Brandy’s back has been acting up for awhile. Over the past few weeks three times she had to spend two or three days in bed to try to get to the point where she felt like she could walk again.

The most recent time started Sunday evening after we got back from a little shopping. Boom. Brandy was in pain and horizontal. The bed was too soft, so it was the couch, or the floor at times. It was just getting worse and worse.

When I came home for lunch Tueday, as I usually do, she was in pretty bad shape, and we collectively decided that a trip to the emergency room was in order.

We headed to the emergency room, and I called out of work for the rest of the day. Brandy had to lie down in the chairs in the waiting room because she was unable to sit. Walking to and from the car and too and from checking in was very slow and painful for her. Once signed in, over 5 hours of waiting ensued. (At one point I went and picked Amy up from school).

A little after 6 PM Brandy was finally seen by someone. Not a doctor, but a physician’s assistant. He took a history. Ah, previous back injury from the military. There were no tests. He just ordered a shot and a few pills on the spot and gave out prescriptions for new pills. antinflamitories and pain killers. Stong pain killers.

Now, while we were waiting for Brandy to be given her pills, I started having pains in my lower abdomen. Familiar pains. Now, for the last several weeks I’d been off and on having that sort of symptom along with UTI type symptoms. I’d actually seen the doctor at a couple points. He had ordered some tests, then determined that at that particular day I wasn’t bad enough for antibiotics… but by then I’d caught a bad cold, so he gave me stuff for that, plus one of my test results had shown an abnormal liver result, so he ordered follow up tests, and I was supposed to see him next week about that. But meanwhile, the pains had been off and on. But never TOO bad. I was taking some analgesic stuff to help me not mind as much, and was basically waiting to see him next week.

But as we were sitting there waiting for Brandy to get her meds, my pain was getting worse and worse very rapidly, accompanied by a very urgent need to go to the restroom every 3 minutes. But without much of any ability to do anything once there. Yup, I knew this feeling. Kidney Stones.

By the time Brandy’s meds arrived… which included some percoset, I was joking that I wanted some too. But I wasn’t crippled in pain, it was bad, but not yet disabling. And besides, we were there for Brandy and Brandy was hurting a lot and still could not move without excruciating pain. So I ran back and forth to the restroom in between holding Brandy’s hand while she was on the stretcher.

They were completely overbooked and busy. All the rooms were full. After our five hours in the waiting room, we had finally been given an exam room in the ER, but then someone with chest pains was rushed in, and we were moved to a hallway. So we were out in a hallway for a long time.

Finally Brandy got her meds. It took almost an hour for them to kick in. But then she was quite loopy. Plus we had a couple prescriptions to take to the drug store. But we were finally leaving. Over 8 hours after first going in.

As we left, I joked about checking myself in. Aside from the fact that we would have been waiting another six hours most likely, it might have been a good idea. My pain was increasing very very quickly. By now Brandy was actually able to walk, although still with pain. I just wanted to rush home as fast as I could to take some of my own supply of percocet and then crash.

We needed to stop on the way home at the drug store though to fill Brandy’s prescriptions. I had forgotten about this and was hoping it would be mere minutes until we were home. Now it was likely to be half an hour.

And yes, sure enough (leving the yicky details out), there in the CVS restroom, in one of many trips I made in the time we were at the store, I passed a kidney stone. Not a huge one. Probably just a couple millimeters in diameter. But it hurt like hell. And I was sweaty and feaverish from the pain.

So we rush home. Brandy has her meds, and her pain killers are fully kicked in. I am in agony. I just passed a stone, but it was not improving yet. First of all the damn things do a lot of damage as they pass, and second, there may be more… I can barely concentrate to drive, but I am better off than Brandy who is now drugged to the hilt. By the time we get home Brandy is good enough to walk on her own, and I literally run in to drug myself with a couple percocets. (And to get back to a bathroom.)

