the weekend that wasn't

Happy Friday the 13th!  I think my Friday the 13th bad luck hit me early.  Let me tell you about it.  Have you ever planned and looked forward to something and then have everything fall apart and not go anywhere near the way you wanted it to go?  Well, that was my last weekend.  We have been needing to buy a new van for quite a while.  Our old one has been wonderful, but it is just, well, old.  It hit 200,000 miles this summer, and we were just praying it would get us to our vacation to Colorado and home, which it did great, but since then I feel like we have been pushing our luck.  So, since we live in a very small town with little to no car dealerships available for another minivan, we knew we would have to go to the city--easy choice.  Finding a Saturday when we could actually go to the city--the two of us, no kids?  Not so easy.  So, about a month ago I penciled in we would be going to the city last Saturday to go van shopping--just me and Ben.  No kids.  We figured they are old enough (15,13,11,8)  to watch themselves for a day especially with grandparents in town to call on in an emergency.  So, I had the day all planned out.  We were going to leave early (like 6 a.m.) so Ben and I could attend the temple, then we would have the whole day to van shop--we had a list of dealers and places to go, we would go out to dinner someplace besides fast food or Mexican (which is all our small town has to offer--I was thinking Olive Garden--Yum), and we would just have a great day together.  I had a plan--we were ready.  Little did I know. . .

Well. . . we left on time.  The temple was wonderful, but things just went downhill from there.  After we left the temple we went to a dealer.  We pulled into the parking lot and I had this instant, intense pain on my right side lower back.  Like so intense and instant I felt like I was going to be sick.  I breathed deeply thinking, "What in the heck???" and then we left the dealership without even going in because I needed to use the bathroom and didn't want to use it there.  So, we drove to a hotel right across the street, I went in, took deep breaths, walked around, used the restroom, and the pain started to subside.  So, I thought, "okay that was weird, but I am feeling better, so let's go. . ."  So we drive back over to the dealership and start looking at some vans.  We looked at 3, and then the pain started again.  Oh, my.  The salesman said, 'Well, lets take a drive."  And I was thinking, "I am not going to go for a drive and throw up in this new car."  So I politely said, 'Ben you drive it, I am not feeling well.  I need to go to the restroom."  He was ready to just leave and go home, but I insisted he drive the car and see what he thought.  So, I spent the next 30 minutes in the restroom of the car dealership throwing up and feeling awful.  I called my Dr. from the bathroom in the dealership and said, "help!  I am in the restroom of a car dealership in the city, and I am dying!"--benefits of small town medicine.  Thank heavens he has known me almost all my life and knew I wasn't crazy :)  He called me in some prescriptions at home, and then I hear some knocking on the bathroom door.  It's Ben who didn't know where I had gone and was very worried.  I told him we had to go home right away--which takes 2 hours.  So, after a horrid ride home of constant pain and throwing up, I made it home where I immediately sent Ben to the pharmacy, and I hid out in my room for 2 days alternating between moaning in my bed and getting sick in my bathroom.  It was not a pretty sight.  After 6 hours of throwing up almost every 20 minutes, I finally stopped and was able to get some medicine and liquids down.  Ugh.  Not fun.  What was wrong?  Well, I had a UTI, and those are common for me, but I have never, ever had them with that kind of pain in my side.  My doctor thought it might have been a kidney stone?  But I never passed anything and the pain went away by Sunday.  The throwing up I am assuming was my body's reaction to the intense pain.  I don't know, but I hope and pray it never, ever happens again.

So much for our nicely planned weekend.

I was sort of out of commission for a few days after and just sore.  After throwing up that often for that long, my body was really sore, but by Wednesday I was feeling almost normal.  Thank heavens for modern medicine!

But trying to find another weekend we have free now is almost next to impossible.  Ben and I were looking at the calendar, and I said, 'Looks like we can go again the 2nd weekend in November."  Oh. My.  So, we are hoping and praying our good old van keeps plugging along fine until then and that I never get that sick again!  It was an experience I never want to repeat.  The end.