Svithe Alive

This was quite the weekend. Two visits to Urgent Care, a mis-diagnosis, two CT scans, multiple x-rays, an ambulance ride, a hospital stay, a correct diagnosis, and surgery. (Not to mention a couple of fevers upwards of 102 that I think finally broke last night about midnight or so.)

Though I was not the one experiencing the afore mentioned ailments and treatments, I was the heart wrenched wife standing by feeling completely helpless, wanting to help but not having much to give in the way of relief.

I never really thought he was going to die, but I have to say that when he came back from surgery he looked dead and I was very glad that he indeed was not dead. The first night we were in Urgent Care we were talking about how many family members would most likely have died without the advanced medical services we're so blessed to have here in this day and age.

warning: the following examples may contain inacuracies. I am trying to go off my memory as best as possible. Keep in mind though, that I am the kind of person that can re-watch movies because I can't remember what happens much of the time...
We concluded most of Matt's families would be gonners.

• Matt's mom very easily could have died while having their last child. Who knows if he would have made it through that...(Also, she very well could have died while giving birth to Lady Steed. During that first birth her appendix was very close to bursting. Luckily they were doing a C-section, they routinely checked it, and they ended up having two surgeries for the price of one.)
  
• Matt's dad...well, lets just say he's not the luckiest man when it comes to medical issues. He had two of the largest kidney stones the hospital had ever seen at the same time, one in each tube. They did not believe they were kidney stones because they were so large. Additionally, given his luck, had he lived in a time a primative medicine, he would have died of an infection to one of his multiple bones broken in his life (one being a broken arm right before Lady Steed and Thmazing got hitched).
  
• Lady Steed had some complications while giving birth to the Big O. My guess is that he would have had a hard time surviving without that emergency C-section and immediate cleaning out of his lungs.
• Matt himself would be dead. When he was a little kid his dad felt like he should check on him in the middle of the night. I think (though I could be getting this story a little wrong, so feel free to correct me Lady Steed) that his throat was constricting to the point he couldn't breath. Dad Bras(s) rushed him to the hospital and they were able to save his life. Also, this whole appendix thing could have been bad. Our Bishop told us (thankfully after Matt's surgery) that his cousin died just 5 years ago from his appendix bursting while he was at the hospital...
  

As for my family, I think we'd have had more living than dead, but who knows...

• My oldest brother Bryan had some medical issues when he was around 2 1/2. Even the doctors had a hard time figuring out what was wrong. If I'm not mistaken it was a chiropracter that "saved his life."
• Though I don't think she would have died, my sister J. may have lost her eye sight after falling out of a moving vehical and getting rocks full in her face and eyes.
  
• J.'s daughter Becca gave them a real scare when her heart beat dropped so low it was off the charts during delivery. Without an emergency C-section it would have been a very touchy situation.
  

Anyway, I guess the moral of this is that I'm very grateful for life and that we've all made it through what we've made it through...

In Romans 8:28 it says, "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God." Also, we are often adomonished to count our many blessings when life is harder or more troublesome than we'd like. So I thought I'd go ahead and make a little list, mainly because I like lists (as you could probably tell from above).

I'm very grateful:

1. the R.S. gave me a list of Medical and Emergency facilities when I first got in town.
2. Mapquest gave me the quickest route to the Urgent Care.
   
3. Matt did not die.
   
4. the R.S. President knew someone that could give him a blessing on short notice.
5. the men who gave him a blessing came even though they didn't know us.
6. in the blessing they told us to seek further medical attention.
7. he had a fever the second time we went into Urgent Care because that meant an automatic admission to the hospital.
8. they discovered after his second CT scan that the problem was one of appendix and not of kidney stones.
9. this happened here rather than UT. His insurance has much better coverage than mine had.
10. though we didn' t have our insurance cards we were able to call another LDS Raytheon employee who was able to get us all of the numbers we needed to figure it out.

The list goes on, but 10 is a nice round number and I like things to be neat and orderly if possible. We felt very supported by our parents and by church members. I really am grateful to be a part of such a huge network of caring people who are willing to help you even when they don't really know you. It's quite amazing if you think about it.