Goings on

I have not posted for a while.  I have not cooked for a while.  I do have some stories to share though. 

The last time I posted was three weekends ago.  The following weekend I went to Salt Lake to visit Temple Square.  It was wonderful to wander around the temple grounds, in and out of the visitors centers.  I spent some time sitting in front of the statue of Christ in the North Visitor's Center.  It was a wonderful experience. 

Then I met up with a friend and we went to lunch.  I figured since I was on the road, I would taste some food made by the professionals rather than my own cooking for a weekend.  Ironically, I this gave me food poisoning (we think) and Monday night was a very miserable night spent on the couch.  How surprising!  All these weeks of eating my own, amateur cooking and never a problem.  Eat something made by a pro and that luck changes.  It boosted my confidence.

The next weekend my mom and dad got the four-wheelers running.  The plan was for them to go for a ride, but my dad had a headache so mom and I headed out for a relaxing trail ride.  We didn't know that there were going to be motocross races that day.  We got stuck in the middle of the races and were stuck trying to find a way around them for a long time.  Eventually, we gave up and cut through the course.  In all, we were gone for about 2 hours and I did not feel at all like cooking when I got home.  So I didn't.  Instead, I set about getting ready to go to Needles for work. 

This weekend, well this weekend I'm actually home.  Not in Needles.  I inherited many things from my father.  Unfortunately, I also inherited his esophagus.  I have acid reflux disease.  Over time the acid causes narrowing in my esophagus and makes the muscles spasm and misfire from time to time.  These two combined make food sometimes get stuck.  Until this past week I was always able to get the food unstuck on my own, but Wednesday night was different.  Michael and I sat down to dinner at about 8:30 and the first bite didn't go down.  I took a drink, which usually pushes the food down, but then the water stopped, hurt and then came back up.  All over the place.  After a while of fighting with the piece of chicken I gave up and told Michael we were going to need to get to a hospital. 

We made some phone calls and discovered that the closest place that could do the necessary procedure was in Las Vegas- 2 hours away.  We had a truck to unload that night and there was no way for Michael to drop me off at the hospital and then make it back in time to meet the truck.  So, when the truck showed up at 1 AM we unloaded it and met my parents in Searchlight.  We made it to the first hospital at about 6.  They couldn't do the procedure.  6:30 we hit St. Rose Dominican Hospital Siena Campus in Henderson.  At this point, the food has been stuck for 10 hours.  

After some x-rays, IV drugs with a very small success rate and several hours of waiting I was taken to same-day surgery to have an endoscopy- scoping of the esophagus.  16 hours after the food got stuck, it was removed.  I woke up a short time later and spent the rest of the day in and out of a coma-like state.  Normally anesthesia makes people drowsy, but the anti-nausea drugs I was given mixed with the anesthesia to create an extremely potent cocktail.

Now I am home, writing this blog.  That pretty much sums up my life for the past little bit.