s office here and found out how get our car out of the impound yard.

It wasn’t an easy task, you see, that car was the only vehicle we had, so we had to ride our bikes to the Sheriff’s office and find out what we were going to need to do about our impounded car. We needed to go to a place where we could get a money order for the hearing to get our car back. Because it’s the end of the month we were short on cash. I called a wonderful and very generous and helpful person. They kindly lent us what we needed. It got expensive. It was $150.00 just to have the sheriff sergeant hear the situation and to have a “hearing” and to give us permission to go and get our car out of the impound lot. I was given a ride to Circle K to try to get the money order. This was the downtown Circle K and then I walked about three miles back home (memories of walking from old Overgaard’s storage lockers back to the service station next to Heber’s post office. Remember Heber and Hyrum?) Sherry walked a mile out to meet me and then we walked back home together.

I was not feeling good anyway. Now, some of you can walk or run three miles easily, but to me it was really difficult. My feet and legs were killing me. My body and soul were exhausted. We had to ride our bikes back to the Sheriff’s office give him the $150.00 money order, we rode the bikes to Car Quest to get our car. We got there at 4:45 and they close at five. After 5:00 it would have been another $46.00 to be able to get our car out or even to open the gates. But we found an old friend, Craig Bowers was there and we got to talk and catch up and all the guys were really nice. When they told us we had to spend $68.00 for our car! We weren’t happy about having to pay that, but it was what we had to do so we spent the money. So, besides walking the miles and riding to the sheriff’s office twice, we spent $150.00, plus the $68.00 just to get the car back. I was completely wiped-out and the car’s gas tank was empty too. We stopped and put money in the gas tank and so there’s another $40.00 we had to spend.

You know, I only took lower math in school, but I think that that pretty much takes care of the $250.00 we were blessed with, thanks to a generous loving and supportive person. Thank you, Dear One!

Anyway, Wednesday I was so sick from all of the fun we had on Tuesday. I wasn’t awake or aware of much all day. Sherry was not feeling good from the stress on Tuesday, but she pushed though. I did make yummy homemade French fries on Wednesday for the family.

Then, on Thursday Sherry got up early and was in a great deal of pain. She thought it was because of our crazy Tuesday. All we knew was she was really hurting. She called her mom and I helped her all day. She did not know if it was just a stomach-ache, or stomach flu. She threw up over and over. I looked on the Internet to see what could be done for her. She drank baking soda and water and threw up some more. We waited to see if she was going to get better or worser (?). I called Sharla to see what a gall bladder attack feels like and she offered some good advice. The pain wasn’t getting better for Sherry so we had to decide what to do. We had to go to the hospital emergency room right away!!

I helped her out to the car and we left the four kids (ages 14, 12, 11, 9) at home and gave them instructions because we didn’t know when we would be back. I told them I thought we may even have to stay all night since I’ve seemingly spent a good portion of my life in hospitals I realized things move very slowly there. We went in to the Show Low hospital. At first it seemed we should go to the Payson hospital, but Sherry wanted to go to Show Low. She wasn’t able to talk too much, but she did grunt when I said Show Low. It was probably so we would be near to her sister, Shirley Hatch. In fact, Shirley called right as we were getting to the hospital and said she would go and pick up the four children while we were at the hospital. She lives in Taylor and so that was very nice of her to do that.

It has been a long time since I have been to the hospital there. Back then it was called the Navapache hospital. I wasn’t thrilled about going back there. I was surprised to see this hospital and how it has improved. It is now Summit Health hospital. We got to the emergency room about 5:30 PM. and it did not take them long to see how much pain she was experiencing. In fact, she passed out twice on the way to the hospital. They took her to the bed and gave her treatment right away. One nurse thought it was gall bladder and Doctor Williams came in and determined that the pain was probably gall bladder, or gall stones. They finally gave her pain medication, but she still hurt pretty badly.

The doctor ordered an ultra sound. When the tech came he was a very nice man. He joked with us and made the long test very pleasant. He said his father was 42 and his mom was 20 when he was born. He said his father was a molester, murderer and committed suicide. The person his father molested and murdered was him and then his father killed himself. This good man was revived from the murder attempt. Now, he said, he forgives his father for molesting and murdering him. He was adopted by a family in Montana and at the age of thirteen joined the LDS Church. I told him that I have been a fulltime missionary in Montana and he said he has a soft placed in his heart for those that serve in Montana. He moved back to Arizona and became a tech and is a very nice man. He told us that his son was leaving for Chile on his mission next week.