So now, as I write, Brandy is still in pain and not as mobile as she should be, but is in a nice painkiller haze…. (And of course the painkillers don’t actually fix her back problem… that may not be fixable, it is a degenerate disease… but to feel normal again she’ll still have to be on bedrest the rest of the week probably.) My painkillers have still not fully kicked in. I feel better than I did an hour ago, but am still in a lot of pain. I hurt constantly and am trying to distract myself by writing, and I can’t spend more than about 3 minutes away from the bathroom at a stretch. And the percs are starting to make me dizzy and nauseous. Hopefully they will kick in before I upchuck, or we may be heading back to the ER.

Don’t we make a wonderful healthy couple?

We are both a complete mess tonight.

I really hope tomorrow is better for both of us.

My good friend Rebecca just announced to the world what the name of her and Chris’s baby would be. You can see the full post here. This is after Rebecca and Chris went through a lengthy process for deciding on a name. No, it isn’t Ibengdo, although that is what it would be in the same way that my name (Samuel) turns into Abulsme. Perhaps I will call him Ibengdo. But that is not it. See her post for the real name.

I’ll be honest, my first reaction was much the same as the one Rebecca got at her shower. Yes, I think the only thing that will save the youngster from getting beaten at school over his name is the fact that he will be six feet tall by the time he is seven years old. :-)

However, as I started to think about it, I remembered the many emails Rebecca had sent me talking about how “proper” children should behave. You know… Being quiet and well mannered at restaurants. Not running around and making noise at grocery stores. Not having to be told more than once to do something. Not talking back to their parents. You know, that sort of thing. And then, when I pictured in my head a kid that behaves that way all the time, yes, yes… I could see that name. It fits perfectly! :-)

In any case, I am looking forward to meeting the young man in a few months. Congrats Reb and Chris on the name choice. Sorry I couldn’t make either of the two baby showers. I sent something along, you should have it in a few days. Hope Ibengdo likes it!

Last night after dinner we drove by the house we are trying to buy. It looked like they may have begun the repairs. Or at least some cleanup. It was dark and we did not get out of the car to go look in more detail like we have other times, but it seemed like some of the debris from the front of the house had finally been removed or piled up to go. So it looks like they may have started.

A bunch of things still have to go right for this to happen. They have to finish the repairs, and the inspections have to confirm that it is indeed as good as it was before the hurricanes and there are no other major problems. And I have to get the last of my relocation payments from work. And we otherwise have to have no major unexpected costs between now and whenever closing happens. (Probably January, but maybe December… depends on how long the repairs take.) We shall see. Any one of a number of things could yet derail it. But it looks good at the moment.

But since it now looks like this may happen (as opposed to a month ago when it looked like it the odds were slim) here are a couple pictures.

First, this is the house we are renting from Ivan’s family right now:

And then this is the one we are trying to buy:

(Both images are from the Brevard County Property Appraiser. They are at the same scale. North is up in both pictures.)

Crossing our fingers for everything to work out!

Brandy and I were thinking about something that had happened and were trying to figure out if it had been more or less than a year ago. (I think it turned out to be more.) But anyway, that led Brandy to check something on my blog.

She was looking for this entry. That post announced the death of my parakeet Brain. It was a sad day. But when she rushed back to my house from her house to help me bury Brain and to grieve with me, it kinda marked the start of when we started “dating”. Well, that can be counted in many different ways. We first met back in February 2003. I think. Our first “date” was in March 2003. And we talked and saw each other fairly regularly from that point onward as “just friends”. And certain other (cough) milestones (cough) would actually be later on down the road than this date. And I didn’t actually say publicly to anyone that we were a couple until this post almost a month later.

But the transition into being a couple, or at least calling it that kinda happened that day. In retrospect, we had been acting like a couple for months before that. But this was when we sort of started realizing it ourselves.

I put that posting up at:

12 Nov 2003 01:44:39 UTC

Exactly one year later (given the true length of a year and the oddities of the calendar) would be:

11 Nov 2004 07:33:25 UTC

Um, it’s now a little bit more than two and a half days since then. So I guess we missed it. Oops.

But, better late than never I suppose.

Happy one year of being a couple Brandy. It has been a great year. It is hard to believe it has actually ONLY been a year. Thank you. I love you. And here is to the next year being as fun as the first, but perhaps not quite as chaotic!