a trip to the ER

this was one expensive bracelet-

some may already know, but i went to the emergency room on friday, you know, just to hang out. thursday night before i went to bed i started to have a weird pain in my right hand. it felt numb and tingly like when you fall asleep on your arm. it went down my hand and ended at my elbow. it stayed all night long. at one point around 2 a.m. i got up with my screaming 3 year old for the 8th time and tried to pick her up. i got her up to my waist and my whole right hand gave out on me and i slowly dropped her (she's fine). the next morning it was still a little painful but not as intense. by 8:30 i could feel the same pain in my right leg on the back of my thigh. it wasn't really painful, more achy like i worked out too hard, but i hadn't worked out my legs. i decided to call a friend of ours in our ward that is an ER doctor. I told him my symptoms and he told me he thought it would be best if i went to the ER for an MRI. he said that if it was just numb he would tell me to wait it out but numbness with loss of mobility in any way is your body trying to tell you that something is wrong. i then told him that my sister had a stroke and several seizures when she was 21. he laughed a little and said, "please go the ER right now." I called ryan and he was on his way home from work. i decided to call my "stroky" sister and ask her what kind of things happened to her leading up to her stroke. i made her really frightened when i started telling her what i had experienced because they were coinciding with her so well. she told me to go the ER right away.

side note-

now, normally just having these things happened people would probably just thing, "wow, that was weird" and just move on, but because of family history it was a big red flag for me. i also have really bad varicose veins with bad circulation that in turn can result in a higher risk for a blood clot. the other thing that tells me something is not quite right is the fact that i took 4 of my kids to the ymca. 2 to playcare and 2 to dive class. i exercised and then watched my 2 in dive class. i had about a half hour until it was over, 2 minutes had gone by in my head but the clock said that 20 minutes had passed. it felt weird, but whatever. then i remember saying to myself, "i am so glad i didn't bring the little ones because it would take us longer to leave to y and we had to be somewhere fast after dive." i handed ali & charlie their towels and told them i would meet them in the hall after they changed. i picked up their coats and my hand hit my 2 tags that were dangling from my shirt saying i had 2 children in the playcare. i thought to myself how weird it is that i have tags when i didn't bring them with me. it took a minute for me to process what was going on and to tell myself to go pick up the kids in the playcare. the whole time i felt fine and "with it". it was just something weird that happened.

back to friday-
so, into the ER i go. by the time i got there my hand felt back to normal and the pain was going down my leg and was now behind my knee and into my calf. they did blood work and an MRI. when the doctor came back he said, "the good news is, there is NOTHING wrong with you. the bad news is, we don't know what is wrong with you." my blood work came back "pristine" he said. they couldn't explain what had happened. by this time the pain was only in my ankle and almost nonexistent. i was told that no more tests would be done until they had more symptoms to go off of. he told me to follow up with a primary doctor or come to the ER if anything major happens.

so, i feel fine. i was given an extraordinary blessing from my brother and husband before i went into the ER. i know that blessing helped me heal and now we just need to wait to see if there is more to come, but let's pray that that was it and someday i will say to my husband, "remember that day when i went to the ER with the weird numbness and pain, but then it left and nothing ever came of it?" and he'll say, "yeah, that was weird."

"yeah, it was weird."

p.s. i came home to this taped on our front door from the most caring 9 year old in the world with beautiful artistic ability.