We laughed and joked and he said that the that he looks at all the patients in the hospital and judges what Is wrong with them at first and then he has a tape of images and matches it up and then just throws it on to show the doctors what’s wrong. He said that the tape he had on at the time was an ultrasound of twins, oh wait, did he say triplets? It was funny.

We got back to her ER room and they gave her more medication since she was still hurting pretty bad. In about an hour two more technicians came in and took her to have a cat scan or a CT scan, I’m not sure. I walked outside to get some fresh air and right in front of me was Wendy’s. So I had to go get a spicy chicken sandwich and a chocolate frosty. When I got back to the emergency room Sherry was concerned because she didn’t know where I was.

After a while Dr. Williams came in and he had a surprised look on his face. He told us that she did not have gold bladder problems. He said that she had acute appendicitis. He was very surprised, he said there was a doctor and specialist that was a top-rate surgeon and that he would allow him to perform surgery on himself or his wife. Then he said something very surprising. He said she would have surgery within two hours. Then about 9:30 she went into surgery. I went outside again to get more fresh air, but didn’t go to Wendy’s. I went to a waiting room where they had pudding, Jell-O, juice, soda, crackers or anything else that I wanted. Everyone was very nice, even the cleaning ladies were waiting on me.

Sherry came out of surgery after over an hour-and-a-half and was in the recovery room when they took me to her. She was still in a great deal of pain. Now the interesting thing was the Summit Hospital in Show Low was a very nice hospital, and everyone was really nice, except the first person who took our information. In fact, the guy who was in charge of Sherry before and after surgery was named John. I asked him where he went on his mission (You could just tell…it was written all over his face) and he said he went to Alabama. I asked him whether he rooted for Auburn or the University of Alabama. He said he was in Tuscaloosa and so he pulled for Alabama.

The surgeon came in and said everything had gone well and Sherry had done perfect. He said her appendix was huge like a large jalapeño and would have ruptured very soon. I asked him about the casualty rate of people who have them rupture and he explained what they do in that case, but the casualty rate is high then he showed me pictures of her appendix (and those of you who know me well know that I don’t like that kind of thing) he said I brought her to the hospital just in time.

They took us to our private room on the second floor, room 208, and introduced Misti, our nurse and the tech named Scott Woods. They both were very nice. Misti’s husband went on a mission to Brazil like my Heber did and Scott went to Montana. He also grew up near Stan and Jean Porter and attended Sixth Ward. We decided that he was there when I reported my mission in 1974. Stan Porter was also his Bishop. He was there when Uncle Stan was released. This was fantastic and so amazing. We got a along really well. He was great! It was nice remembering Sixth Ward, Stan Porter and all the people we both knew.

We stayed overnight in room 208 and in the morning the doctor came in and said we can leave any time we want wanted to. Neither one of us had slept all that night. In fact, I went down to the parking lot and Scott came with me, while I plugged the phone in to the car to charge so that in the morning Sherry could talk to her family and tell them what had happened during the night.

We finally checked out and then went to Walgreen’s to get her prescriptions. I had to drive very carefully because every bump caused her pain. I was falling asleep with my eyes open on the way home. I was struggling more than any other time, except the time driving from Payson to Phoenix to be there before Sharla went into surgery after I had taken Ambien.

We got home and rested and Shirley brought the kids back in the afternoon. We were both zombies on Friday and today is Saturday. We have been counting our nickels and dimes (literally) to get gas and milk, but we had to do what was best for Sherry to save her.

We are doing okay now and we thank the Lord for His help and His support. Without Him we would not have gotten away and to get her the care that she needs. We want to thank our family and friends for their prayers. The kids were just fantastic and we got to talk to them and let them know what we were doing because they were very worried about their mother. I called Sharla again to tell her about the surgery. She was very nice and acted glad I called her to tell her.

There is a lot of work ahead of us for Sherry to recover and we thank the Lord for His help and blessings.

I am grateful for my wife and JD and Jackie, as well as my children Summer and Hyrum and Teanne and Heber and all their family members and my siblings and their children. I am thankful for them and for all of you reading this.

This really has been an amazing and crazy week. Thanks to all.

Love,
Rod

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