10 December 2002

Boy, oh, boy could yesterday have been better.

I woke up queasy and then had to get in a car for a three-hour drive up to D.C. (Did I mention I'm susceptible to motion sickness?) At least no one objected to my taking the front passenger seat, which reduces motion sickness problems.

Then we ate lunch, and then we went into a three-hour-long interview meeting. Zzzzz...

And then we got back in the car and drove back to Williamsburg. It worked out to an eleven-hour working day. (I know three and three and three adds up to nine. I didn't tell you about the time we spent sitting around waiting for the meeting, or getting stuck in traffic.)

The good news to come out of that is that I'll be able to leave work a little early today to get some of the last of our Christmas shopping done.

So around 7 last night I got home and called my dad to find out that my mom was admitted to their hospital's ICU ward with an astonishingly high level of toxins in her blood and an array of horrifying vital signs.

The last I heard, the hospital had called Dad around 8:30 last night to get his permission to put Mom on dialysis for a few hours, because her kidneys simply couldn't cope with all the crap in her bloodstream. They were going to essentially hand-filter her blood for about four hours, and then monitor her for a while to see if they'd reduced the problem enough that her body could take over again.

That's just scary. And I think my Dad is even more frightened. After work tonight, Matt and I are going to go over to the hospital to visit her (and I'm praying to every diety I've ever heard of that they'll have cleaned her system out enough that she'll be rational again - before they admitted her, she was seeing hallucinations) and then afterwards we're going to see if Dad will let us take him out to dinner, just to give him some company and someone to talk to for a while.

The good news is that, now that she's in the hospital, she should recover fairly quickly. Just how quickly remains to be seen, of course, but as much as I hate hospitals, I have a strong appreciation for modern medicine. I don't know if she'll be well enough to go to Texas with my dad next week, as they had planned, but I expect she'll be at least mostly back to normal by Christmas.

And then, the icing on the cake: After I finished talking to Dad (the first time), I went to check my e-mail, and my computer wouldn't wake up from sleep. I hit the Reset button - and it turned off and wouldn't turn back on. I was about to panic when Matt said something offhandedly about the power. I went around the chair to look, and sure enough - the surge suppressor had come unplugged. I plugged it back in, and after a few minutes everything worked fine.

So, all in all - it could have been worse. But it definitely could have been a better day.

Pregnancy update: That queasiness I mentioned yesterday morning? Morning sickness finally shows up in the morning. I've been getting queasy in the evenings, but yesterday was the first day I wasn't feeling top notch in the mornings.

Over the weekend, Matt and I stopped at a Books-a-Million and bought about $120 worth of baby and parenting books. Some were Christmas presents for Emma and Patrick. Three parenting books for Matt and I (two for me and one for him, though I think we're both interested in seeing what the other's books say).

And a handful of baby books as gifts for our parents and grandparents, which is how we're planning on spreading the news. We're sticking a note in each that says, "We hope you'll enjoy sharing this book with your (great-) grandchild, who is due in August." I'm kind of excited. Matt figures his mom will pass the news on to his brother and sister, since they'll be together for Christmas, and I'll probably tell John during the Christmas phone call.

And then I'll FINALLY be able to talk about it in my journal and blog without putting it all in comments like this...

--Liz